Mona Welschof, PhD
VP Clinical Development
Mona Welschof joined the BioInvent team in January 2021. Mona has 20 years of clinical development experience in oncology covering all phases from early stage to registration.
“My main focus is to support the planning and execution of BioInvent’s clinical studies, including coordination and leadership of clinical operations functions, ensuring GCP compliance and providing strategic guidance in clinical development activities. BioInvent is in a very exciting position right now with five clinical projects, and important partners, who all share our ambition to make a real difference for cancer patients.”
Linda Mårtensson, PhD
Principal Scientist at BioInvent
Linda Mårtensson has a PhD in Experimental Oncology at Lund University, with focus on therapeutic antibodies. She joined BioInvent’s preclinical team 12 years ago and has since been working on the development of novel antibody therapies.
”The balance of scientific freedom, strong team spirit and supportive leadership makes the work environment at Bioinvent very positive. At Bioinvent, I am constantly offered new, stimulating challenges as when we prepared BI-1607 for clinical entry which was successfully completed during the summer 2022.”
The BioInvent colleagues Ingrid Teige, Head of Preclinical and Linda Mårtensson, Principal Scientist, had some busy days at the AACR (American Association for Cancer Research) Annual Meeting 2022 in New Orleans, Louisiana, US.
Exciting translational data were presented for BioInvent’s anti-TNFR2 antibody BI-1808, showing similar biomarker correlations in patient samples as observed in the preclinical setting. The poster on BioInvent’s second anti-FcyRIIB antibody BI-1607 reinforces BioInvent’s evidence base that blocking the Fcγ receptor is a key strategy in controlling outcomes in cancer.
BioInvent’s and its collaboration partner Transgene presented a poster demonstrating that the companies’ jointly developed oncolytic virus drug candidate BT-001 has the potential to improve anti-tumor activity and provide greater therapeutic benefit than systemically administered anti-CTLA-4 antibodies.
Björn Frendéus, Chief Scientific Officer
Scientific Advisory Board
BioInvent has a well-establish Scientific Advisory Board consisting of world-leading experts. In this interview, Björn Frendéus, Chief Scientific Officer at BioInvent, talks about the important role the advisory board has for the ongoing development of the company’s programs.
How would you describe the function of BioInvent’s Scientific Advisory Board?
“The principal function of BioInvent’s Science Advisory Board is to give BioInvent a world-leading, cutting-edge, critical scientific review of all our programs. The scope for the advisory board covers all project phases from discovery to clinical development. Once a year or so, my team and I get the opportunity to present our entire portfolio to a group of internationally leading experts. BioInvent and the members of the advisory board share the absolute ambition to help people with severe cancer diagnoses. We also share the conviction that highest quality research provides the fundament to developing groundbreaking cancer treatments. The discussions we have with the scientific advisory board are therefore brutally honest, highly productive, and extremely stimulating.”
How do you normally meet, and how often, how do you set the agenda?
“Our meetings are normally face-to-face and are held at the Paddington Hotel in London, which provides easy access to our European and US advisors, as well as the BioInvent and Southampton research teams. We meet regularly every 12-18 months. The standing agenda can be described as ‘a critical scientific review across our programs’, a detailed agenda is shared with advisors ahead of each meeting.
“Present at the meeting are BioInvent’s Scientific Leads and a team from Southampton University, where I am a visiting professor. The Southampton research team consists of translational and clinical professors and a group of highly talented PhD students and post-docs, which support our programs through intellectual discussions and generation of experimental data. It is a true privilege for all of us to be able to present and get real-time feedback from our advisors, who are world leading experts in distinct fields relevant to our business – immunology and cancer immunotherapy. Our discussions range from the highest level on BioInvent’s programs, to key outstanding questions relating to our scientific hypothesis, efficacy, tolerability, potential combinations, clinical indications and developability, to detailed suggestions on experiments and models.”
How do you recruit members and what are the criteria?
“Members are identified based on scientific excellence within the immunology/oncology fields core to BioInvent’s focus, i.e., immunology in general, and cancer immunology and mechanisms of resistance in the tumor microenvironment in particular. The composition of the SAB team, personality, and continuity following BioInvent, are also important.”
All members of your Scientific Advisory Board are leading international experts within their respective fields. What have attracted them to collaborate with BioInvent?
“BioInvent has a solid reputation for scientific excellence, which is a prerequisite for our ability to attract world-leading advisors. Our ambition is to develop therapies that are missing today. One very exciting and promising area where BioInvent is highly active is to develop pharmaceuticals that can re-ignite the effect of existing drugs to overcome drug-resistance. Another field where we believe we can make an important contribution is in the treatment of cold tumors. Cold tumors lack immune cells and consequently don’t respond to available immunotherapies. It is our ambition to find a way to induce inflammation in these tumors, which would make it possible to treat them with immuno-oncology therapies. These are highly interesting fields with potential to dramatically improve cancer outcome.
“In addition to BioInvent’s scientific appeal, we also work hard to establish productive relationships with experts who can contribute to our programs. One part of this is of course that we always come very well prepared to our meetings, another is that we really listen to the advice we get. Continuity is a key aspect throughout a project’s development, and we have ongoing discussions with individual members of the scientific advisory board.”
Sylvie Ryckebusch, Business Development
Business development
The business development function at BioInvent serves to expand the company’s capabilities by making connections with important players within the pharmaceutical industry and academia. The main objective is to establish fruitful collaborations with partners with complementary resources or expertise to maximize the value of BioInvent research, preclinical, and clinical assets. BioInvent has established different types of strategic collaborations: research and development partnerships leveraging BioInvent’s platform technologies, product licenses resulting from legacy library license agreements, and development and commercial partnerships for our clinical assets. In this interview, we talk with Sylvie Ryckebusch, who heads the business development function at BioInvent.
How would you describe the business development work at BioInvent?
“I often describe business development as an iceberg in that sense that only a small part of what we are doing is visible. Business development is truly long-term work, and the deals that we make normally take a long time to bring to a successful close, and a lot of time is spent to build and nurture meaningful relationships before any real negotiations begin. Business development also include a number of housekeeping tasks such as alliance and contract management.”
Can you describe your networks within the industry?
“We have many relationships within the pharmaceutical industry and academia and a large number of active collaborations. With our industry partners, our primary ambition is to establish development and commercial partnerships for our clinical assets, though we sometimes also establish research collaborations. The more advanced our clinical programs, the greater our chance of establishing partnerships that bring real value to BioInvent. Academic partnerships, on the other hand, allow us to tap into world class scientific expertise to advance our early programs, but also potentially to acquire high quality early assets that could be of interest to BioInvent for further development.”
Much of your work consists of meeting with people. Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your work at all?
“It has. BioInvent goes to all major conferences in our field, and normally this is a great way to keep our current and future partners up to date when it comes the development of our clinical programs. Normally these conferences are also a perfect opportunity to establish new relationships. During the pandemic, all conferences have been held digitally, which has made it more difficult to meet with new potential partners. Hopefully we will be able to get back to a more normal situation with real face-to-face meetings in 2022. However, we closed the CASI deal in the midst of the pandemic.”
Have you noticed any shift in the interest in BioInvent from the big pharma companies?
“Yes, definitely. As our programs advance in the clinic, leading pharmaceutical companies are increasingly tracking our progress and engaging in ongoing dialogue. The quality of our clinical assets as well as the BioInvent assets developed by our partners has also showcased the high quality of our unique platform technology, antibody library, and scientific expertise.”
I realize that you cannot talk about any agreements that potentially are in the making, but can you comment a bit on the deals that were made in 2021?
“Gladly. In August 2021, we established a supply and collaboration agreement with MSD to support the expansion of the clinical trial program with our anti-TNFR2 antibody BI-1808. The agreement with MSD gives us the opportunity to explore the potential synergistic activity of BI-1808 in combination with pembrolizumab, which is very exciting. As MSD carefully reviews programs before establishing such agreements, this provides further validation of the high quality of our TNFR2 program.”
BioInvent has a strong cash position as well as a solid financial position. Does this impact the business development in any way?
“Absolutely. It enables us to be much more selective in the timing and choice of partnerships. We have the freedom to develop our assets to a stage where we can create substantial value in our programs and make them really attractive for potential partners.”
One final question. You have six clinical projects that are outlicensed to other companies. What does that mean for BioInvent?
“First of all, it is a fantastic seal of excellence for the quality of our platform technology. These projects also hold real long-term financial potential. In the short term, say five years, we may receive minor clinical milestone payments, but the real upside in the projects is of course if we reach the commercial milestones and potential royalties in five to ten years from now. It is impossible know if any of our external projects will go all the way to market but statistically it is highly probable that at least one or two will be successful.”
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