Staff Writer

CHICAGO - "The most dangerous person in the world is a CEO who knows how to use PowerPoint," Douglas MacDougall, president of MacDougall Biomedical Communications, told a roomful of workshop attendees at the Biotechnology Industry Organization's international convention.

His overstated claim about CEOs who say too much for too long with too many slides came during the first minutes of a "boot camp" for company officials wanting to learn how they can hone their messages to investors, and McDougall laid out not only hyperbole but also some unconventional - or at least seldom followed - advice.

Some of the guidance was obvious. For example, MacDougall shot down a sitting-duck mistake made on the same morning of the boot-camp session by Berlin-based Noxxon Pharma AG, which dispatched a press release about the completion of a Phase I trial that didn't mention the drug's target until the third paragraph.

Other guidance, though, had to do with such matters as filing an investigational new drug application. MacDougall counseled against letting the move be known in a press release. "Is an IND news? It isn't, and it sets up multiple binary events that can hurt you," he said, calling the action nothing more than "a party you have at your company because you got a project done."

Telling the world that an IND has reached the hands of regulators only starts the 30-day clock for existing and would-be investors to wait for whether the FDA finds the filing acceptable, MacDougall said. If the agency says no, then another press release - unflattering - is inevitable. And even if the agency gives its nod, "your clinical trial isn't normally going to start until three or four months after," while hospital review boards make their decisions about sites, he added.

"Don't promise when you are going to file an IND either," MacDougall said. "The real announcement is starting a clinical trial. Don't put out a press release until you have to." Chris Erdman, senior vice president at MacDougall's firm, reduced the advice further. "Only tell people about things that are under your control."

Instead, companies "can really get stuck in the weeds" of their own organizations, as MacDougall put it.

"People believe the data will set you free, and that's true," Erdman acknowledged, but only to an extent, and if used moderately. "People put four or five in vitro datasets on one [PowerPoint] slide," he said. "Nobody looks at those." Confronted with more than about 50 words per slide, "they're confused, they're bored, they're checking their Blackberrys." The science is the most important piece of what's conveyed to audience members, and the easiest to confuse them with, Erdman said.

The science should be part of any evaluation of a company's SWOT - its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, McDougall said. Threats are particularly important. They're "not in the slide show, but the first thing that a partner or VC is going to ask you [about]," McDougall said. Weaknesses he defined as "things you tell the world you need the money for."

Erdman echoed the latter. "Show them where you're going to be one year hence," he said. "Show them where you're going to be once you've spent the $25 million."

An early meeting's goal, MacDougall noted, is not to get a deal or financing, but to reach the next get-together.

John Sorvillo, vice president of business development at Cambridge, Mass.-based Genocea Biosciences Inc., agreed. "You're not going to get a check after the first meeting," he said, and keeping the lines open with pharma firms in "an honest, not pushy way" is important. Sorvillo spoke as part of a lunch panel during the session.

Formerly with ArQule Inc., of Woburn, Mass., Sorvillo said the firm once contacted New York-based Pfizer Inc. about a deal and "they basically threw us out." But priorities change, and biotechs can chart those changes by keeping in touch with potential partners and by checking updates of research and development efforts. ArQule ultimately formed a relationship with Pfizer that was later expanded to be worth as much as $345 million. (See BioWorld Today, July 22, 1999, and Dec. 24, 2001.)

Another panelist, Steve Kuemmerle of Abbott Biotech Ventures, previously served in Abbott Park, Ill.-based Abbott's pharma licensing group. "I've had companies call me with a what-do-you-think sort of question," he said. "I don't have any problem talking to companies like that."

Chris Yochim, external relations director of partnering and business development for London-based AstraZeneca plc, said talks should begin early - well before the nuts and bolts of partnering are discussed. He said some startups have told him, "'Oh, no, we're not even close to talking to pharma yet.' That's a big mistake. Get on their radar. We have time to listen."

And those talks, if they take the shape of physical meetings, should unfold naturally, Erdman stressed. "I would always have the slides, sure. [I tell people in meetings], 'I've got it on my PowerPoint, I can hand it to you or we can just talk about it,'" he said, and PowerPoint should be used as a supporting resource. "The problem is that people use it as an end-all and be-all," he said.

MacDougall is even more skeptical of technology. "I had a guy who came out the other day with his iPad showing me his presentation," he said. "We had 20 minutes and he spent 10 minutes [on that]. It was total waste. I don't even recommend using laptops."

He also recommended that companies, upon starting a news-making but long Phase I trial, "have a plan to fill the gap with publications," and said not keeping the story alive in scientific journals is "the biggest mistake a biotech company makes. A lot [of them] may not publish because of patent issues - that's a valid reason," he conceded, but wherever possible the firm should aim first for prestigious magazines, adjusting expectations as necessary.

"It's always nice to get the front cover of Nature, but it's not that easy," he said. "You've got to start somewhere."