Conde: Bio platforms should target high-end research institutions before expanding down-market
Jorge Conde · Shifting Risk Mindsets, from Tech to Bio · Apr 30, 2018 · at 20:26
Jorge Conde, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z Bio), discusses go-to-market strategies for novel biology platforms, comparing them to Illumina's sequencing model.
0:00 / 0:37exact quote · 37.2s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“And you sell to the high end of the market first, right? So what, you know, what we saw with happening with sequencing was that obviously in the very early days when, you know, the throughput of the sequencer It was low, where the cost was very high. The only natural buyer for that was, you know, large research institutions, and those sort of became the initial sites, and as the, you know, sort of performance got better, the market opened up, and opened up, and of course, you know, today, if you can get a benchtop sequencer for a relatively low amount of money, and basically any lab can afford that, and so I think the same is true when you have these other technology platforms”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jorge Conde
Conde: AI has not yet compressed biotech clinical trial timelines
“We still haven't seen, and I think it's coming, but it hasn't happened yet. We haven't seen artificial intelligence or other technologies massively compress the amount of time it takes us to do the clinical development, the clinical trials, the enrollment of p…”
Novartis's one-time gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy costs $2.1 million
“You know, in the case of treating a baby that had, you know, something like somatic muscular atrophy that would have otherwise died, a one and done gene therapy from Novartis, this is a therapy that's worth about, it's cost about 2.1 million dollars, effective…”
Conde: Engineering principles make later drug programs more valuable than earlier ones
“The second drug is more valuable than the first if you're using engineering principles, because what you learn from example one sort of imbues value to example two and so on and so forth.”
Conde: Biology is transforming from experimental science into an engineered discipline
“It's really just one subset of what we think is the broader theme here, which is the shift away from biology being primarily an empirical or an experimental science to becoming more of an engineered discipline.”
Conde: Engineering principles make subsequent drug candidates more valuable than earlier ones
“But in your world, in the world you're describing, this engineering world, it's actually the reverse is true. That the second drug is more valuable than the first if you're using engineering principles, because what you learn from example one sort of imbues va…”
Conde: Platforms focused solely on target discovery struggle to capture value
“And so if your platform is to identify novel targets, it's going to actually be very hard. That's sort of the end of the line for what your technology can do. It's really hard to capture value there. And certainly hard to get that from a collaboration standpoi…”