Episode 18 | NCI SBIR Investor Initiatives

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Episode Guests

William Bozza, Ph.D.

William Bozza, Ph.D. serves as a Program Director, managing a portfolio of oncology startups (SBIR & STTR awardees) to facilitate small businesses in technology commercialization for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Bozza is currently leading the center’s efforts on the Small Business Concept Award for early-stage high-risk/high-reward technologies that target rare and pediatric cancers.  He is also taking the lead on the program’s Peer Learning and Networking Webinar Series to help SBIR companies learn from peers and facilitate collaboration.

Brittany Connors, PMP

Brittany Connors, PMP, serves as the Director of Investor Relations at NCI SBIR. She has worked at NCI SBIR in various roles since 2013, playing a major role in the center’s Investor Initiatives program. She has maintained a vast network and works with more than 70 industry-leading investors and strategics each year to review the NCI SBIR portfolio and to select companies to attend and pitch at events like BIO.

Programs Mentioned in Episode

• Investor Initiatives
• Empowering Innovation in Women’s Health

Episode Transcript

BILLY BOZZA: Hello and welcome to Innovation Lab, your go-to resource for all things biotech startups, brought to you by the National Cancer Institute’s Small Business Innovation Research, SBIR Development Center. Our podcast hosts interviews with successful entrepreneurs and provides resources for small businesses looking to take their cutting-edge cancer solutions from lab to market. I'm Billy Bozza, a program director at NCI SBIR and today's host. 

     Today, we're excited to talk about NCI SBIR Investor Initiatives, our program’s avenue for connecting SBIR- and STTR- funded companies with potential investors and strategic partners. I've invited the Director of Investor Relations at NCI SBIR, Brittany Connors, to provide some background on this unique program and share updates on its features. Welcome back, Brittany. 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Thanks for having me, Billy. Happy to be back and happy to be talking about Investor Initiatives. 

BILLY BOZZA: So, let's dive in. What is Investor Initiatives and why did the NCI SBIR program think that this is something that really needed to be developed?

BRITTANY CONNORS: Yeah. So that's a great question, Billy. So, the core of Investor Initiatives, and I know we'll probably talk a little more about this, is our Annual Showcase Program. We're really, you know, seeing the technologies in our portfolio and the companies in our portfolio that are ready to go out and pitch to attract either their initial funding, some are a little bit farther, but really to attract their next stage of funding or start attracting partnerships. 

And so, the core of our program is sending those companies to events like BIO, events like RESI, Life Sciences Summit, etcetera, where they can go out and start pitching and attracting that next stage of investment. That's really the main part of our Investor Initiatives Program. But of course, as a whole, we're always working with all of the 400, 450 projects in our portfolio. We're kind of seeing where those projects are in terms of their, you know, readiness to attract funding. And we're constantly trying to make connections with potential investors and strategic partners, which is really important because at the end of the day, you know, the 200 or so million dollars that we're giving out on an annual basis is taxpayer dollars. And we want to be sure that those taxpayer dollars are funding things that can actually commercialize, can actually get to patients. And so, this program really emphasizes the need for, you know, us to also help these companies in their business development and making the important connections that can help them down the road. 

BILLY BOZZA: Yeah, I think that's a great point. And right, if you go through the SBIR program as a whole, it's about $7 million in in total nondilutive funding. So, after that, companies really are gonna need programs like Investor Initiatives to go out, raise money, and really drive towards commercialization, so. 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And I feel like even when I'm out, you know, meeting new investors and strategic partners, I think it's, you know, a lot of people know about SBIR, but I think people forget that here at NCI, one project, if you go through our Phase 1 to Bridge Award, you can get up to around $7 million dollars per project and, you know, that's not bad, that's a lot of money, but as we know, it takes a lot more money, so I'm happy to help. 

BILLY BOZZA: Yeah, absolutely. OK. So, how long has Investor Initiatives been around and what are some of the key evolutions? 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Gosh, man, I think we've started this program back probably around 2010, maybe a few years before that. And it really started with, you know, some of our program officers attending the big industry events like BIO and the Med Tech Conference, etcetera, and starting to build this investor and strategic partner network. 

By constantly attending these events and keeping in touch with people, we've built up a good network of around 300 to 350 contacts in this space. In the past, I think it was from about 2010 to 2015, we would actually host an NCI SBIR hosted investor forum either in Boston or Silicon Valley where we would bring in the local investment community and we would select about 10 of our companies that were ready to go out and pitch, to go attend and to pitch to these folks. 

And while that was a great event and we saw some success from it, it took a lot of leg work, it took a lot of funds, and we were only able to do it sometimes every two years. And so, after 2015, the program kind of evolved into utilizing all of the industry events that already exist. We started leveraging that investor network a bit more in recruiting an annual review committee of about 70 investors and strategic partnerships to come in and help us review our portfolio. This starts about every February. We match those investors to relevant technology areas that they might be interested in. They get about five to seven applications each and these applications are submitted by, you know, eligible companies in our portfolio, and they basically discuss everything that they would include in a pitch deck. 

And so, the review committee helps us review those applications, we get about 100 a year. And then out of that we select about 30 to 40 companies to then sponsor and we pay for them to go to an event like BIO that next year, and I'll talk about some of the other events that we attend. So yeah, we're really utilizing our network to help us review and identify the technologies that are ready to go, ready to go pitch, and then we support them in doing that. And we, you know, help them connect with people, we help pitch coach them, and we're really just, you know, kind of here as a resource to help them in whatever they need in that journey. 

BILLY BOZZA: Yeah, that's great. So, what about the Showcase Program, you mentioned that, do you want to expand a little bit more? 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Yeah. So, I'll go through a little bit more of the timeline. So, typically every January, we have an application open to eligible companies and that's typically companies that have received a Phase 1 Award within the past two years or a Phase 2 Award within the past four years. So, they'll be eligible to apply. They fill out, you know, a 7-page application of everything that they would include in an investor pitch deck. And then at the same time, I'm kind of going out and recruiting that review committee that I mentioned. 

And then what's really fun is matching, manually matching the reviewers to the applicants, and really trying to tailor that process so it can make the most impact. So that process takes a few weeks and then, you know, after we collect all of the data, the reviewers have a scorecard that they submit. So, internally we kind of analyze that data and really decide, you know, based on average scores, based on, you know, if a reviewer was typically high rater across all of their companies or vice versa, a low reviewer, we take that into consideration and we take into consideration, like, the standard deviation between the reviewers for a certain application. So, we're really trying to determine the best fit for those companies that could be selected into our program. 

And this process all culminates in a reviewer call in early June, usually, where we have all of the reviewers jump on a Zoom call. We'll have two calls, ones more therapeutics focused, one is med tech, and we'll kind of present some of the companies that were a little bit harder to determine if they should be, you know, brought forward into this program. And we'll get the reviewers on the line to really kind of discuss it back and forth and see if they might modify their scores based on, you know, a short video pitch that we allow the companies to present for those calls, and just kind of this natural conversation that we have amongst the reviewers. 

And so, after all of this ends, we select, you know, the 30 to 40 companies who then will attend events that fall. So, usually, it's starting around September. This year, it'll start with the Biopharma America LSX World Congress that's happening in Boston. And then it'll go through next June and end with BIO. And so, we have, you know, a ton of events that I can speak to that we, you know, start working with and sending companies to

BILLY BOZZA: Got it. Got it. So, you mentioned the different reviewers and the review panel. Can you give our audience a head-up on the type of expertise those folks have? And if there's folks on the line that are interested in getting involved, potentially as a reviewer, how could they go about doing that? 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Yes, always happy to have more reviewers. So really, if you have an oncology background, if you're an active investor, we see angel investors, we see, you know, VC's, corporate venture capital arms, and then, yeah, more of the strategic side. So, we have reviewers from places like Siemens, Varian, J&J, Bayer, Merck, kind of all the big hitters, and then a lot of the, you know, more oncology focused firms like RA Capital, Orbi Med, Arch Venture Partners, etcetera. And so, really, if you're involved in any of those environments and you are focused in oncology, you would be an ideal reviewer. 

BILLY BOZZA: What about success stories? Can you highlight some interesting successes and outcomes that companies have had as a result of taking part in the Investor Initiative Program? 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Yeah. So historically, I can let you guys know that we actually had a paper published back in 2021 in the Journal of Clinical and Translational Science, and so, this kind of reviewed our program from the year 2016 to 2019. So, kind of like when we've started this new version of Investor Initiatives. So, after we send companies to their specific event and they are involved in our program, we send them a survey to complete that just lets us know, you know, how did they do at the event, did they like the event, were the right kind of people they are trying to connect with in attendance, do they have any follow up conversations planned, have any deals come from either this attendance or have you just gotten any deals in general? 

So, we'll send that to them right after they attend an event, and then we'll actually follow up with them about a year and a half later to just see if any of that progress has been made in their follow up conversations. Because as we know, these conversations and deals take a long time to come to fruition. And so, we did a study and we found that of the 117 companies that were supported, there were a reported 32 completed deals and this was as of April of 2020. And so, I think that was a really great number. And, you know, when we see completed deals, obviously that's just in the survey, but we go and follow up with the companies and see exactly, you know, what they can attribute to the participation in Investor Initiatives. 

So, we're working on updating the metrics and hopefully coming out with a new paper that would be 2020 to present, and really going through, you know, that data and seeing how many completed deals would be reported for that cohort. 

But one of the more recent successes that we've had and I think this is a really good example of just a company utilizing, you know, not only our funding, but our programs, you know, in between their funding to really guide them down this commercialization path. So, this company Carevive, they are an EHR integrated cancer care management platform. And so, they received a Phase 1 contract back in 2018. In 2019, they were selected for Investor Initiatives and attended RESI Boston and actually met one of their series C investors, the Biopharm [phonetic], and so they ended up with an oversubscribed $18 million series C in 2021. And then they were selected for our program again in 2022. They commercialized their NCI funded project and then they attended the Vive Conference through us this March. And now they've actually been acquired. So, I think that's just a great example of how, you know, a company can really come in and not only get funding, but utilize our programs like Investor Initiatives to start making connections and hopefully deals follow. 

BILLY BOZZA: Yeah, absolutely. It really highlights the power of the program. I think this is one of our best programs, honestly. 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Thanks, Billy. 

BILLY BOZZA: So, when is the next application cycle open? 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Yes, so the next application cycle will be end of January. So, if you're eligible, you'll be receiving multiple emails from either me, our comms team, or your program director. Yeah, be on the lookout, January 2025. 

BILLY BOZZA: OK. And do you think it would be helpful to highlight maybe our newest cohort of companies and kind of describe some of the events that they're attending just so our audience can have a better idea? 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Absolutely. So, this year we have 30 companies that have been selected. We have some on a wait list too, in case, you know, any events give us some extra spots or if more funding opens, we’ll actually pull in companies from that wait list to attend. But this this current cohort is made up of 30 companies, 14 of which are in the therapeutic space, 7 devices, 6 diagnostics or tools, and then 3 digital health companies. And so, like I mentioned previously, we will be attending Biopharm America slash the LSX World Congress, that's emerging of two events this year in Boston. So, that's September 11th and 12th and we'll have three companies pitching at that event. I'll also be in attendance with our Director, Michael Weingarten, and two of our program officers. And so that's, I think, going to be a really great event. 

We'll also probably have a presence at RESI Boston, the Life Science Summit. We always send companies to Bio Investor Forum, Health. New this year, we're working with Bio Future, which happens at the end of October in New York. The Med Tech Conference, of course, Med tech Strategists, and, you know, going into the new year, we'll be involved in all the JPM events, including Biotech Showcase and RESI JPM. So, I'll stop at those events, but obviously we continue through June of 2025. 

BILLY BOZZA: OK. That's a comprehensive list of conferences. Would this be a good opportunity and venue for some of our listeners to reach out, learn more about Investor Initiatives and connect with the Investor Initiative team? 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Absolutely, yeah. If you're attending any of these big events in the industry happening, you know, anytime, feel free to reach out and I can let you know if we'll be there. If we're not, I'm happy to make connections to people who might be and let you know about the companies that we have attending. 

BILLY BOZZA: OK. Last question for you, Brittany. Are there any new changes or features coming to Investor Initiatives, any late breaking news that we can share with our audience? 

BRITTANY CONNORS: Late breaking news, I like that. So, I'd say, you know, one of the main things is just we're always looking to connect with new events. And so, I think, you know, establishing these relationships with people that are highly involved in the industry are super important. So, like I said, that Biopharm LSX event, while we've worked with Biopharm in the past, we've never participated in the events with LSX World Congress. So, I'm really excited about that one. 

We also recently met with the organizers for the Women's Health Innovation Summit, which is taking place in September, also in Boston, and that's really focused on, you know, women's health technologies, women led companies. And so, we've begun a relationship with that event and we'll probably start sending companies to that as well. Like I said, Bio Future is a new one for us. So, we're constantly looking for, you know, these promising events that would be good for our companies and adding them to our showcase list. 

But other than that, I think a big part of what I've been trying to think of probably since I started here is how to connect people together just, like, on a more continuous basis. Obviously, it's hard as a government official to just constantly reach out to investors and say, you know, “I have this company that would be great for you.” We're technically not allowed to do that. We have to, you know, show the investors all of our information and then they have to request an introduction. So, that's why we have a program like Investor Initiative. So we can, you know, thoughtfully go through a process and select these companies using third parties and then, you know, be able to have an investor book that we go and showcase and send to our network, so hopefully they will request introductions to our companies. 

But ideally, I would be able to, you know, like to be able to have some kind of platform or software where we have the people involved in our review committee opt in to, you know, say that it's OK that a company contact them or a company, you know, say I would really like to talk to this person from this venture firm, do you have a connection? And then if that person has opted into this, I'm OK to go ahead and make that connection. 

So, I'm just trying to think of more ways to expand the networking component of everything because as all of us know, I think networking is so important and sometimes it really is the key to success. So, if I can expand on that in my role, then I think that we can just make even more positive outcomes happen and hopefully get really cool things to patients. 

BILLY BOZZA: Absolutely. Well, Brittany, thanks so much for speaking with us today. I know I always learn a lot whenever you're on the podcast. So, again, thanks so much.

BRITTANY CONNORS: Thanks, Billy. It’s so good talking to you. 

BILLY BOZZA: As always, don't forget to check our website, sbir.cancer.gov, for the latest funding opportunities and commercialization resources to support your journey from lab to market. This was Billy Bozza from NCI SBIR. Please join us again for the next installment of NCI SBIR Innovation Lab and subscribe today wherever you listen. 

If you have questions about cancer or comments about this podcast, e-mail us at ncci.info@nih.gov or call us at 800-422-6237, and please be sure to mention Innovation Lab in your query. We are a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute. Thanks for listening.