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...

Keynote

A Saturday morning abuzz with excitement at UCLA CNSI’s auditorium filled with students, budding scientists and entrepreneurs to hear Xencor’s CEO and Co-Founder, Bassil Dahiyat’s 20-year story on building out the company now at 150 employees and valued at an impressive $1.85B. Bassil took attendees on his journey beginning at the end of his doctoral studies at Caltech. During his graduate years, Bassil and his doctoral advisor had been working on improving the efficiency of protein design. From this research, Bassil along with an advisor, decided to start a company with the premise of improving the existing methods in protein engineering, focusing on creating more stable protein structures. In order to raise capital, Bassil started his rounds venturing to conferences to meet potential investors for funding.  He secured his first big seed funding through a friend met at the conference, a lucky break according to Bassil, and certainly not the last! Soon after raising capital, Bas...

On Tuesday September 24, BCLA hosted its first networking mixer of the 2019-20 academic year. Featured in our mixer was a fireside chat at Studio 55, Pasadena,  with Basepaws CEO Anna Skaya, moderated by Christy Conner. 

Anna began the fireside chat talking about the history of Basepaws, from her initial idea to the whirlwind of start-up life and where she sees the of the company.  Basepaws, now based in the Lundquist Institute accelerator (formerly LA BioMed), has allowed for the growth of knowledge for better understanding feline diseases.  In the search for start-up funding, Anna Skaya was featured on the popular TV show Shark Tank, where she successfully attracted investment. 

Aside from the investment, Anna spoke of how the Shark Tank experience made her a much better presenter, and helped her pitch the company to a larger consumer base. Anna also discussed the importance for the motivation of a company. ‘The desire to make something that matters will motivate you muc...