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Corporate Investing: With or Without Traditional Venture Capitalists?

Join us for our January Breakfast meeting which for the 4th year in a row will bring our members access to the thoughts and ideas of renowned investment professionals.

Moderator:

Jeffrey W. Guise, Partner, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati
Dr. Jeffrey Guise is a partner in the San Diego office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. He practices in the area of intellectual property law and has extensive experience in all aspects of intellectual property acquisition, licensing, and enforcement. Jeff's intellectual property litigation experience includes pre-trial and trial experience, interference proceedings, and litigation counseling. His intellectual property counseling experience includes drafting non-infringement and validity opinions, freedom-to-operate analyses, and invention records management plans.

Jeff's patent prosecution experience includes drafting and prosecuting U.S. and international patent applications for a wide range of biotechnology, pharmaceutical, immunology, medical diagnostics, genetic engineering, agricultural biotechnology, genomics, proteomics clients, bioinformatics software, and electronic hardware systems. He also has extensive experience in negotiating and drafting license agreements.
Prior to joining Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Jeff was a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop. Prior to Pillsbury Winthrop, he was a partner at both Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison and Lyon & Lyon.

Panelists:

Stan Fleming, Managing Member, Forward Ventures
A 20-year veteran of biotech investing, Standish Fleming co-founded Forward as a venture capital investment firm. Throughout his career at Forward, Fleming has served as acting president of several portfolio companies, including Triangle Pharmaceuticals [NASDAQ:VIRS], Actigen (now Corixa [NASDAQ:CRXA]), GenQuest (now Corixa [NASDAQ:CRXA]) and CombiChem (now DuPont Pharmaceuticals [NYSE:DD]). He was a founding board member of Ciphergen Biosystems, Gryphon Sciences and Triangle Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Fleming is a former president of the Biotechnology Venture Investors' Group ("BVIG"). He now serves as a director of Ambit, Nereus, Kemia, and Sanarus. Fleming earned his B.A. from Amherst College and M.B.A. from the UCLA Graduate School of Management.

David Kabakoff, Executive-in-Residence, Soffinova Ventures
David Kabakoff, Ph.D., joined Sofinnova Ventures as an Executive-in-Residence in 2007. David has 30 years of experience leading technology and product development programs in the pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, and drug delivery fields. He currently serves as Chairman of Trius Therapeutics and Chairman of Amplimmune, Inc. He is also a Director of InterMune, Inc.; Avalon Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; and Alylix, Inc. Dr. Kabakoff also serves as a Board Observer at Intellikine and Anza Therapeutics.

David co-founded Salmedix, Inc., a developer of cancer drug treatments, and served as the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. In June 2005, David negotiated the acquisition of Salmedix by Cephalon, Inc. David also held the positions of Executive Vice President, President and Chief Executive Officer of Spiros Development Corp. while at Dura Pharmaceuticals, a specialty respiratory pharmaceutical and pulmonary drug delivery company. Earlier, David was also employed as Chief Executive Officer of Corvas International and held senior executive positions with Hybritech, Inc.

Jay B. Lichter, Ph.D., Managing Member, Avalon Ventures
Jay B. Lichter, Ph.D. was previously a Venture Partner at Avalon and most recently led Avalon's investments in InCode Biopharmaceutics, Inc., an auto-immune disease company, and Akesis Pharmaceuticals, a developer of patent protected diabetes drugs, where he currently serves as President and CEO. Dr. Lichter is an experienced biotechnology and pharmaceutical business executive with over 20 years of experience in management, scientific research and business development. Dr. Lichter has been either directly responsible for or participated in licensing or M&A deals valued in excess of $1 billion.

Dr. Lichter was the first employee and co-founder of Sequana Therapeutics, an Avalon V portfolio company. Dr. Lichter served various roles within the company including managing the genetics department (with over 40 scientists), working in business development and initiating the pharmacogenetics business unit. Dr. Lichter led the negotiations or participated in the development and management of collaborations with Glaxo (diabetes), Boehringer Mannheim (osteoporosis), Boehringer Ingleheim (asthma) and Parke-Davis (central nervous system).

When

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - Wednesday, January 21, 2009 7:00 a.m. - 9:00 a.m.

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Tuesday, January 20, 2009 12:00 p.m.

Where

Marriott La Jolla 4240 La Jolla Village Dr La Jolla, California 92037

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