Great honour to have Christian Mauriand, speaking at our recent conference

It was a great honour to have Christian Mauriand, MBA, Global Head of Development at Roivant Sciences speaking at our recent conference in Montreux on ¨How to build a multi-billion dollar biotech through partnering, an introduction to Roivant Sciences¨.

Christian described how Roivant was built entirely through dealmaking into a commercial stage company with over $8bio market cap, 900 employees, 6 late stage studies ongoing and which has delivered 6 FDA approvals and 10 consecutive positive Phase 3 studies. Wow!

Some of the key principles behind this very impressive track record include that smaller, therapy area focused organisations (¨vants¨) are best, it's helpful to align incentives (e.g. giving executives equity in ¨vants¨), a rigorous focus on value, recruiting top talent from within and beyond biopharma, and deploying data and technology in all business areas.

Christian described how Roivant was able to achieve rapid operational acceleration and to share infrastructure and learnings as well as data and tech to deliver successful Phase 3 studies faster and at lower cost than rivals. Having a stable majority shareholder investing through the balance sheet also helped.

Roivant is therapy area agnostic and very independent in its thinking, looking the other way to the pack. Dealmaking involves rigorous scrutiny and always includes a thesis on why not to do a deal as well as on why to do it. Roivant takes a proactive interest in specific fields and targets and watches certain programs - always a sign of excellent dealmaking.

In particular, Roivant had liked the TL1A target for some time and Pfizer's program in particular, but it always seemed core to their pipeline. When Pfizer acquired Arena with another program in a similar area, Roivant quickly realised that the whole context for outlicensing had changed and swooped in with a creative solution. Impressed by how quickly Roivant could move the program vs the competition in inflammatory bowel diseases, Roche then acquired Telavant for $7bio. A perfect example of how consummate dealmaking can unlock the potential of stalled assets for the benefit of patients.

We are very grateful to Christian for sharing such valuable insights on Roivant's inspiring and amazing journey. If you sadly missed his talk at our conference, he will give a reprise at the International Partnering in Lifescience Society (IPLS) conference in Malaga on September 16th-18th.

Please save the date for our 2025 conference - May 25th-27th back in beautiful Montreux!