PABC Entrepreneur Spotlight to highlight three PABC-member companies for potential investors
The popular event will be held online, expanding the audience from local to global.
(DOYLESTOWN, Pa.) June 25, 2021— On July 22, several hundred scientists, entrepreneurs, business leaders, biotech investors and others are expected to join online for the Seventh Annual “Entrepreneur Spotlight,” sponsored by the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center (PABC).
The PABC is a life sciences incubator-accelerator that currently has 79 member companies, the majority of which have on-site operations.
The Spotlight is a ‘Shark Tank’-style event showcasing selected PABC-member companies to potential investors. It has attracted audiences of more than 150 professionals in previous years and the 2021 edition will be a fully virtual event due to COVID-19, making it accessible to a worldwide audience. While the online format presents challenges, Louis P. Kassa, the PABC’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, says there is an obvious upside.
“We’ve refined the format over the past six years, so it’s a fast-paced event that allows the audience to learn in depth about the spotlighted companies,” Kassa said “We have three impressive entrepreneurs set to make their pitches this year plus an all-star lineup of experts for our panel.”
The two-hour event, which will begin at 4 p.m., is intended for professionals in the investment community, finance, life sciences, economic development and related fields. There is no cost for the PABC Entrepreneur Spotlight, but registration on the event website is required.
The July 22 program will begin with three biotech entrepreneurs pitching their early stage companies, which are headquartered at PABC, to potential investors. Following their pitch, the presenters will field questions from a panel of three experts in business development and biotech investing, as well as from the audience.
The panel of experts will include Michele Cleary, PhD, CEO and board chair of the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. She has written more than 50 research papers and is co-inventor on multiple patents for new technologies with direct application to drug development. The other panelists are Steven E. Cohen, MD, lead investor representative of Daiichi Sankyo Pharma, and Eric Heil, MBA, a venture capital investor and former CEO/serial entrepreneur with significant experience in health care across life sciences, digital health and technology-enabled care delivery services.
The PABC-member companies to be showcased during the event are:
- EcoGenome: A life science company dedicated to the development of prognostic and predictive tests that will enhance personalized treatment strategies for cancer patients to improve outcomes and reduce costs. The company is developing tests to inform the use of cancer therapies by identifying genetic vulnerabilities within the patient’s tumor.
- Mid Atlantic Bio: This company’s mission is to bring novel immunotherapies to market, targeting multiple infectious disease indications with high unmet medical need, such as rabies and coronaviruses. Mid-Atlantic Bio employs a proprietary immunotherapy platform called IMT504.
- Gene Lancet Bio: This gene-editing company owns a novel guide RNA (lgRNA) of distinct intellectual property designed for use in RNA-guided endonucleases as gene editing tools and human therapeutics. GeneLancet also develops non-immunogenic scarless STAR Editor, a novel CRISPR-Cas9/lgRNA complex for curing chronic HBV, HIV, Alzheimer’s and other diseases of unmet needs.
Each company will give a 10-minute presentation and then answer questions for five minutes. Next, audience members will have the opportunity to join separate breakout sessions to talk with representative of each featured company and other peers.
The program will begin with welcoming remarks from the PABC’s Kassa and Timothy M. Block, PhD, co-founder and president of the Hepatitis B Foundation, PABC and Baruch S. Blumberg Institute. The event will conclude with an awards ceremony.
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About the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Center (PABC): The PABC is a nonprofit life sciences incubator-accelerator, offering state-of-the-art laboratory and office space to early stage biotech companies, as well as the Hepatitis B Foundation and Blumberg Institute. The center uses a highly successful services-based approach to nurture and guide its member companies to success, advancing biotechnology, maximizing synergies among nonprofit scientists and their commercial colleagues, and launching new ideas and discoveries that will make a difference. PABC is just outside of Doylestown in Bucks County, in the heart of the Philadelphia-New Jersey pharma belt. For more, including membership information, visit www.pabiotechbc.org. To make a donation to PABC, click here.