Ahead of MedCity CONVERGE, we spoke to investor and Penn lecturer Gary Kurtzman on the city’s penchant for healthcare innovation.
After 30 years guiding healthcare companies through the start-grow-exit cycle in Philadelphia and beyond, Dr. Gary Kurtzman, Managing Director of Healthcare at Safeguard Scientifics, is sure of one thing: Philly has what it takes to set itself apart in the national landscape of healthcare research hubs, especially in the world of immunotherapy.
“We’re the place where people are coming for immunotherapy-based biotech products,” said Kurtzman, a board member and advisor to companies in the Philly area and elsewhere helping tackle significant problems faced by patients.
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Kurtzman, who has overseen exits of early-stage companies to brand-name companies like Eli Lilly and Teva, thinks the research underway in the Philly area has the potential to deliver more scientific breakthroughs, provided it has access to the capital and entrepreneurial support it needs.
Q: You have said before that Philadelphia is the epicenter of the healthcare universe. When it comes to biotech research, how is the city playing a starring role?
Kurtzman: Philly has been a hotbed of research forever. That’s not new. Over the last several years particularly, with the formation of Spark Therapeutics, gene therapy, with a long history in this region, finally became a successful commercial endeavor. What we’re seeing now around immunotherapy, likewise imbedded in our research endeavors, for a couple decades, that has taken a commercial embodiment with the approval of Novartis’ drug [Kymriah] and a couple of years ago with Tmunity based out of Dr. Carl June’s lab and more recently with the funding of [Penn spinout] Carisma. You put that together with efforts around creating infrastructure for the production of gene and cell therapy products and you can see an ecosystem developing around that effort.
Q: Besides these breakthroughs, what are some other local advancements where you see the most promise?
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Kurtzman: Well, it’s not just the technology to develop the therapy but manufacturing and supply chain are other areas where the region is trying to claim leadership. Jefferson University, for example, is opening a bioprocessing lab in the suburbs and Penn announced a $50 million dollar commitment to financing companies.
Q: In the national VC landscape, how are investors viewing Philly healthcare companies? Is there a willingness to back them?
Kurtzman: I think that depends on what companies are doing. Tmunity and Carisma just got large financing rounds on the order that companies at their stage would get if they were in Boston or the Bay Area. We’re still behind in the natural ecosystem of going through the formation, establishment, funding and exit cycle. We do have notable examples, but I still think the volume is just not reflecting the work that’s being done here.
Q: Safeguard Scientifics joined an effort to back early-stage digital health startups called the Healthcare Innovation Collaborative. Any interesting observations from that push?
Kurtzman: This was designed to get various stakeholders in a room to see if we could make things easier for digital health companies. I would say that it’s been somewhat of an eye opener, because things make sense tend to get more complicated when you get a bunch of people in the room with different perspectives and who represent different organizations. We haven’t yet solved the major roadblock on how to make things easier for healthcare entrepreneurs, but that is still very much the intent. To that end we recently launched a new initiative, a call for proposals aimed at helping address the financial burden and difficulties faced by patients undergoing lengthy or complex disease treatments.
Q: What’s needed for Philadelphia to retain, and attract, the leading researchers that are needed to sustain the path of innovation?
Kurtzman: We have the research and healthcare expertise. That’s already embedded in our pharmaceutical, academic institutions and larger tech companies in our region. We need to address how to get the next generation of companies to develop or relocate here and grow. The good news is we have a natural geographic advantage: Being very close to the epicenter of government and the healthcare system. We need more entrepreneurs willing to set up shop here and the ability to support them with experience and with funding. We need to grow and advance the ecosystem that supports the next generation of game-changing healthcare technologies and products.
