Interview: Michael Yeomans, Bayer Schering Pharma
A featured speaker and panelist at conferences produced by EBD Group, Michael Yeomans consistently offers BIO-Europe Spring participants insights into industry trends and inspires discussions on future directions for dealmaking.
Dr Yeomans joined Bayer Schering Pharma in April 2007 as Senior Vice President, Head of Global Business Development & Licensing, based in Berlin. His arrival stirred bloggers to speculate on new directions for the company and a follow on report by IN VIVO noted Yeomans quickly sent a clear message for the rest of the industry that read: “Look out, we’re coming—and we’re coming with aggressive deal terms.” Heading a team of 40+, Yeomans concentrated on bolstering the Bayer Group’s main therapeutic areas of oncology, cardiology, diagnostic imaging and women’s healthcare by embracing the whole range of dealmaking from technology licensing to the acquisition of late stage compounds to supplement its pipeline.
partneringNEWS caught this veteran executive of life sciences between meetings.
Michael Yeomans, Bayer Schering Pharma
partneringNEWS: What are your take-away points from the conference so far?
Michael Yeomans: Business is definitely picking up, as was well established by the presentation from BIO yesterday. For me, it was surprisingly strong last year, when it might have been a lot worse. In terms of the number of deals done, this year will be stronger. The weakness in IPOs continues. There was some sign of life there toward the very end of last year, but it was subdued, and it would certainly be good for everyone to see that come back.
In terms of the types of instruments at hand, I don’t see that things have really changed a lot. Instead, some types of deals tend to come in and go out of fashion. The option deals that everyone has been talking about for the past year was quite a normal form of deal 10 or 15 years ago. At the height of the biotech boom, companies did not need to go that way as they could get a full license deal. That changed with the funding crunch so that in the past two years the option deal has re-emerged, which I think is good as it represents a good model for both partners. They can be relatively simple, quick to do and offer flexibility to advance projects to a specified milestone without taking on any longer term commitment, which reduces risk.
partneringNEWS: What is your view on being pushed to earlier stage deals, which increases risk?
Yeomans: This has been a pronounced trend driven by competition for late stage products and programs which have just gone through the roof. We saw that as well in the BIO presentation yesterday. With the limited number of these late stage assets, the one drives the other, actually, the competition pushes prices up, and so we begin to look earlier in the pipeline. You ask if we are comfortable in that space and I would say we always like to see clinical proof of concept. If that is not there then you have a high amount of risk on your hands, especially in the area of oncology where the probability of success for these pre-clinical compounds is very low.
partneringNEWS: What is your view on sharing out risk with another larger pharmaceutical company, which we have seen recently?
Yeomans: You’re probably referring to the announcement of a collaboration of Lilly, Merck, and Pfizer in lung and gastric cancers. For Bayer, one would have to go back nearly 20 years to a joint research collaboration in the area of HIV-Aids. This was a response to a crisis situation and was exceptional. Yet it becomes very complicated when you have larger companies working together because there are challenges over who owns the IP, how to share the marketing rights, and ultimately the returns, or the losses as it may be. Nevertheless, we are currently looking into possibilities to collaborate with other larger pharmaceutical companies and provide our diagnostic tools for the development of therapeutics for example in Alzheimer’s disease.
partneringNEWS: What has encouraged you lately?
Yeomans: It has been good to see the increasing role of diagnostic tools in clinical studies. It is an area where we are actively engaged with imaging agents, especially the development of PET tracers in oncology, cardiology, and neurodegenerative diseases. We are currently developing florbetaben as a tool for Alzheimer’s diagnosis in a Phase III clinical trial. It is a very positive development for patients in leading to earlier diagnosis.
The entire shift towards personalized medicine is encouraging, to focus treatments to individual patients.
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