LEVERKUSEN, Germany & SAN DIEGO– Bayer AG and its wholly owned San Diego-based subsidiary Vividion Therapeutics, Inc. (Vividion) will highlight how the two companies have fostered innovation and collaboration through Bayer’s “arm’s length” operating model during a presentation at the 2022 BIO International Convention.
Bayer has built a strong partnership with Vividion since its acquisition of the biopharmaceutical company in 2021, deploying an innovative business model that allows Vividion to operate largely autonomously and independently to develop and advance its novel pipeline and platform technologies.
“Vividion’s arm’s length but connected relationship with Bayer has given us a unique and highly desirable operating model,” said Jeffrey Hatfield, Chief Executive Officer at Vividion. “The independence has allowed us to keep our entrepreneurial culture, fast decision making and focus on breakthrough innovation, while the connection adds significant technical expertise, global reach and the financial stability of a major pharmaceutical company. With all these strengths, we’ve been able to accelerate progress on our pipeline of novel, previously undruggable target programs this past year, and we look forward to the possibility of delivering multiple programs into the clinic starting next year.”
“Our partners thrive when empowered, and our objective is for Vividion to continue to advance innovation in an entrepreneurial environment focused on patient benefits and outcomes,” said Marianne De Backer, MBA, Ph.D., Member of the Executive Committee of the Pharmaceuticals Division and Head of Strategy, Business Development & Licensing and Open Innovation at Bayer. “We listen to our partners’ needs and are flexible in the way we steer our engagements. As a result, we are pursuing innovative business models with external innovators, recognizing that today’s life sciences environment requires adaptive, agile approaches to deals and decision making.”
By addressing key limitations of conventional drug discovery techniques, Vividion’s proprietary chemoproteomic platform technology allows the company to unlock high value, traditionally undruggable target biology with precision therapeutics for cancers and immune disorders. Recently, Benjamin Cravatt, Professor of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute and Vividion’s scientific co-founder, received the prestigious Wolf Prize in Chemistry for this technologic breakthrough. As the most advanced platform of its kind in the industry, Vividion adds another drug discovery engine that will fuel its pipeline with first-in-class medicines at an unprecedented speed to Bayer’s portfolio.
Vividion is already advancing multiple novel biology, first-in-class programs towards the clinic and has more than a dozen similar pipeline opportunities emerging in early discovery. Combining Bayer’s distinguished history and accomplishments in small molecule development with Vividion’s industry-leading chemoproteomic platform engine addresses known limits in the field of drug discovery to identify small molecules for disease-relevant protein targets traditionally thought to be undruggable.
With Vividion’s new, state-of-the-art research campus in San Diego, Bayer has expanded its operations into this fast-growing life sciences cluster. The company is now present in four of the largest biotechnology hubs in the United States – Boston, San Francisco, San Diego and Research Triangle Park, NC.
