Prioritizing a Pipeline Against the Clock

Situation

A public, clinical-stage biotech had more clinical-stage opportunities than its roughly 18 months of cash could support. Management and the board weren't aligned on a path forward, and live business-development opportunities needed answers.

What We Did

We led a systematic portfolio analysis spanning both development and BD options, evaluating a dozen candidate expansion indications for the lead assets to prioritize clinical development options. In parallel we characterized a range of BD options including deal term expectations for partnering worldwide, partnering outside the US, or retaining rights and self-commercializing.

We facilitated executive dialogue to generate a manageable list of actionable alternatives, combining clinical development and BD options. Then we evaluated these alternatives using short-term financial measures such as time and cost to next value inflection point and long-term metrics such as eNPV and investment productivity (value creation per unit of investment).

Outcome

The C-suite and board aligned on a reprioritized development plan across the key assets, chose to retain rights and self-commercialize the lead product, out-licensed a deprioritized asset, and shelved an in-licensed program whose commercial case had weakened against recent competitor data.