Why Stopping an Early-Stage Program Is a Positive Result
In early-stage biotech, we tend to celebrate the programs that move forward. But their success was never a foregone conclusion. It can seem counterintuitive, but some of the most valuable work happens when team leaders decide to stop a program.
In Building Investable Science: A Framework for De-Risking in a Risk-Averse Market, the Chicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC) details how many of a program’s risks can be investigated early, before it reaches the clinical phases. The CBC describes what happens when promising academic projects are put through rigorous review: some get stronger, others change direction, and many are stopped.
That last outcome matters. Forming a company too early can turn scientific uncertainty into an expensive corporate problem. Answering the hardest questions first, before the company exists, protects scarce capital and the people behind the science. It also builds investor confidence in the programs that answer those questions successfully and move forward.
Strong teams bring that discipline to their work:
They identify the single greatest risk in their program and design an experiment to challenge it.
They have key results reproduced outside their own lab.
They bring in outside experts for candid feedback, and they accept the answer, even when it’s “not yet” or “no.”
For investors, that discipline changes the conversation. Instead of a company built around an intriguing result and a long list of open questions, they see a program that has been challenged, refined, and tested, with a clearer account of what the next dollars are meant to prove. They are also more likely to see early-stage companies that have been through a rigorous de-risking process as strong investments.
““Too often, academic teams spend years scraping together funding to keep promising discoveries alive while putting off the experiments that might tell them to stop. Killing a program early frees up resources for the programs that deserve to live, and lets serious investors find them.””
These are the conversations that will take place throughout the Midwest BioBuilders Summit. On November 12 in Chicago, founders, investors, and industry leaders from 7+ Midwest states will discuss science, opportunity, and risk with 100+ early-stage companies and academic spinouts.
