WWW.GRANTS4OD.FUND

connecting grantseekers with grantmakers

GRANTSEEKERS & GRANTMAKERS

� Academic teams

� Scientists

� Start-ups

� Later-stage biotechs

� need funding

� Patients associations

� Foundations

� Charities

� provide support, and

� funding

GRANTSEEKERS: INDUSTRY

� Financing a rare or ultra-rare disease drug project is a harsh task. Despite incentives

provided by FDA and EMA orphan drugs regulations (as well as other countries

regulatory bodies), developing an orphan drug still requires significant funding.

� Most frequently, financing comes from founders, friends and family, business

angels, venture capital, corporate venture, and tax-payer money (“public funding”).

� Almost everybody in the orphan drug industry has dealt with the above-mentioned

stakeholders. With more or less success. Financing an orphan disorder project is not

easy at all: it is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

� Despite success stories, the financing industry is still not comfortable with orphan

drugs (there are exceptions): poor understanding of diseases, niche markets,

attrition rates similar to non-orphan, increasing payers’ pressure on pricing, etc.

Furthermore, their money is highly-dilutive.

GRANTSEEKERS: ACADEMY

� In light of the scarcity of public funding, research laboratories and clinicians are

increasingly looking for alternative sources of funding to finance their projects.

� Industry has been a source for years, but, when the projects focus on orphan diseases,

only a few established or well-funded early-stage companies partner, provided they have

an interest.

� Since a couple of years, patients organizations and dedicated foundations provided

funding to academic- and industry-led early-stage orphan diseases projects, everywhere

in the world.

� This is a growing trend, and we believe that, in the case of orphan diseases, these

organizations are the best partners for academic projects and investigators-led clinical

trials, as they are primarily seeking a therapeutic return, instead of a financial return.

GRANTMAKERS: PATIENTS ORGANIZATIONS

� Among the different missions of a patients association, contributing to the financing of research and development of therapeutics or diagnostics addressing the disease is of utmost importance. In fact, academic and industry R&D teams often lack the financial resources that are needed to progress a project to an available treatment.

� Diminishing public research budgets, poor understanding of the rare diseases ecosystem, and frequent negative risk assessment by venture capital lead to a funding bottleneck, particularly at the preclinical development stage.

� For decades now, small and large patients associations filled the gap, mainly through grants to academic teams. More recently, patients associations started to fund start-ups and late-stage biotech companies. Large associations process grants through yearly requests for proposal. Midsize and small associations examine industry grants request on a case by case basis.

� Recent actuality proved that grants and equity investments made by patients associations can trigger either the targeted “therapeutic return”- a therapy -, and/or a significant financial return (eg. Kalydeco in Cystic Fibrosis).

FUNDING MODALITIES

Patients organizations fund academic teams, investigators, biotechs and industry with:

� Non-refundable grants

� Refundable grants

� Royalty-bearing grants

� Convertible loans

� Equity

HOW WE WORK

� Our experience in industry, our understanding of the orphan drugs ecosystem and our

connections with patients organizations, academic teams and biotech companies are our

most valuable assets. We may assist start-ups and established companies, as well as

patients associations.

In a nutshell, we:

� evaluate orphan drugs projects suitability to patients organizations funding

� review projects’ presentation material and customize it if necessary

� identify relevant patients associations (we have an international proprietary database of

several thousand organizations)

� establish preliminary contacts, and validate their level of interest and financing capacity

� introduce our customer to interested organizations

� assist our customers in their presentations

� advise on collaboration and financing terms

� help our clients in negotiations and closing

MORE INFORMATION

� www.grants4od.fund

� Christian Girard, MiM, Senior Partner: christian@orphancrowdfunding.com

� Philippe Barth, MD, MBA, Senior Partner: philippe@orphancrowdfunding.com