Customer Case Study
Molecure accelerates Out-Licensing Activities with Inova
Introduction
The company: a biotech that collaborates with licensing partners and key opinion leaders
Molecure is a public biotech company based in Poland, focused on the discovery and development of small molecules to treat patients with unmet medical needs. Molecure intends to realize the full potential of its drug candidates through collaboration, codevelopment and licensing assets to external partners. Molecure’s business model is strictly focused on drug discovery and development, with its core strength in high quality medicinal chemistry and preclinical biology, enhanced by scientific collaborations with key opinion leaders.
The challenge: Excel and note-taking apps are too basic for a growing biotech.
Partnerships are key to Molecure’s success, providing both the necessary funding to continue their work and the expertise to take their drug candidates through the clinical phases of development. Initially, Molecure relied on Excel and then Evernote to manage and track their out-licensing activities. This worked well until the number of potential partners approach by Molecure has grown considerably. Excel and Evernote simply weren’t up to the task of tracking multiple ongoing discussions. Molecure needed a better way to centralize their information.
The solution: Inova, the partnering platform for biotechs.
To organize and accelerate their out-licensing opportunities, Molecure turned to Inova’s partnering platform. Inova comes preconfigured with partnering best practices, featuring dedicated fields and workflows for biotech companies. Inova provides a fast, easy way to store, share, and leverage partnering data. It is a scalable solution, allowing companies to start small and expand as their activities increase, making it the perfect solution for Molecure whose partnering activities are currently managed by the business development director and the CEO.
The benefits: Inova efficiently centralizes partnering data and integrates with daily tools.
Using Inova, Molecure finds all of their partnering information in one secure place. They always know the status of each opportunity, including their latest interaction with a partner and the next steps. When attending a partnering conference, Molecure uses this information to send targeted and personalized meeting requests. Afterwards, they easily import meetings from BIO and EBD conferences. With everything in one place, Molecure easily reports and shares information on their partnering activities.
“Inova is really worth the investment, especially once you have 3 or 4 projects to out-license. The amount of time you save is worth far more that the price of a license.”
The story
Molecure is a small biotech company employing 90 people, most of whom hold PhD degrees in biology or chemistry. Molecure currently has a platform of 3 distinct small molecule programs targeting chitinases and chitinase-like proteins (CLPs), with potential utility in diverse inflammatory and fibrotic diseases of high unmet medical need (including IPF, sarcoidosis, NASH) with the most advanced molecules, OATD-01 completing phase I clinical trial.
Molecure has also initiated programs focused on development of small molecule arginase inhibitors with immunomodulating and antineoplastic activity, currently in late IND-enabling stage.
Partnering is key to the success of these programs. Molecure out-licenses their R&D programs to complete clinical development and provide financing for earlier-stage research. For the first few years, Molecure was able to track their outreach efforts and discussions using Excel and Evernote. However, as their out-licensing efforts increased over the last two years, it became difficult and cumbersome to track their discussions and manage the accompanying documents. Getting a clear overview of all of their activities and reporting on them was nearly impossible. To improve and accelerate their out-licensing activities, they chose Inova’s partnering platform.
“Inova is really worth the investment, especially once you have 3 or 4 projects to out-license. The amount of time you save is worth far more that the price of a license.”
Centralizing their partnering information
When Molecure needs information about a partnership or discussion, Inova is the first place they look. Using Inova’s connections to daily tools such as Outlook, Cortellis, and conference meeting systems, Molecure centralizes their partnering information quickly. In one glance, they see the stage and status of all discussions, what documents and emails have been exchanged, up-to-date asset information and more. Inova’s powerful search capabilities makes it easy to find exactly what they need. Molecure also uses reminders to remember when to follow-up on their last meeting or email with a partner, ensuring that no opportunity slips through the cracks.
Leveraging biotech partnering best practices
Molecure leverages Inova’s workflows, which are tailormade for biotech companies. Each one features default milestones and activities to help structure the partnering process. Using these workflows, Molecure tracks the status of their discussions, views next steps, and reports on their activities. Having a standard process ensures that all opportunities are managed effectively and makes it easy to report on their pipeline. The Inova Customer Success Manager worked closely with Molecure to ensure that they got the maximum value and impact from the workflows and could started using Inova quickly.
Maximizing Conference ROI
Using Inova, Molecure gets more out of their attendance at partnering conferences. Molecure meets with more than a hundred companies every year, too many to accurately track in an Excel file or simply remember. However, using Inova, Molecure has the full history of their interactions, including the documents that have been exchanged, with potential partners in one place. As a result, they send accurate, pertinent meeting requests and follow-up with on their meetings efficiently. Inova’s BIO Connector connects to over 20 partnering conferences, including BIO International, BIO-Europe and JP Morgan Healthcare Investment Conference, importing all of the meeting information in seconds.
Reporting in real-time
Using Inova, Molecure quickly analyzes and reports on their partnering activities. For example, they can report on how many opportunities they have, what stage they are at, what their pipeline looks like, how many opportunities there are per asset, whether non-disclosure agreements or material transfer agreements have been signed (and when those expire), and more. These reports are easy to share with the rest of the Molecure team, help them make the right business decisions.
Why our customers love Inova
Inova bridges the challenge of two externally-facing function within AstraZeneca, R&D and Business Development, and gets them operating in a seamless fashion: the right hand knows what the left hand is doing.
We use Inova as our exclusive tool for BD&L project management and reporting, resulting in high quality data and deal flow. We enjoy working with Inova’s experts and solutions, they continue to exceed our expectations.
I wanted a solution for my Technology Scouting team that required minimal IT involvement. The BD and AM teams were already using Inova and happy with it. I am very glad we also chose Inova, it’s intuitive and easy-to-use.
Inova has enabled Lilly to standardize processes, enable more consistent data across the entire External Innovation community and place data more directly into the hands of business development leadership.
Inova is built exactly for what we do, pharma partnering. It helps us work together as one company.
Inova puts the information I need at my fingertips, helping me decide which partner is the best fit for my product portfolio.
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