Mark Farmery Created BiotechBikers to Encourage Biotech Biz Dev ON the Bike, and We Are Taking Notes!

On January 9th I received a message from Mark Farmery that read “Hey Sam, it's fantastic what you're doing with Hill Climb. It would be great to connect, tell you more about BiotechBikers, the cycling-centric bioscience community I founded, and explore synergies.” I didn't even notice the typo, because here was someone who has been cultivating a cycling business community for years, and he managed to find me through the show! Honestly I didn’t know any other like minded communities existed and I couldn’t have asked for a more satisfying response to my #1 KPI.

It turns out, Mark is Chief Development Officer at Anocca, a cutting edge Swedish T Cell therapy biotech that’s focused on treatments for pancreatic cancer, which is wildly fatal and therefore on the list of more menacing cancers…more on that in a future episode. It also turns out that Mark is a huge believer in the power of networking to bring the right people together to solve extremely complicated challenges like altering the body’s immune system response to cancerous cells. It was this urge AND his lifelong love of cycling that compelled him to bring his bike to big biotech conferences, and encourage others to join him. What started in 2018 with just three people has grown into an international biotech and pharma networking community with chapters all over the world! Stay tuned to meet Mark and learn how Biotech Bikers became a thriving community online and IRL.