Case study:
Assessment of novel vaccine technology triggers further investment
Background:
The client was a large multi-national fund, who has part ownership of a small biotech with a novel platform technology. The target company with whom they wanted to engage with was a European-based biotech company who were developing a novel technology platform to facilitate the rapid development of room-temperature stable therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines. The team at Boyds was asked to undertake a rapid assessment to determine whether contractual development milestones had been achieved, in order to trigger further investment in the biotech.
Boyds approach
The scope of work was agreed upon with the Client and the deadline for submission of Boyds’ due diligence report was set to be within two weeks of the project start date (defined as the Boyds team having access to the data room).
The Client provided Boyds with access to a secure data room which included target company presentations and supporting scientific data. The Boyds team quickly assimilated the information presented within the slide decks and then evaluated the scientific data to confirm whether this backed up the programme summaries as presented by the target company. Many of the claims made by the target company were supported by scientific data, although the Boyds team identified some missing information.
A request for additional detailed information was sent back to both the Client and the target company to enable the Boyds team to be able to confidently make an assessment of whether the milestones had been achieved. The target company answered all questions satisfactorily, enabling the Boyds team to make recommendations that further investment was warranted.
Impact and Outcomes
Based on the recommendation from the Boyds team that the necessary development milestones had been achieved, a further investment by the client was triggered.
