Learning from two decades in Biotech

1. I want to thank the organizers for putting together this
excellent meeting, it’s really inspiring to see the quality
of starts up in the competition and the science going on
in academic institutions in Cyprus - and I hope that this is
the beginning of a long term concerted effort.
Let me start by introducing myself – I am Cypriot, who
studied engineering at Princeton and MIT and business at
Stanford –I spent my career- in early stage companies at
the intersection of technology and business –
I have been involved in three start ups,
the first one saw a meteoric growth before coming
crushing down and eventually shutting down – a painful
experience at the time but with the benefit of time I can
call a “learning experience”.
the second one saw lots of ups and down over a period
of more than a decade but did end up with success – it
brought an important cancer drug to market – a drug
that is the standard of care globally for a hematological

2. malignancy called MM – the company launched the
product and achieved profitability but as a result of this
success it was acquired by a major pharmaceutical
company called Takeda.
For several years after the acquisition, I worked for
Takeda Pharmaceuticals responsible among other things
for leading partnerships with start up companies, and
investing the company’s venture fund. This gave me the
opportunity to participate in the creation of start-ups
from the perspective of a bigger company.
The third start up is the one I am currently running –
Mersana Therapeutics - working on a novel approach to
cancer therapy - it’s had some early wins in the past
three years by bringing two products into clinical
development and raised significant funding. Off course,
as in all start up situations, we have a long way to go
before we have a product that helps patients and
delivers revenues – we cannot yet declare success.

3. Life in a start up company is never a linear activity – it
often feels like being on a rollercoaster ride that’s keeps
going and going and has to stop…..….at Mersana, every
experiment we do, every patient we treat brings us one
step closer or one step away from achieving our goal – in
my three years at Mersana Therapeutics, I came close to
shutting down the company twice times. So for all of you
entrepreneurs in the room, make sure you are
passionate about your idea, that you have strong
conviction about its potential – because that is what is
going to sustain you on the days when the experimental
results come out negative, when a customer turns you
down, when things don’t go your way. And surround
yourself with the best people you can find. In a small
company, every person makes a difference.
In the united states and more specifically areas such as
Boston and the San Francisco’s Bay area have a rich
entrepreneurial ecosystem that greatly facilitates the
commercialization of new science and technology.
Hundreds of companies like the ones I have been
involved in are founded every year – As we embark on an
effort to foster such an ecosystem in Cyprus, it is worth
stepping back and asking – which of these four success

4. factors exist in Cyprus and which do we need to
cultivate?
I would argue that there are four key components
1)Entrepreneurs with the vision and the willingness to
take risk- the passion to make their vision a reality
2)A highly educated and well-trained work force to
help execute on that vision, a work force that can
operate on a global basis
3)A favorable regulatory framework that facilitates the
creation of entrepreneurial companies and
minimizes the bureaucratic costs and complexities
that can burden a small company
4)Access to capital – commercializing new
technologies can be very expensive, few start-ups
make it to profitability immediately,
After today’s session, I am even more convinced than I
was earlier that we have both the passionate and driven
entrepreneurs as well as the well trained work force,
both foundational for building a strong entrepreneurial
eco system.

5. So how about a favorable regulatory framework? I must
admit that I am far from an expert on the state of affairs
in Cyprus – However, I do know that one of the critical
legislations enacted in the US in 1980 that accelerated
the commercialization of technologies out of universities
and other federally funded research organization was the
Bayh-Dole act. This legislation not only has led to the
creation of tens of thousands of startups, it has also been
beneficial financially to the academic and research
institutions that sourced the innovation. A patent to a
chemical licensed to Eli Lilly that became a block buster
cancer drug treating thousands of people yearly with
lung cancer, has accrued over half a billion dollars to
Princeton university, money poured back into university
research. Stanford University has received to date over
$300mm for the algorithm that led to the creation of
Google, again funds that have been poured back into
research. Such legislation, if not in place, should be
considered in Cyprus – its really a win-win situation for
the entrepreneurs, the university and the country
overall. Other policy aspects that can spur innovation
such as tax incentives should be considered as well.
Access to capital is probably the most challenging aspect
– the current effort with the support of the Hellenic

6. Initiative is a great starting point but as these early
companies succeed, these efforts will require capital,
often an order of magnitude more capital could be
needed in the later stages of commercialization. it will
take time to establish a track record of entrepreneurship
in Cyprus so that it would attract foreign venture capital
–the question is how do we bridge that gap –
and I want to share with you two specific stories that
highlight what can be done:
• when I was at Takeda, I was approached by the CSO
of Israel. He had a concerted effort to bring capital
to Israel to invest in life sciences. Over a period of six
months, we dialogued with his office on what could
be done and how Takeda would benefit. He was
determined to make something happen – in the end,
he helped broker a deal between Takeda, Orbimed –
one of the largest global healthcare VC funds – and
Johnson and Johnson – the three of us made a
funding commitment to a ten year in Israel. We
would never have made that investment without the
proactive and determined outreach of the Israeli
govern

7. • You met Vassillis Papakonstantinou this morning
who is leading a similar effort to spur
entrepreneurship in Greece. Vasillis has done a
great job of finding champions of the effort in the US
who are helping him tap into the greek american
business community willing to help start up
companies make connections – with potential
investors or partners. For example, the greek
consulate in Boston has hosted several events aimed
at connecting greek entrepreneurs with greek in the
area who are willing to leverage their network to
help these starts ups. For a small country, Cyprus has
an incredibly successful expatriate community
passionate about helping the island succeed– its
huge resource and we need to find a concerted
effort to channel this energy into helping spur
technological entrepreneurship in Cyprus.
• Beyond tapping into the expatriate community,
there is significant wealth within the island that
could be deployed to support these efforts. Could
we rally wealthy individuals into contributing to a
venture fund? Relatively small amounts of money
put against the type of great technological ideas we

8. saw this morning would be economically productive
creating products for the global market and
employment for the islands highly trained youth.
So I hope this meeting does become a call to action. I
know that we can make this happen!
Anna Protopapas,
President and CEO
Mersana Therapeutics