Surviving the “valley of death” - How early-stage life sciences companies can overcome funding gaps and IP hurdles

Tine Carmeliet, Juno Hautekiet and Geert Glas discuss how early-stage life sciences companies can survive the so-called “valley of death”. This is the funding gap between making a promising scientific discovery in a laboratory setting and the translation of the scientific findings into human applications and potential treatments for a disease, and is a widely recognized problem. 

Our life sciences experts focus on the challenges growth companies face and why it is important to make the right legal decisions early on. They discuss, among other things:

the importance of properly organising seed funding during pre-clinical trial stages;

the maintenance of intellectual property rights and the potential impact of university-funded research; and 

the unpredictable and expensive nature of clinical trials, and how to manage these challenges to successfully navigate the “valley of death”.