Michael Christiano joined Norbridge as a Partner in June 2009 to start its life sciences advisory and transactions practice. The practice assists young companies in establishing partnerships to acquire cash and capabilities required for growth and sustainability. A particular focus is to plan and execute revenue-generating collaborations.

Recent engagements include:

• For a private oncology company, a $50M expansion of an ongoing R&D collaboration and license agreement with an option for the partner to access client technology for internal use.
• For a Series C therapeutics company, two collaborative academic research and license agreements to discover and optimize compounds for client drug development.

Michael joined Norbridge after a decade in business development at Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and AVEO Pharmaceuticals, Inc. In his six years at AVEO Michael had responsibility for planning, structuring, negotiating and securing major strategic alliances, including:

• A $490M research, co-development and co-promotion license agreement with Schering-Plough for AVEO’s preclinical stage anti-HGF antibody program;
• The ex-North America proof-of-concept option and license agreement with BiogenIdec for AVEO’s discovery stage erbB3 antibody program along with a significant equity investment and near term cash;
• The restructuring of the $110M research, development and license agreement with Merck for small molecule target discovery and validation and Human Response Prediction™;
• The research, development and license agreement with OSI Pharmaceuticals for small molecule target discovery and validation and Human Response Prediction™ (after expiration of the Merck alliance) capturing a meaningful increase in technology valuation;
• Three antibody-generation technology in-license agreements with XOMA, Dyax and Arana; and
• Two phase 1 oncology compound in-license agreements with Mitsubishi and Kirin.

Such alliances enabled AVEO to grow in six years from a technology platform-only company to a phase 3 product company with a supporting platform.

Prior to AVEO, Michael worked at Millennium where he led or participated in various transactions, including:

• The $750M ex-US co-development, co-promotion and license agreement with Ortho Biotech for VELCADE™;
• The $140M divestiture of Millennium’s interest in its CAMPATH™ 4-way joint venture to ILEX; and
• The early termination of the personalized medicine alliance with Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Prior to roles in biotechnology business development, Michael was in management consulting at Arthur D. Little, finance at Bristol-Myers Squibb, and sales at Automatic Data Processing. Michael holds a BS from Virginia Tech and an MBA from Cornell.