top of page
Search

Prepping for JPM Week 2027: Why Relationships Alone Are a Risky Biopharma Partnering Strategy

Writer: Heylth Editorial Team
Heylth Editorial Team
Sep 26
3 min read
JPM Week 2027 and Biotech Showcase Accelerator by Heylth

A warm introduction can open a door at biopharma partnering meetings like those during the JPM Week 2027. Companies seeking investment or licensing deals also need to be found, understood, and assessed beyond their existing network.

For many emerging biotechs, the familiar BD&L playbook starts with an address book: identify known pharma and investor contacts, ask for introductions, meet at conferences, send a nonconfidential deck, and follow up.

Relationships remain essential to building trust and negotiating a deal. Their limitation is reach. A team can work its network diligently while missing a partner whose priorities have changed, or whose scouts have never encountered the company.

Large pharma already manages scouting more systematically. Novo Nordisk uses regional and therapeutic-area scouts and a shared platform to record, review, and prioritize external opportunities.[1] 


AI is expanding the research available to these teams. AlphaSense connects information on companies, drugs, trials, targets, patents, and approvals.[2] Clarivate’s Cortellis AI agent helps examine the fit, differentiation, and evidence gaps of potential licensing or acquisition targets.[3]

Some screening tools produce ranked shortlists. Ferma, for example, describes scorecards based on buyer-defined criteria including clinical differentiation, intellectual property, competitive position, and deal feasibility.[4] 

There is no single AI score that every biotech must beat. The practical question is whether a relevant buyer can find your asset and verify the case for it.




That calls for investment in five areas beyond relationships.

1. A living partner map.  Track prospective partners’ therapeutic priorities, pipeline gaps, recent deals, preferred stages, and search and evaluation contacts. Update the shortlist as their strategies change. A targeted introduction is stronger when you can explain why the asset fits now.

2. A credible presence where partners look.  Maintain useful company profiles in relevant partnering platforms and take part in professional online forums and scientific discussions. Share substantive, nonconfidential updates on milestones, publications, and clinical progress.

BIO Partnering, for example, provides a way for companies to find one another and request meetings during JPM Week.[5] Being visible between conferences gives a scout more than a single email or meeting to work from.

3. A website built for discovery. 

Give each lead asset a clear public page with its indication, mechanism, stage, differentiating evidence, and development status in readable text. Use descriptive headings and consistent terminology across the site, company profile, and one pager.


Google’s guidance for AI search features emphasizes indexable content and sound technical structure; visibility is never guaranteed.[6] The same clarity makes it easier for a human analyst to check what a company does.




4. A story supported by extractable evidence. 

In the deck, connect the unmet need to the asset, the trial design, the result, and the next decision. State endpoints, comparator, sample size, limitations, and source dates plainly. Link claims to publications and public trial records where available, and keep the story consistent with those records.[7] 


Make the PDF text searchable: an image-only deck may look impressive while requiring text recognition before ordinary search can retrieve its contents.[8]

5. A repeatable BD&L process.  Record outreach, questions, objections, requested data, and next steps. Tailor follow-up to the partner’s decision instead of resending the same deck. AI can help assemble and compare information; scientific judgment, trust, and negotiation still belong to people.[9]

The aim is to make relationships more productive. When the right contact receives a clear, verifiable opportunity, and other relevant partners can discover it too, a company has more ways to start a serious conversation.


Ahead of JPM Week 2027, Heylth’s Partnering Accelerator supports that work through positioning, AI based partner scouting, materials for human and AI assisted review, outreach, and follow-through.[10]


References

[4] Ferma, opportunity screening scorecards:https://ferma.ai/solutions/opportunity-screeners

[5] BIO Partnering @ JPM Week 2027:https://bpjw.bio.org/bio-partnering

[6] Google Search Central, guidance for generative AI search:https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide

[9] Inpart, AI in biopharma BD and partnering:https://www.inpart.io/insights/ai-in-biopharma-bd-white-paper

[10] Heylth, JPM Week 2027 Partnering Accelerator:https://www.heylth.com/jpm-2027

 
 
 

Comments

bottom of page