
Omnes Capital
Comprising 10 investment professionals, Omnes Capital’s venture capital team acquires minority stakes in young companies with high growth potential. Its main areas of interest are financing innovative business ventures in the information technology and life sciences sectors (drug development, diagnostics, medical devices, bioproduction).
For 12 years, Omnes Capital has managed FCPI mutual funds (French regulated mutual funds investing in innovative companies).
Bruno Montanari
Director
ORIGIMM Biotechnology
ORIGIMM is a young, ambitious Austrian biotech company striving to become a market leader in the treatment of acute and chronic infectious diseases, and dermatological conditions associated with various pathogens.
ORIGIMM is developing the worldwide first therapeutic vaccine for treatment of acne vulgaris; the disease with enormous market potential, afflicting 85% of teenagers and more than 20% of adults below 40 years of age.
Using its proprietary ProVaDis® technology platform ORIGIMM overcomes the challenges in vaccine and immune therapy development by early focus on protective efficacy of antigens in the context of human disease. This translates into a rapid selection of best, most protective candidates with a significantly improved success in clinical trials. ProVaDis platform enables ORIGIMM to rapidly build its product portfolio in many other lucrative areas.
Pappas Ventures
Jayson Punwani
AssociatePATH
Bill Cadwallader
Senior Commercialization Officer DiagnosticsGreg Zwisler
Commercialization OfficerPBM Capital Group
Jayson Rieger
SVP of Business Development & Portfolio ManagementPfizer Venture Investments
Pfizer Venture Investments (PVI) is the corporate venture capital arm of Pfizer and was founded in 2004. PVI has an annual investments budget of $50 million and invests up to $10M per investing round. The firm focuses mainly on U.S. startups but has global reach. PVI attempts to allocate 80% of its funding to U.S. based companies and utilizes the remaining 20% for international ventures. PVI provides equity funding for private companies in need of seed, growth, or venture financing. Remaining opportunistic, PVI focuses entirely on high growth prospects in all sectors and all phases of development. The ideal candidate has a potential for high growth and returns. Additionally, PVI will seek to in-license products and buyout companies if the opportunity arises.
Barbara Dalton
Vice PresidentPlantForm
PlantForm Corporation is a Canadian company formed in 2008 to commercialize a low-cost, plant-based manufacturing platform for monoclonal antibodies, protein drugs and vaccines for cancer and other critical illnesses.
The company’s technology platform provides several advantages over mammalian cell culture and other fermentation systems used to produce most biologic drugs on the market today: it’s fast, efficient, highly versatile (for new product development) and easily scalable. Best of all, it’s capable of reducing manufacturing costs for life-saving drugs by up to 90 per cent.
PlantForm licenses its technology from the University of Guelph, where it was developed by Dr. J. Christopher Hall, a PlantForm founder and the company’s Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Hall held the Canada Research Chair in Recombinant Antibody Technology from 2002 to 2014 and is a leading authority in the field. All relevant intellectual property is protected by patent filings.
PlantForm’s pipeline features both innovator and biosimilar products, including:
• biosimilar trastuzumab, a plant-produced version of the $6-billion breast cancer drug Herceptin® (animal studies successfully completed, human clinical trials scheduled for 2014, market entry anticipated 2017)
• biosimilar versions of two additional oncology drugs with combined annual global sales of $11.4 billion (2010)
• innovator antibodies for HIV/AIDS, funded by the Government of Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• recombinant butyrylcholinesterase (rBuChE), an enzyme used as preventative medicine for people vulnerable to attack by nerve agents, organophosphates or other stimulants ($1.8-million contract with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and $800,00 contract with Defence Canada)

David Cayea
COODon Stewart
CEOPrize4Life
Prize4Life is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 in Cambridge, MA focused on accelerating therapy development for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's disease). Prize4Life uses incentive prizes to attract new minds and drive innovation in ALS drug development. The organization is running the $1M Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize4Life challenge for preclinical validation of a novel ALS therapeutic in an ALS mouse model, and submissions to this prize will be accepted until June 6th 2015. In addition to prizes, Prize4Life also runs infrastructure programs to support the ALS research community, such as the ALS FORUM, an online portal of cutting edge research and drug development news in ALS (www.researchals.org).
Sara Shnider
Executive DirectorProlog Ventures
Prolog Ventures is a venture capital firm based out of St. Louis Missouri that was founded in 2001. The firm is currently making investments out of its vintage 2013 4th fund of approximately $100 million. The firm is looking to make equity investments in companies ranging from $500,000 to $3 million. The firm will invest in companies across the United States and plans to make approximately 3-4 investments over the next 6-9 months.
Brian Clevinger
Managing Director
Quintessence Bioscience
Quintessence Biosciences, Inc. is a private, clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel anti-cancer compounds based on our patented EVade™ Ribonuclease technology. The lead candidate, called QBI-139, completed a first in human dose escalation Phase I clinical trial in patients with solid tumors. Quintessence is looking for funding for a proof of concept clinical trial (Phase Ib/IIa) with a defined patient population.