McDermott Will & Emery

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The life sciences marketplace has been ripe for collaboration for the past decade, but new players, new technologies and new regulations are changing the space. Traditional life sciences companies are working together in new and exciting ways, bringing a variety of deal structures and new complexities into the landscape. Our Collaborative Transformation podcast episode “Driving the Deal: Life Sciences Partnership Opportunities, Pitfalls and Impact” with Emmanuelle Trombe and Gary Howes explores these issues in depth. Below are key takeaways from the episode, which you can listen to in full here.

It’s not just new players changing the space—it’s new approaches by traditional players. “It’s not only about pharma and biotech,” Trombe said. “We are seeing collaboration with health care players such as payers, insurers and providers.” Technology companies are also entering the space, bringing financial and philanthropic investments to the table. “People are still trying to do the same things, but they’re getting there in slightly different ways,” Howes said. Collaborations are also shifting from exclusive collaborations to more open collaborations, where partners are more closely involved in the product lifecycle, co-developing products and sharing technology, data and profits.

Bridging the gap between different industry cultures is crucial to building a successful collaboration. Product lifecycles and regulatory regimes vary across industries, but the gap between technology and health care/life sciences is particularly broad. “Life sciences health care companies looking at a lifecycle for their product is something like 20-odd years. That’s not the model that pure tech companies are used to,” Howes said. “There has to be some sort of realignment, so that both parties on either side of the collaboration understand each other’s business enough to make them a success.”

Data drives efficiency and efficacy in treatments, but the regulatory environment continues to present challenges to using it. Data collection is restricted in most countries, particularly for pharmaceutical companies and insurers, which makes it challenging to structure deals around data. Data regulations such as GDPR “could be a hurdle for the development of digital therapeutics, because they limit the ability to use the data collected in a meaningful fashion,” Trombe said. Overcoming these hurdles will be crucial to unlocking the potential solutions in medical data.…
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Megan Rooney
Partner
Office: Chicago
Years at Firm: 13

What is your favorite part about practicing health care law at McDermott? 

The team, the team, the team! It’s a pleasure to work with colleagues who have deep substantive expertise, prioritize client service, and are good human beings. As a healthcare M&A attorney, I am responsible for leading large teams of attorneys, including a variety of subspecialists, to drive efficient and effective outcomes and achieve business goals. I love knowing that, in nearly every instance, when an issue arises we have the specific expertise to handle it and there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

What is the biggest opportunity facing clients in your area of focus today? 

Our hospital and health system clients have a tremendous opportunity to improve the delivery of patient care, expand services provided to their communities and defend against the challenge of declining reimbursement through strategic partnerships. In addition to traditional hospital and health system M&A, our hospital and health system clients are increasingly pursuing Collaborative Transformations – that is, partnerships with non-traditional health care players. A successful Collaborative Transformation takes cultural integration between non-traditional partners, incorporating new technologies into health care regulatory compliance structures, and so much more.

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We are pleased to share that Chambers USA has once again named McDermott Health the only firm to receive a Band 1 national ranking in health care. This year’s Band 1 placement marks 10 consecutive years of securing a top national ranking in this prestigious law firm directory, and the ninth year that we have…

McDermott Will & Emery continues to strengthen its position in Europe, securing an excellent set of results in the Chambers Europe rankings for 2019, which included 13 practice area rankings and a total of 25 individual lawyer recognitions across all of its offices.

Health care and life sciences-specific practice rankings include:

  • Germany: Healthcare (Band

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Matt Friendly
Associate
Office: Miami
Years at Firm: 5

What is your favorite part about practicing health care law?

I appreciate that health care is constantly evolving and changing. While the vastness of the field can be intimidating for some, it provides career-making opportunities to gain experience in a sub-specialty and build a reputation within…

It’s the industry disruptors, the unusual partnerships, and the cross-border and cross-sector relationships that are driving Collaborative Transformation in the health care and life sciences organizations. But a Collaborative Transformation takes more than signing paperwork and shaking hands. A successful Collaborative Transformation takes cultural integration between non-traditional partners, incorporating new technologies into health care regulatory compliance structures, and so much more. At McDermott, we’ve recently had the opportunity to help our clients pursue their own Collaborative Transformations, and are proud to showcase their achievements.

Innate Pharma Expands its Collaboration with AstraZeneca

McDermott Will & Emery advised Innate Pharma, a French oncology-focused biotech company, in signing a multi-term agreement with AstraZeneca and MedImmune – AstraZeneca’s global biologics research and development arm. This agreement broadens the existing collaboration, aimed at accelerating the development of an oncology portfolio of each of the parties and to provide patients with more rapid access to new therapeutic options. This extended collaboration will permit Innate Pharma to develop and commercially strengthen its investment ability to develop its immuno-oncology portfolio (IO) and its R&D platform. For its part, AstraZeneca will enrich its IO portfolio with new clinical and preclinical programs. For more information on this collaboration, click here.

CVS + Aetna

McDermott is one of the firms that has advised CVS Health in connection with its $69 billion purchase of Aetna. The transaction, one of this year’s largest M&A deals, is expected to transform the US health care sector. For more information on this collaboration, click here.

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In a new Governing Health vidcast, McDermott partner Michael Peregrine breaks down why you may need to revamp your conflicts of interest procedures, and how the general counsel and the compliance officer can work together to protect the health system from conflicts-related risks.

Many health systems’ conflict of interest policies and protocols haven’t been updated since the 1990s. While these approaches—based on duty of loyalty and simple concepts of financial interests—may have fit the bill in the past, today’s rapidly shifting environment poses new governance-related challenges that have direct implications for the process by which conflicts of interest are identified, disclosed and addressed. These challenges include:

  • Diversification of health system portfolios, featuring investments in a broadening scope of products, services and enterprises, particularly in the case of innovative technology and delivery of care platforms
  • Growing officer and director interest in investing alongside their health system
  • Swift consolidation of the inpatient health care provider market and increasing ambiguity in identifying competitors
  • Sharpening focus on material bias arising from personal relationships (intra-board or external)
  • Non-traditional market participants, including high-tech market disrupters and powerful new organizations formed by vertical or horizontal combination
  • State regulators’ attention and reaction to media reports regarding high-profile instances of conflicts of interest
  • The presence of constituent directors on corporate and joint venture boards
  • New case law focusing on how personal interests may affect leadership decisions

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At a time when health care organizations are facing greater financial and reputational costs than ever before, more than 150 health care industry leaders, legal and compliance executives, and investors gathered for McDermott’s Health Care Litigation, Compliance & Investigations Forum at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago to discuss strategies for proactively managing and effectively responding to…