Fledgling life-sciences companies have to dredge through billions of dollars, years of work and exhaustive testing before they can get drugs and other products to market.
It’s no surprise many companies don’t make it to the finish line.
That’s where Illinois Biotechnology Industry Organization comes in. The life sciences association works to nudge early-stage companies in the right direction, as well as promote public policy, push math and science education and attract jobs and companies to the region. Earlier this year, iBio named Warren Ribley as its new president and CEO. Ribley was previously executive director of the Illinois Medical District, and before that the director of the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity for the state.
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Blue Sky spoke with Ribley about iBio’s recent legislative win and efforts to help early-stage companies get past what he calls the “valley of death.”
Q: What do you see as your biggest tasks at the helm of iBio?
A: iBio, through its 12-year history, has really laid a strong foundation for the growth of biotech and life sciences. There’s been a number of entities associated with universities and other [organizations] that are growing. So now the real trick is just to coordinate all those activities and make sure we’re all working in sync to continue to develop our ecosystem.
We’ve really seen growth of entities that are working with early-stage companies or even pre-company formation on ventures and discovery to bring them into commercialization. That level of activity has just increased substantially. It’s really going to help us achieve our goal of making Chicago one of the leading global biotech clusters in the world.
Q: In late August, Gov. Bruce Rauner signed Senate Bill 455, allowing biosimilar substitution. Why was that a big victory for your organization?
A: There’s this whole new class of biological drugs coming to the marketplace known as biosimilars, and there hadn’t been any kind of regulatory pathway by which pharmacists working with physicians could prescribe those new medications.
These are medications that are made from living cells and living molecules. Because they’re living organisms, they can never replicate the original drug, but again, without something in place within the Illinois Pharmacy Act, there really wasn’t a means by which patients could take advantage of these new medications, which we believe will lower drug costs overall.
Q: What kind of work are you doing with companies through Propel Center, which provides resources and expertise for early-stage life sciences companies?
A: To bring a new drug discovery to the marketplace where it’s ready for patients to use, it takes an average of 10 years and an average of $2.5 billion from beginning to end. It has to go through several processes of clinical trials before all of that information can get submitted to the FDA for approval. It’s a very capital-intensive process and it’s a long timeline.
What we really tried to do through Propel is work with those companies at their earliest stage of development, really getting them up to that point where they are successful in raising the venture capital that they need to enter into phase one, two and three clinical trials.
And we’ve all heard it referred to as the “valley of death” in those early years because of the time that it takes just to do all the research and the testing and then show the promise to be able to raise that capital that’s necessary. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of diligence to work through that process.
We have about 30 active companies currently. We’ve worked with over 100 companies since our launch.
Q: Are you finding that those companies stay in Chicago?
A: Yes. We’re really developing a pretty strong bench, if you will. And that’s important because [the community] … builds on itself. As we see some of these earlier-stage companies become successful, that’s just more talent and very often they are willing to give back. They realize the value that they have derived from these kinds of programs and they’re willing to help other investors and other entrepreneurs.
That’s part of building the ecosystem — and that’s really what it’s all about to get to that level of space that we want to be, that’s the way to do it. It’s one company at a time, and keeping them here and having them reinvest in the community. That’s why things like [Chicago-based healthtech incubator] Matter are important and the accelerators we see at the universities. To really create that sense of community is just critical.
Q&As are edited for length and clarity.
Email: [email protected] * Twitter: @megancgraham