To kick off the new year, the BCLA team hosted its first event in collaboration with the LA Chapter of 3D Women in Printing. Our first ever happy hour provided an informal space to network in an informal setting. The event was a great success hosting over 50 attendees for a casual evening of networking, drinks, and appetizers at Broxton Brewery in Westwood. It was great to see new and familiar faces come together to form new connections, helping LA’s biotech scene grow and prosper!

Attendees included a mix of professionals from the 3D printing space who discussed the rapid growth in this market, financial services professionals with an interest in health care and tech, medical designers, consultants, and academics from UCLA and USC, among many others. With minimal structure to this happy hour, attendees had the opportunity to mingle and establish new connections and foster existing relationships. Brief remarks were provided by BCLA President, Adhi Sikand, and organizers of the LA Chapte...

On Saturday February 1st, BCLA hosted its first lunchtime seminar of the year at UCLA. Our speaker, Matt Crowley, a venture and mergers and acquisitions lawyer, talked about the top 10 legal mistakes for founders to avoid. Crowley founded his own law firm, Crowley Corporate Legal Strategy, where he helps first-time entrepreneurs navigate their legal challenges, is a professor at the Loyola Law School, and an author of two books on entrepreneurship and raising capital.

Based on his over 20 years of experience in the field, Crowley shared many common mistakes and how to make a startup attractive to investors. Common mistakes among entrepreneurs include failing to consider the implications of entity selection and place of incorporation and not protecting startup intellectual property. Additionally, issues can arise later in company’s early life surrounding employees and co-founders and he cautioned against issuing shares without vesting, misclassifying employees and failing to file the app...

BCLA was happy to welcome attendees to hear John Wetherell give an insightful talk at our December Lunch-seminar held at the Lundquist Institute (previously LA Biomed). The lunch-seminar was co-hosted by BioLabs in their state-of-the-art research space on the 3rd floor of the stunning new MRL building. Before the talk, attendees from start-ups, academia and biotech industry mingled with each-other over a refreshing lunch served in the café of Biolabs with views over the campus and the mountains beyond. Our co-host Gary Olsem kindly offered attendees tours of the impressive BioLabs facilities- an incubator space which several of the attendees were delighted to hear were available for start-up companies.

To begin, BCLA’s Vice President, Hammond Sun, offered warm opening remarks and together with Gary Olsem of BioLabs, welcomed the speaker of the day, John Wetherell. John is a Partner at Pillsbury and the co-lead of their entire Lifescience practice. He is an Intellectual Property leader w...

Team BCLA excitedly welcomed LA’s biotech community to our last networking mixer of the year! It was exciting to see a mixture of new and familiar faces getting to meet each other over drinks and appetizers, at the beautiful rooftop space in DTLA provided by Nixon Peabody.

After light refreshments, attendees were escorted into the conference room for our fireside chat featuring Lukasz Kowalik from UCLA TDG, Radhika Palkar from USC Stevens Center, Harsh Parikh and Alex Busto from Nixon Peabody. The common mission of these organizations is to serve as a gateway between cutting-edge research and entrepreneurship, translating innovative ideas into products for public benefit while fostering collaborations. Specifically, Harsh focuses on healthcare transactions, regulatory compliance, and manages care reimbursements. Alexandra’s work is based on transactional and regulatory matters for health care providers and others in the industry.

To start the evening off BCLA’s Vice President, Hammond Su...

Following on from the highly successful BCLA summit, the team dove straight into another huge event, this time at Amgen in collaboration with AWIS, HBA and Amgen WE2. A diverse mix of high profile individuals from Amgen, including Raymond Deshaies, Sr VP of Global Research, Rohini Deshpande, VP of Drug Substance Technology,  Patrick Dey, VP Digital Health and Innovation, and Corinne M. Le Goff, Sr VP, General Manager of US General Medicine, took to the stage to delve into ‘The future of drug development’. The discussion was moderated by Carolina Amador, chair of BCLA advisory board and Sr Associate of Competitive Intelligence at Amgen.

The evening began with networking over refreshments. After a brief introduction from Erin Denny from AWIS, Carolina opened the occasion with a question to keep the mood light. ‘What do you love to do that it’s not work?’. After a few laughs from the panelists, the audience were encouraged to find that even top Amgen employees find time for things outside...