Devices & Diagnostics, Hospitals, Pharma, Startups

MedCity News Hangout: Where to find funding if you’re not a digital health startup

Everyone likes to talk about funding for digital health – Y Combinator is doing biotech […]

Everyone likes to talk about funding for digital health – Y Combinator is doing biotech now! Andreesen Horowitz gets into health tech! Deals and dollars look great in Q1 2014!

It’s not as easy to make cheery slide decks about funding for the rest of the healthcare startup world: pharma, medical devices and bio tech companies. However, the money is still out there for companies working on hard science products.

Our April hangout features three people who specialize in funding healthcare startups. If you need fresh ideas about where to get financial support for your company, tune in to our hangout at noon Eastern on Wednesday. We will speak with people working with early stage and late stage companies as well as an entrepreneur who has found unique ways to fund his cancer vaccine company.

The panel includes:

Leading startups and funding them

Currently Richard Berenson is the CEO of Thermalin Diabetes, but he has been leading organizations and developing practical, break-through strategy for more than 20 years. He has been CEO or COO at 9 startups, including ActivBiotics and HeartLander Surgical. He is also involved with Mass Medical Angels. MA2 is a seed stage investor group exclusively focused on life science and healthcare investments. The group’s mission is to bring more clinical tools to the marketplace, while attaining superior returns for investors.

Royalty and debt deals
David Carter is a principal at Capital Royalty, an investment firm focused on structured financings of commercialized biopharmaceutical products and medical technologies. David joined Capital Royalty in 2003 and has more than 20 years of investment experience. Prior to joining Capital Royalty, he was a partner at Palestra Capital, a New York-based hedge fund, where he focused on risk arbitrage, special situations, and distressed securities.

To space and back again
Dorit Donoviel has more than 20 years of leadership experience as director of R&D overseeing diverse areas of biomedical research from basic to applied science, drug discovery, and technology development. Regularly reports and presents on the entire NSBRI science portfolio as well as the Industry Forum to the NSBRI Board of Directors, External Advisory Council, User Panel, and NASA.
The NSBRI Industry Forum mission is twofold: to commercialize biomedical discoveries made for space, and challenge the private sector to develop space-compatible healthcare solutions.
The Industry Forum focuses on commercialization of NSBRI-funded technologies through activities such as commercialization workshops and market analysis reports. To engage the private sector, in 2011, the Industry Forum Steering Council launched a funding program that recruits small U.S. companies to provide medical innovations that solve the unique challenges of human spaceflight while developing new market opportunities on Earth.

Non-traditional funding for a cancer treatment
Marc Mansour is the chief operating officer of Immunovaccine. The company is developing an adjuvant platform with the potential to provide controlled and prolonged exposure of antigens and adjuvant to the immune system by creating a depot at the site of vaccination. He is an expert in vaccinology and cancer immunotherapy. Since he joined Immunovaccine, Marc led the clinical development of the DepoVax™ platform and the Company’s lead therapeutic cancer vaccine DPX-Survivac, soon entering randomized Phase II trials in ovarian cancer and glioblastoma.

Join us at noon Wednesday!

[Image of Hirotoshi Itoh’s artwork by flickr user Aaron Shumaker]

Veronica Combs

Veronica is an independent journalist and communications strategist. For more than 10 years, she has covered health and healthcare with a focus on innovation and patient engagement. Most recently she managed strategic partnerships and communications for AIR Louisville, a digital health project focused on asthma. The team recruited 7 employer partners, enrolled 1,100 participants and collected more than 250,000 data points about rescue inhaler use. Veronica has worked for startups for almost 20 years doing everything from launching blogs, newsletters and patient communities to recruiting speakers, moderating panel conversations and developing new products. You can reach her on Twitter @vmcombs.

Shares0
Shares0