CABS is a volunteer-based, non-profit organization headquartered in San Francisco, committed to advancing the life sciences and biotech industry through education, collaboration, and networking.
The annual event, Investor Forum, held in conjunction with the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference, has been a hallmark of CABS for nearly 15 years. This year's forum is scheduled to take place on January 15th, 2024, from 8:00 am to 15:00 pm at Morrison Foerster’s San Francisco office (425 Market St, San Francisco, CA 94105). Due to venue capacity restrictions, the forum will have both on-site and online attendance, expecting over 130 on-site participants and more than 100 online attendees.
Our hybrid format will include two insightful panel discussions covering essential topics such as entrepreneurship, investment trends, licensing, and strategic considerations, as well as new opportunities and challenges in life sciences.
2025 CABS Investor Forum Agenda
8:00-8:45AM: Registration
8:45-9:00AM: Welcome Remarks and Introduction of CABS
Kay Tong, President, CABS
9:00-9:30AM: Life Sciences in Transition: What the New Administration Means for the Industry
Brigid Bondoc, Partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP
9:30-10:30AM: Thriving in Uncertainty: Carving Out a Niche in the Life Sciences Jungle
Moderator: Janet Xiao, Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP
Panelists:
Simone Song, Founder and Senior Partner, ORI Capital
Harry Stylli, Chairman and Co-founder of Karnelian X, Inc.
Shanshan Xu, Founder and CEO of Bambusa Therapeutics Inc.
Shengfang Jin, President and CEO, Ensem Therapeutics Inc.
10:30-10:40AM: Coffee Break and Networking
10:40-11:40AM: Alchemy of Success: Leveraging Commercial Deals to Drive Drug Development
Moderator: Alex Zhang, Founder and CEO, OneTwenty Therapeutics Inc.
Panelists:
Andrew Lam, Managing Director and Head of Biotech Private Equity, Ally Bridge Group
Matt Karlyn, Partner, Morrison & Foerster LLP
David Shen, Founder and CEO of Proteologix Inc.
Speakers Bio:
Brigid Bondoc
Brigid is a food, drug, and medical device lawyer who advises life sciences companies on a wide range of U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) pre- and post-market regulatory issues.
As a member of our FDA + Healthcare Regulatory and Compliance Group, Brigid works with medical devices, drugs, biologics, cell and gene therapies, food, cosmetics, dietary supplements, tobacco, diagnostics, and combination products. She also helps companies navigate products that don’t fit neatly into existing FDA categories.
Brigid regularly counsels innovative developers on FDA jurisdictional questions, approval strategies, and regulatory risk mitigation, supporting both established and start-up companies in life sciences, healthcare, and consumer products.
Janet Xiao
Janet focuses her practice on worldwide patent procurement, patent portfolio management, and strategic planning for life sciences companies. Janet’s clients range from large multinational biopharmaceutical companies to emerging startup companies. Recognized as being highly sought after for patent prosecution and strategy mandates, Janet develops and strengthens her clients’ complex patent portfolios to maximize commercial value. She is instrumental in developing strategies for multibillion-dollar patent portfolios for pharmaceutical clients. She also works extensively in performing IP due diligence reviews in the contexts of VC investments, technology transactions, mergers and acquisitions, and marketing and manufacturing clearance for biopharmaceutical products.
Simone SONG
Simone Song is the founder of ORI Capital, and the senior partner of ORI Healthcare Funds which focus on investing in early stage and innovative healthcare companies globally.
Simone is the architect of ORIzon, a big data driven AI research platform which enables ORI Capital to become a quantitative venture capital fund manager that combines quantitative analysis with fundamental research.
Simone serves on the boards of directors of various investee companies of ORI Healthcare Funds, including being the chairman of AffyImmune and being the directors of CG Oncology, Enable Injections, Pillar Biosciences.
Simone was the former Head of Goldman Sachs Healthcare Investment Banking for Greater China. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, she was a Managing Director of Cowen Group; a member of the advisory board of AXA Investment Managers, and an executive board advisor to AXA Asia Pacific Holdings.
Simone received a BA in Economics from Fudan University in China and a MA in Economics from Claremont Graduate School.
Harry Stylli
Harry Stylli, PhD MBA is Chairman of MDx Management LLC as well as lead investor and co-Founder/Chairman of Karnelian X, which is developing a disruptive autologous antigen presentation platform for generating neoantigen-specific polyclonal cell therapy with pan-cancer potential. Dr. Stylli is also an investor and Executive Chair of Immunis.AI which has developed a powerful blood-based diagnostic for prostate cancer in the active surveillance setting. Dr. Stylli has co-founded and/or advised numerous companies both in drug development and technology, including for example Aurora Biosciences (acquired by Vertex), CovX Pharmaceuticals (acquired by Pfizer), Xencor, Progenity (now Biora), and Sequenom (acquired by Labcorp). Dr. Stylli has secured over $2 billion USD in funding from both private and public sources for development and commercialization of novel technologies, including small molecule pharmaceuticals, biologics, medical devices, diagnostic assays, and laboratory services. Dr. Stylli holds a PhD in Radiopharmacy from King’s College London and MBA from the Open University.
Shanshan Xu
Shanshan Xu, MD, PhD, is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bambusa Therapeutics, a rapidly growing biotechnology company specializing in developing transformative inflammatory and immunological (I&I) therapeutics. Bambusa was founded with a belief that the I&I field is long overdue for innovative approaches and transformative therapeutics.
Prior to founding Bambusa, Shanshan served as the head of Global External Innovations at BioNTech, where she and her team identified best-in-class assets and technologies to transform BNT’s pipeline. Her team’s accomplishments include the partnership of Duality and OncoC4 - both Tier 1 oncology programs. Before receiving the call to join BioNTech in 2020, Shanshan also spent time on Wall Street as a Research Analyst.
Originally from Harbin, China, Shanshan spent almost half of her life in Mainland China, where she received her medical degree. She also holds a Ph.D. from UC-Irvine and an MBA from MIT.
Shengfang Jin
Shengfang is a co-founder, President and CEO, and Board of Director of Ensem Therapeutics. Prior to her role as CEO, she served as the President and Chief Scientific Officer, driving ENSEM’s strategic initiatives, technology platforms, and R&D. Previously, she was Vice President of Discovery Biology at Editas Medicine (EDIT), a clinical-stage gene editing company. Her teams pioneered the discovery of advanced CRISPR gene and cell therapies focusing on ophthalmology, neural diseases, and oncology. Earlier in her career, Dr. Jin was Senior Director of Biology at Agios Pharmaceuticals, leading the Small Molecule Cancer Metabolism and Rare Genetic Disease Portfolios that culminated in the approved & first-in-class products (IDHIFA®, TIBSOVO®, PYRUKYND®) and other clinical stage programs. She has also held roles of increasing responsibilities in other Cambridge drug discovery companies. Shengfang is a passionate & enthusiastic motivator, empowering team members to lead and shine.
Shengfang is co-author/co-inventor of over 80 peer-reviewed publications and issued patents. She holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Microbiology from Tufts Medical School (Boston) and obtained postdoctoral training in Oncology and Tumor Immunology at Harvard Medical School (Boston) as an NIH Fellow.
Alex Zhang
Dr. Zhang is the Founder and CEO of OneTwenty Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical stage iPSC-based cell therapy company. He was the Chief Scientist of Hanhai Holdings Group, and the CEO of Hanhai Silicon Valley, Inc., an early-stage investor and cross-border incubator for life sciences and deep tech startups based in San Francisco Bay Area. Prior to Hanhai, Alex was the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Enverest, LLC., a Silicon Valley based innovation solutions and investment advisory firm, with branch offices in China and Singapore. Prior to founding Enverest, Dr. Zhang spent over four years at Thermo Fisher Scientific, where he held several senior business roles. From 2001 to 2009, Dr. Zhang was a Senior Scientist at Tularik Inc. (acquired by Amgen in 2004), where he led drug discovery endeavors in oncology, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases therapeutic areas. Over the past decade, Dr. Zhang has been advising a number of successful biotech, MedTech and digital health startups and venture capital firms.
Dr. Zhang is currently a Board Member of the Chinese America BioPharmaceutical Society (CABS). He served a number of leadership roles in the Executive Council of CABS, including as the President in 2017-18. Dr. Zhang earned MBA degree at Cornell University, PhD in Organic and Analytical Chemistry at Texas A&M University, and BS in Chemistry at Shandong University. His research has led to the publication of 17 peer reviewed articles and 4 patents.
Andrew Lam
Andrew Lam is Managing Director, Head of Biotech Private Equity at Ally Bridge Group (ABG), a global healthcare investment firm focused on high-impact life science innovation. Andrew leads ABG’s private investments in therapeutics including Alumis (IPO 2024), CARGO Therapeutics (IPO 2023), CG Oncology (IPO 2024), Endeavor BioMedicines, ProfoundBio (acquired by Genmab 2024), RayzeBio (IPO 2023; acquired by BMS 2023), and Sonoma Biotherapeutics. He is a director currently serving on the board of Endeavor BioMedicines and previously of ProfoundBio. Andrew is a clinical pharmacist by training with over two decades of therapeutics-focused professional experience spanning late-stage venture investing, investment banking, equity research and functional roles within industry (i.e. medical affairs and business development). He received his Pharm.D. from Long Island University and his MBA from Drexel University.
Matt Karlyn
Matt Karlyn has 25 years of experience in working with companies in the healthcare, pharmaceutical, medical device, and technology industries on a wide range of commercial life sciences, licensing, and technology transactions.
Matt’s clients range from Fortune 100 companies to start-ups, and he regularly advises companies on matters involving IP commercialization, complex collaboration transactions, licensing initiatives, subscription-based economics, and business transactions related to the procurement, development, commercialization, and use of technology and life sciences products. He has also worked with a number of clients on corporate transactions including mergers and acquisitions, as well as private equity and venture capital financing.
David Shen
David W. Shen is a well recognized expert in the Biologic drug discovery and development, and his leadership at Proteologix, Inc., a company he founded three years ago. Under his guidance, Proteologix has made significant strides in developing innovative drugs targeting immunology and inflammation diseases (I&I), which culminated in its recent acquisition by Johnson & Johnson for a substantial $850 million, along with potential milestone payments. Before establishing Proteologix, David held several prominent positions, including Senior Vice President at NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Global Vice President at Teva Pharmaceuticals, and leadership roles as Biologics Department Head at Merck & Co. and Amgen. His academic credentials include a postdoctoral fellowship at the Whitehead Institute, MIT, and a PhD from the University of Toronto. David is also recognized as key inventor of several groundbreaking antibody drugs, such as evolocumab (Repatha) and romosozumab (Evenity) for cardiovascular diseases and osteoporosis diseases respectively.
For your reference, here is some information about our previous Investor Forums:
We express our sincere gratitude for the generous sponsorship and support from Morrison & Foerster LLP. We look forward to seeing you at the 2025 CABS Investor Forum.
