Bayer’s Marianne De Backer spoke with GCV’s James Mawson on the latest in the biotech scene.
Global Corporate Venturing editor-in-chief James Mawson spoke in a fireside chat to Marianne De Backer, head of pharmaceutical strategy, business development and licensing at Germany-headquartered pharmaceutical firm Bayer, where she also serves as an open innovation member of the executive committee.
One major change in the sector, according to De Backer, has been to see the diverse number of new ways that the biotechnology sector is branching out. She cited Colossal – a company looking to “de-extinct” the woolly mammoth using cells derived from Asian elephants – and how quickly it was able to raise money.
She said: “It really puts an exclamation mark on how far we have come in biotechnology.”
Another significant shift, she said, was the number of completely new players entering the healthcare sector over the past year.
Commenting on DNA analysis provider 23andMe and microbe engineering services provider Ginkgo Bioworks, which both went public through vehicles that usually make other types of investments, she said: “Who would have thought that a player like [diversified conglomerate] Virgin Group would come in and make [23andMe] public?”
The global nature of the covid-19 pandemic has impacted the level of investment in areas like diagnostics, telehealth and healthtech. De Backer said: “[The pandemic] was a wake-up call for Europe on how far behind we were in digitalisation.”
Advances in personalised medicine do come with ethical implications, she said. “We are now getting to a point where we have these technologies in hand to hack Darwin – to play God, if you will.
“That level of advancement brings great responsibility. So we are – as an industry – working with government and thinking about how to self-regulate.”
Looking forward, the future is exciting, according to De Backer, who said: “We find ourselves in this bio-revolution, and at the same time, there is a revolution in machine learning and artificial intelligence – these two streams are converging.”
Fernando Moncada Rivera
Fernando Moncada Rivera is a reporter at Global Corporate Venturing and also host of the CVC Unplugged podcast.
