Topic: Prioritizing Opportunities for Life Science Startups
Stephanie Oestreich PhD, MPA, Executive Vice President of Evotec, will be joining us to discuss how startups should prioritize opportunities for different potential applications and/or indications and how this can help establish the company’s product goals and vision. This is particularly important for platform technologies, where a number of potential applications may seem viable, but prioritization is necessary to focus limited resources. We will discuss how to identify opportunities and constraints, and understand the factors that are most important to the company, such as technical, clinical, regulatory, and commercial risks. Frameworks and tools to assist in assessing risk vs reward will be discussed and real-world examples provided.
Speaker Bio: Stephanie Oestreich is Executive Vice President at Evotec and leads BRIDGEs Partnerships for North America and Asia, negotiating umbrella agreements with universities and financing partners, selecting novel research projects and starting companies or licensing successful opportunities to pharma or biotech after achieving proof of concept. She is also a director on the board of four private companies, and the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra. Previously, she was International Business Leader at F. Roche Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., growing the blockbuster Avastin breast, cervical and ovarian cancer indications by 10%.
She also successfully launched four oncology and immunology drugs and held local, regional and global marketing roles with increasing responsibilities in different geographies and therapeutic areas at Novartis. Before working in Strategic Alliances at Novartis, she conducted the research for her PhD in biochemistry at Harvard Medical School and obtained an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. As a semi-professional violinist, she has performed with members of the Berlin, Vienna, and Boston Philharmonic Orchestra in Carnegie Hall and demonstrates the analogies of teams and leadership in music and management in presentations with the Kendall Square Orchestra, an orchestra of scientists that she co-founded.
About the Workshop Series: This series of workshops is for early-stage life science founders from the Harvard Innovation Labs ecosystem. The series will include ‘homework’ given to the founders, which will then be shared and discussed with the group as a means to gain feedback and insights into other founder’s learning experiences. The workshop series will also serve the purpose of promoting a strong sense of community among the founders, allowing them to help one another through the challenges experienced as early-stage life science founders.
