Imagine for a minute coming to Massachusetts as an executive at a foreign-based global pharmaceutical company and looking down from your airplane on its approach to Logan Airport to see Kendall Square in Cambridge and the Seaport neighborhood of Boston. Those shiny buildings, many of which have cropped up in just the last 20 years, could translate into two things to you: innovation and collaboration.
What MassBio has tried to do through Pharma Days® is capture what the Boston area offers—a rich life sciences innovation ecosystem—and put it in a room with the international corporation. To facilitate the meetings that can lead to partnerships. To advance biomedical breakthroughs for patients.
This fall, we welcomed Novo Nordisk back to the MassBioHub conference space for a second straight Pharma Day, building on a year that has featured convenings with Chiesi Rare Disease, LG Chem/AVEO Oncology, and Daiichi Sankyo. And when registration eclipsed 400, we knew we’d have to get creative to make sure everyone who wanted to participate was able to be involved.
“Novo Nordisk wants to be here in Massachusetts,” said Jason Cordeiro, chief innovation and operating officer for MassBio, opening the event. “They recognize the value of this ecosystem and what you all bring to the table. They believe at their core that they want to take innovative ideas and turn them into breakthrough medicines.”
Tapping into the Commonwealth’s innovation ecosystem
“We think [Massachusetts] is where innovation lives,” Dave Moore, Novo Nordisk’s EVP of corporate development, told the audience. “This is where the knowledge base is. This is where the creativity is. This is where the discovery is happening and we want to be a part of it.”
Who are we to argue with that assessment? Massachusetts didn’t attract 18 of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies with its cold winters, traffic, or clam chowder. It is the greatest density of biotechs in the world, one of the most talented workforces on earth, and an unmatched spirit of collaboration that has brought them here and patients are the ultimate beneficiaries.
“We have an ambition at Novo Nordisk to really work hard to drive change to defeat serious chronic disease,” remarked Tamara Darsow, VP of Corporate Strategy at Novo Nordisk. “I think if you would’ve asked 15 years ago, people would say Novo Nordisk is very much an organically driven company, but more and more we’ve been expanding into partnerships and into the external innovation space.”
And a Pharma Day is one way to find those partnerships and to tap into the external innovation here in Massachusetts. Prior to the speaking program, throughout the day—starting before many people were even at their desks —dozens of local investors and early-stage companies sat down with the Novo Nordisk team. Though we never know what is said in these meetings or what comes of them afterward, it is safe to say that having companies like Novo Nordisk, Daiichi Sankyo, and Otsuka come back year after year is a validation of the service MassBio tries to provide.
“It was great to hear first-hand about novel ideas on how to raise the innovation bar and get closer to our ambition of defeating serious chronic diseases,” wrote Moore on LinkedIn following the event. Moore also played off the fact that Massachusetts is not a state, but a commonwealth, during his remarks. “If you change one letter (in Commonwealth), could it be about common health? And I think about what we’re trying to do here and this partnership that we have within Massachusetts, it can impact common health. It can make a difference.”
Driving the conversations on tomorrow’s breakthroughs
While the one-on-one business development meetings are where the rubber meets the road on potential partnerships, companies also bring their own corporate philosophy to the wider ecosystem facing session of a Pharma Day. Some use the information session to give an overview of their R&D operations, while others bring companies and people to speak from experience on partnering with them. For Novo Nordisk, who was just a year removed from their last Pharma Day®, this was an opportunity to tap into the local ecosystem to have a conversation on perhaps the timeliest of topics: the future of obesity treatment.
“The field was in complete confusion about what the treatment target should be, and we felt that this does not do obesity as a chronic disease any favors,” said Dr. Abd Tahrani, joining virtually from Denmark, demonstrating the teleconference capabilities of the Hub space. “We decided to think how can we build a treatment target approach for obesity management?”
Novo Nordisk’s treat-to-target research project’s goal is to help patients and doctors make better decisions to improve treatment outcomes and prevent future health problems.
While the content of the discussion that followed Dr. Tahrani’s presentation was certainly why nearly 300 people were in the audience, for us you just have to look at who Novo Nordisk brought in for the conversation to see why they as a company are so invested in the Boston area: Melinda Watman, a patient advocate and serial entrepreneur; Dr. Caroline Apovian, co-director of the Center for Weight Management and Wellness at Brigham & Women’s Hospital; Dr. Sreevidya Bodepudi, a Boston-based obesity medicine and primary care physician; Dr. Shamina Rangwala, a vice president at Pioneering Medicines; and Lou Tartaglia, managing partner at Cure Ventures.
That’s as high-powered, Massachusetts-based panel as we’ve seen and they certainly delivered different perspectives on the future of obesity treatments, treating to target for obesity, working with different patient populations (e.g., sex, race, ethnicity, age), and more.
And perhaps Tomas Landh, Innovation Sourcing VP, Senior Principal Scientist Global BD Search and Evaluation at Novo Nordisk, summed it up best when he said that “the patient has a very, very central role in the revolution that we are looking at right now” and he urged the audience “to think about all the opportunities for investments and research that this new area is really providing us.”
Making connections and partnering for what’s next
Before attendees headed to the Commonwealth Café for food, drink, and networking, John McDonald, Corporate Vice President, Global Head of Business Development and M&A at Novo Nordisk, had some closing words to share. Approaching 28 years since trading in the warmth of California for the cold of Boston, McDonald said he and his wife stayed here because “the center of innovation moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to Boston…the highest density of innovation sits here in the Boston area, and it sits with you.”
He said that what he loves about Novo Nordisk is how much their people learn from the environment, ecosystem, and people around them. “We’ve learned the most from our partners and our partnerships,” he closed. “We look forward to learning a lot from you, hopefully as partners that are partners today and partners in the future.”
MassBio Pharma Days, part of a suite of partnering events, are truly unparalleled opportunities to tap into the innovation that flows throughout the Massachusetts life sciences ecosystem. As you’ve read, they are designed to meet your organization’s strategic external innovation needs through partnering meetings, information sessions, and networking. Learn more about sponsoring your own Pharma Day® next year.
If you are an academic, entrepreneur, or biotech looking to explore potential collaboration opportunities with leading biopharmaceutical companies, 2025 Pharma Days are being scheduled now.