PharmaTelevision - TVM Capital: Investment Strategies, Relationships with Big Pharma and Biotech Financing

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Video title: TVM Capital: Investment Strategies, Relationships with Big Pharma and Biotech Financing

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In this episode of PharmaTelevision News Review, Fintan Walton talks with Dr Axel Polack, General Partner at TVM Capital. Filmed at BioBusiness 2010 in London, England, they discuss:

• TVM’s investment strategy

• Platform companies

• The effects of the economic crisis

• Milestones, exit strategies and the lack of an IPO market

• Relationships with big Pharma

• Financing in the biotech sector

• Opportunities in the future

Full video transcripts are available with PharmaTelevision Premium Content. Click here to buy a subscription or sign up for a 14 day free trial.

TVM Capital's investment strategy, Platform companies, The effects of the economic crisis

Fintan Walton:

Hello and welcome to PharmaTelevision News Review here at BioBusiness in London. On this show I have Axel Polack, who is General Partner at TVM Capital Venture Capital Firm based in Munich. Welcome to the show.

Axel Polack:

Thanks for the invitation.

Fintan Walton:

Axel Polack, you're obviously an venture capitalist who invests in biotechnology companies, just to start with just give me some sort of indication of what sort of company you'd like to invest in?

Axel Polack:

TVM Capital have several strategies but me personally I am interested in so called platform companies, companies which allow on the basis of one technology to create multiple product opportunities.

Fintan Walton:

So clearly that's really at the very early stage, that's at the important interface between disruptive technologies potentially changing the way in which new medicines can be discovered, now potentially so there is huge opportunity, as an investor and taking into account the climate that the biotech industries has gone through in the last 18 months 24 months has it been much different in 2009 then say 2006 or 2005?

Full video transcripts are available with PharmaTelevision Premium Content. Click here to buy a subscription or sign up for a 14 day free trial.

Axel Polack

General Partner

Dr. Axel Polack joined TVM Capital in 2000, and is a General Partner for life sciences in the firm's Munich office. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Noxxon Pharma AG(Berlin, Germany) and Genetix Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Cambridge, MA), and Invendo Medical (Kissing, Germany). He also represents the interests of TVM Capital with f-star. Dr. Axel Polack's main scientific fields of expertise are molecular and viral oncology, oncogene activation, gene regulation and molecular immunology. He works intensively on the assessment of new investment opportunities in those areas, while also providing support to existing portfolio companies. Before joining TVM Capital , Dr. Axel Polack was General Manager of Innovative Technologies Neuherberg GmbH (ITN now known as Ascenion). Ascenion acts as a marketing partner to research institutions of the Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft, for example, GSF National Research Center for Environment and Health GmbH, which licenses patents and fosters start-up companies. In the eight years prior to Ascenion, Dr. Axel Polack was the deputy head of the GSF " Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology. He holds a doctorate summa cum laude in medicine from the University of Freiburg and a Second Thesis (postdoctoral lecture qualification "Habilitation") in the field of virology. Dr. Axel Polack is also a member of the board of the German Vaccine Research Foundation (Hanover). Dr. Axel Polack's doctoral thesis was honored with the Goedecke Research prize for outstanding fundamental research in medicine. In 1995 he was appointed assistant professor/private lecturer ("PD") by the Ludwig-Maximilian-University in Munich. Since 1984 he has co-authored more than 50 publications in peer review journals.

TVM Capital

TVM Capital is a global venture and growth capital firm with a 25 year operating track record. From its headquarters in Munich, and office in Boston, TVM Capital have financed more than 250 emerging companies in technology and the life sciences. During the last 15 years, TVM Capital have become increasingly specialized in these two attractive high-growth sectors. TVM Capital's key objective as investors is to enhance company growth by harnessing the power to innovate at all levels " technological, strategic, marketing and geographical - incorporating effective international management and securing adequate financial backing.