How to rise above the noise? Spectacular data, says Ysios’ Karen Wagner

Leading European VC on how biotechs can differentiate and why ESG matters

It sounds obvious, but still needs saying, says Karen Wagner, managing partner at Ysios Capital. “How do you rise above the noise? By having the most spectacular data.” 

On The BioCentury Show, Wagner discussed the theme of the upcoming Bio€quity Europe conference — rising above the noise: in a sea of competition where companies vie for attention among investors and pharmas, what are the characteristics that allow them to differentiate?

Bio€quity Europe takes place in San Sebastián, Spain, in Basque Country, where Ysios, the chair of the conference’s Regional Host Committee, has one of its two major locations; the other is in Barcelona. 

Spectacular data, said Wagner, needs to come in the right context. It needs to be “in a well-defined experimental setting — well-defined preclinical or clinical studies — with good comparators, and of course very good development plans,” she said. That may sound obvious, she added, “but we still get people talking to us about a development plan in oncology that takes 5 million to do a Phase II.”

In this environment, the emphasis is on “comprehensive, very thorough plans that lead to really good binary outcomes.”

Wagner expanded on the criteria for validation and what her team looks for, and how even preclinical companies should have mapped their clinical path to some degree. 

She also discussed the role of ESG policies, including diversity, in companies, which she said is more prominent in Europe than the U.S. It’s not a distraction, and the reporting requirements are not onerous, she said. And the data that start to be generated create a “different set of conversations” about what can be done to implement changes.

“We have absolute certainty that ESG is important,” said Wagner. “The fundamentals here are impact. We want to have impact as an industry. Of course, our impact — if you think of sustainable development goals — is in healthcare, the well-being of people. But we need to do that in a way that is socially and governmentally well-organized, and with a careful approach to resources used.”

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