Career Focus

Life Sciences ventures face high levels of scientific, clinical and commercial pathway uncertainty, and these uncertainties present many opportunities for entrepreneurial innovation. This course is primarily designed for students who are interested in exploring entrepreneurial opportunities within the life sciences, including exploring ideation, generating and/or licensing intellectual property, business models, resourcing ventures with the appropriate financial and human resources, and scaling. The course will explore which areas of the life sciences are ripe for innovation and entrepreneurship and will cover therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, and related service providers, data, tools and technologies. Example topics of exploration may include emerging opportunities in pharma & biotech, medical device & diagnostics advances, and related topics such as digital therapeutics, platform technologies, use of real-world evidence, data and computing, AI and GenAI, decentralized clinical trials, the role of life sciences incubators, contract research/manufacturing organizations etc.

Educational Objectives

This course has been specifically designed for students who are considering founding or joining life sciences ventures upon, or soon after, graduation. This course covers many topics that are also important to students interested in working in or investing in the life sciences. While the course is focused on the life sciences, students need not have a scientific background, merely a passion for making an impact through participation in these ventures. The primary objective of this course is to enable students to explore entrepreneurship and careers within the life sciences. Students will explore opportunities along various aspects of the R&D and commercialization lifecycle, along science, clinical, regulatory and commercial areas of the lifecycle.

Key Learning Objectives include:

• Understand key business models for life sciences innovation
• Understand macro trends driving innovation in the life sciences, including the impact of emerging bioconvergence topics at the intersection of the life sciences, data and computing
• Define roadmaps for life sciences R&D and products, incorporating intellectual property concerns, clinical and regulatory pathways to commercialization.
• Explore financing sources, including early grants and non-dilutive financing sources, to equity financing
• Identify best practices for building life sciences teams

Class tools include case and/or lecture-based discussions based on a variety of life sciences ventures, including those in biotech, pharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostics, and related supporting technology and services organizations. In most classes, we will have case protagonists and guests, including life sciences entrepreneurs, investors and domain experts so you can engage directly with these practitioners from the burgeoning life sciences venture ecosystem.

Grading

Grading will be a combination of class participation (50%), and a final written paper (50%).

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