Investing in Canadian innovation: One-on-one

with Maha Katabi, General Partner, Sofinnova Ventures Head tk

TELL INSIGHTS MAGAZINE A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR JOURNEY INTO THE LEADERSHIP ROLE YOU HAVE ESTABLISHED IN THE INVESTMENT COMMUNITY WITHIN THE LIFE SCIENCES SECTOR IN CANADA.

I always wanted to be involved in the sciences, and I focused on pharmacology at university. During my training as a researcher at McGill, I came across the business aspects of drug development in my interaction with an industry collaborator who was interested in testing their novel lipid formulation in tumor models. This Canadian company, Inex, was focused on developing liposomal formulations for drug and gene delivery. I quickly realized that I wanted to explore the world outside the lab and joined an early -stage company creation fund after I graduated. I was pulled into writing business plans for various technologies, and understood the global nature of innovation, biotech and financing in biopharmaceuticals. Throughout my career to date, I have taken on the management of investment funds across early-stage private companies to mature clinical stage and public companies.

SOFINNOVA WAS ESTABLISHED IN 1976 AND TODAY HAS MORE THAN $3 BILLION IN ASSETS HELPING TO DRIVE NEW LIFE SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY COMPANY DEVELOPMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, EUROPE AND CANADA. WHAT ATTRACTED THE SOFINNOVA TEAM INTO THE CANADIAN BIOTECH ECOSYSTEM-WHY CANADA?

Sofinnova Investments’ venture strategy is focused on therapeutics. The firm was originally launched by French pension funds, and one of the firm’s early managers established a presence in San Francisco early on and this led to the establishment of Sofinnova Investments as an independent manager of US focused investment funds. The firm pivoted to investments in life sciences in the late nineties and has further focused as a pure play therapeutics investor over the past four funds. We partner with founders of biotech and pharmaceutical companies to take innovative therapies from the lab to the patient.

2. The majority of our investment activities are in the United States. Innovation is strong outside the US in Europe, Canada, and other emerging places around the world. It is a globally competitive market place and we are looking at what we believe are the best opportunities in areas and places where our team can add value. The team’s experience and track record have collectively led to 24 FDA approvals over the last 10 years. Canada’s life sciences industry offers opportunities that are comparable both in quality and market potential, and this market remains relatively underinvested.

WHEN YOU SCAN THE CANADIAN INDUSTRY, WHAT HAS IMPRESSED YOU THE MOST ABOUT WHAT CANADIAN TECHNOLOGY AND ENTREPRENEURS ARE DOING?

During the pandemic, what I learnt about our healthcare community in Canada when we seized the opportunity to accelerate decision making about clinical trial conduct, funding innovative projects, and accelerating negotiations to have access to vaccine technologies was that we have amazing people. Gone were the usual complaints: this is too risky, why are we doing this, can we succeed? It is remarkable how quickly we can move when a risk-taking mindset prevails.

Resilient healthcare systems are needed to sustain a robust economy. Now that the pandemic is behind us, we need to focus on innovation and continue to foster a risk-taking culture.

There are numerous examples of Canadian technology and entrepreneurship in biotech and pharma: from the early days of the industry in the mid-nineties developing 3TC as an antiviral therapy to treat HIV by Biochem Pharma and GSK to the discovery and development on Monteleukast (derived from Montreal) at Merck’s research facility in Canada. As an aside, Jonathan Leff, MD Executive Partner at Sofinnova, was part of the Montelukast discovery team at Merck. Other recent examples that have had a global impact include Peter Cullis’s development of lipid nanoparticles that were used to deliver mRNA vaccines by Moderna, Pfizer and others.

CAN YOU SPEAK ABOUT SOME OF THE PLATFORM TECHNOLOGIES YOU ARE SEEING TRANSFORMING THE SECTOR TODAY?

In my view, smart therapies that are selective and can deliver targeted treatment while minimizing collateral damage have been advanced in recent years across several modalities: in biologics we have seen antibodies become the vector to deliver toxins to tumor cells and replace traditional chemotherapies in cancer. This strategy is called Antibody Drug Conjugates or ADCs. Small molecules that exploit genetic weaknesses in tumors have changed the way lung cancer and hematological cancers are treated. Molecular profiling and patient selection and now routinely used in managing oncology patients. This tailored therapeutic approach has been used in many therapeutic areas, in rare diseases such as cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophies with exon skipping technology. Molecular glues are another example of a biological observation of a small molecule changing how to intracellular proteins interact and signal leading to a novel field of chemical biology.

Genetic medicines have made meaningful contributions in hemophilia, heart disease, ophthalmology and I believe more therapies will emerge as genetic medicines are improved to be safer, commercially scalable and durable.

Rare diseases are an almost untapped area. More patients can be helped around the world as we focus on making effective treatments more accessible.

Artificial intelligence is now being adopted across the pharma industry. From my perspective, it can change how supply chains are managed, how physicians interface with patients and how clinical trials are conducted. It has been implemented more extensively across the early phases of drug discovery over the last 10 years, and it will continue to be a part of the tool box to improve productivity in early stage drug discovery and development.

THINKING

FORWARD SAY 5 OR SO YEARS, WHAT DO

YOU SEE ON THE HORIZON IN TERMS OF WHERE THE TECHNOLOGIES ARE GOING AND HOW WILL THEY IMPACT HOW HEALTHCARE WILL CHANGE?

Personalized approaches are likely to be applied to treating a wide range of chronic inflammatory diseases, neurodegenerative conditions, and metabolic diseases.

Current bottlenecks in drug development such as the conduct of clinical trials will likely benefit from the availability of databases that can streamline and accelerate the enrolment process and reduce the need to rely very large clinical trials.

Market access and drug pricing are a societal challenges that we need to tackle to ensure that innovation reaches patients that need it most.

We have seen a steady state of roughly 50-55 novel products approved in the US in the last 5-10 years. With increased productivity, it will be a great outcome to see that number increase in a non-linear fashion to change how the industry as a whole is perceived compared to other innovation driven sectors.