Case Study: Sustained Release Ocular Drug Delivery Systems

Project Background

Client

• The client is a UK based company focused on development of novel therapies for eye diseases. It has a product candidate, based on its proprietary technology, in late stage clinical trials for glaucoma; in addition, it also has other drug candidates in development.
• Sustained release ocular drug delivery systems are one of the emerging areas that have shown a lot of promise recently. In the past few years, these implants and inserts have become a key focus area of researchers worldwide.
• The management’s vision is to reach the market in five years. However, in the near term, it was actively debating whether to seek additional investment to fund product development efforts.

Objective

• To track funding rounds of competing players over the last ten years and create a comprehensive investment tracker covering information on amount invested and the nature of investment.
• To establish ongoing trends in the market and facilitate the client’s ‘Go / No-Go’ decision backed by informed business cases for investment and the amount of funding being sought.
• To analyze and recommend potential investors whose investment agenda are better aligned to the client’s portfolio and are more likely to respond to a call for fresh investment.

Project Approach

Project Outcome

Deliverable

• An Excel investment tracker of all relevant funding instances that have taken place across the industry over the last ten years. The database covered the year of investment, type of investment, amount of investment and details of investor / consortium of investors for each funding instance.
• A PowerPoint presentation to highlight the investment trends split by equity and debt funding. Amongst others, this included insights on the average amount invested by both VC firms and strategic investors across different stages of investment (Seed / Angel, Series A, Series B, Series C, Series D and so on) and the money raised by some companies in public offerings.

Outcome

• A list of potential investors that held similar portfolios provided the starting point to the client leadership team, which was scouting for potential investors to fund the development pipeline.
• The level of sustained investment activity assured the client that the time was right to seek maximal incremental funding against a set equity sell-off target.
• A comprehensive analysis of historic investments (both in terms of the type and value of investment) provided ample guidance to the client with respect to the likely value it should seek from potential investors and strengthen its case for investment.