Pictet: Healthcare case studies

Speakers: Joanne Kotz - Co-Founder & CEO, Jnana; David Braga Malter - Principal Heath, Private Equity, Pictet Alternative Advisors; and Yann Mauron - Principal Heath, Private Equity, Pictet Alternative Advisors

Joanne Kotz: I'm Joanne Kotz. I'm a co-founder and also CEO of Jnana

Jnana was inspired by the chance to work with really phenomenal scientists and do drug discovery that wasn't possible before and make innovative medicines.

One of the biggest questions when you're starting a company is what's the best first drug to make? 

It was a couple of years into the company that we came across a disease called PKU. 

It's a genetic disease. You have it from birth.

It affects the way that your brain functions. You can't think straight, you don't interact with people well. 

You have to go on a diet where you can essentially eat no protein. It's really challenging to maintain, really unhealthy and really tough on kids.

David Braga Malta: Jnana had an amazing technology platform. And when I say amazing, it's that they could do things that others couldn't.

Certain proteins in our body are always moving. it's really difficult to design a drug if you don't know where the drug should fit.

Jnana developed a technology platform that enables exactly to do this, do a steel frame of something that is always changing.

Yann Mauron: Jnana had some great preclinical data when we decided to invest.

What Jnana producing is a pill. So it's oral, which is easy to take. And that would avoid having those kids totally change their habits in terms of diet.

Joanne Kotz: When you're working on drug discovery, it takes a lot of money and time to develop a new medicine. 

It would be impossible to do what we do without private equity investment. 

You need to have people that know that  science and drug discovery have inevitable ups and downs when you're trying to do something new 

Yann Mauron: 90 to 95% of biopharma companies are private. What private equity brings to them is funds to develop those drugs. It is expertise, because many people would be around the table in order to discuss issues, to help them design the clinical trials, to think about commercial plan and network within the industry. 

David Braga Malta: People in the teams of the private equity, like ours, need to have different backgrounds. They need to speak the language of science. They need to speak the language of business, so that these come together in a company to help a portfolio.

Joanne Kotz: Earlier this year we had the first data from patients suggesting that our PKU program was working.

David Braga Malta: As the company transitioned from pre-clinical to clinical, strategic the company ended up being acquired by Otsuka, enabling the company to actually go the last mile, which is doing the trial now that enables a drug to be approved.

Joanne Kotz: It all came together in a way that it felt best, for the chance to IMPACT  patients, for our our PKU program. Also, really a fantastic recognition of the  investors and team who joined early on. 

And we have an unbelievably exciting feeling to be on the path toward making a difference. 

Speaker: Duane Pinto - Chief Medical Officer, JenaValve; John Kilcoyne - CEO, JenaValve; David Braga Malter - Principal Health, Private Equity, Pictet Alternative Advisors; and Yann Mauron - Principal Health, Private Equity, Pictet Alternative Advisors

Duane Pinto: As physicians, we have two things that we want to accomplish. We want people to feel better.  We want them to live longer, and this device accomplishes both of those things.

My name is Duane Pinto. I'm the Chief Medical Officer of JenaValve and an interventional cardiologist.

JenaValve helps people who have heart failure 

from a leaky valve.

Up until this point, valves have been repaired by opening people's chests. Not every patient can survive such a procedure, and that's where JenaValve comes in - it's for patients who are at high risk for surgery. 

We can repair their valve by inserting a catheter in their leg and threading it up into the heart and putting the JenaValve in. 

John Kilcoyne: It's unique because what we're doing here is really providing a life-saving therapy for patients who truly have nothing. 

David Braga Malter: We are in the business of helping great technology become viable commercial products.

We were facing a company that had a proven technology. Doctors wanted it. They wanted it to implant it in their patients. 

Funnily enough, they wanted it more than what the company could manufacture at the time, 

and they were in a point in their strategy that they needed to tap into the largest market, that was the US market.

Yann Mauron: When the company moved to the US, they got the instruction from the FDA that they had to do a large clinical trial in order to be accredited, and for this they were required to raise additional funds. And this was the opportunity for us to partake in this adventure.

Duane Pinto: It takes time to run clinical trials. 

It takes time to work with our colleagues in the FDA. 

It takes a special group of private equity investors to recognise that and to not necessarily focus on the immediate returns.

Yann Mauron: In our world, success has to respond to a few elements. One of them is patient impact. The second one is impact for investors.And the third one is the time frame in which you can generate those returns.

John Kilcoyne: PE funds provide that infusion of capital that gives you the strength in which to move the products into the marketplace. 

Yann Mauron: But beyond this, there's multiple things that Private Equity groups can bring. 

In the case of JenaValve, at some point they suffered from an issue in supply chain, and what we could do is identify alternatives 

in order to supply them with those  elements.

Duane Pinto: We are just on the precipice of the patients that we can help. That's very exciting to me, that we can treat and have less suffering at the time of their procedures in order to have a better life.