Preparing for a biotech conference or CRO/CDMO meeting with AI

A quick primer before the walkthrough: Meeting prep is reading plus question-writing, and AI shortens both. Everything here uses public sources only; anything an assistant tells you about a company is a lead to verify, never a fact to repeat.

In plain English: Before a conference or a vendor meeting, you assemble a one-page briefing from public pages, generate a question list, and take structured notes. This tutorial shows the prompts and the checks.

Who this is for: Anyone attending their first industry conference or partner meeting — scientists, ops, BD, or procurement.

What you need: Any general AI assistant, and public sources you have gathered yourself: the company website, press releases, published pipeline pages, service pages, conference agenda.

Comfort level: No coding.

Key terms (defined again at the end): CRO, CDMO, pipeline, modality, tech transfer, scope of work.

Step 1 — Gather the public sources yourself

What this step does: Grounds the briefing in documents rather than in the model's memory, which is where fabricated details come from.

Collect and copy the text of:

• The company's about, pipeline, or services pages.
• Two or three recent press releases.
• Their conference session or booth listing.
• Anything they have published that is relevant to your need.

Do not ask the assistant to "tell me about company X" from memory. Ask it to work only from what you paste.

Step 2 — Build the briefing

Role: You are preparing a colleague for a first meeting.
Task: From the pasted public material only, produce:
1. What this company does, in three sentences.
2. Their stated capabilities or pipeline, as a bullet list.
3. Three things that are unclear from the public material.
Rules:
- Use only the pasted text. If something is not stated, say so.
- Do not add market size, revenue, headcount, or reputation claims.
- Mark anything that reads as marketing language rather than specification.

Material:
[PASTE PUBLIC TEXT]

Section 3 is the most valuable output: the gaps become your agenda.

Step 3 — Generate questions worth asking

What this step does: Moves you from "tell us about your capabilities" to questions that produce usable answers.

Based on the briefing above and my need below, draft 10 questions.
- Five technical, five commercial or operational.
- Each must be answerable with a specific fact, not a yes/no.
- Flag which three I should ask if I only get ten minutes.
My need: [E.G. A PARTNER FOR 200 L MAMMALIAN CELL CULTURE FOR A PHASE 1 SUPPLY]

Worked example — questions this produces for a CDMO meeting:

• Which scales do you run routinely today, and how many batches at that scale in the last 12 months?
• Who owns the analytical method transfer, and what is the typical timeline?
• What does your standard scope of work include, and what is billed separately?
• Which parts of the process would be subcontracted?
• What is the current lead time from signed contract to first engineering run?

Note the shape: each one has a factual answer you can write down and compare across vendors.

Step 4 — Set up your note structure before the meeting

What this step does: Makes two vendor conversations comparable afterwards.

Turn my ten questions into a note-taking template with columns:
question | their answer | who said it | follow-up needed.
Add a final section for commitments made and dates.

Fill it in during the meeting. Comparing four vendors from four differently shaped sets of notes is the reason vendor selection drags.

Step 5 — Verify before you rely on anything

Three rules:

1. Anything not traceable to a page you pasted is unverified. Do not repeat it in the meeting.
2. Do not paste your own confidential material — your molecule, timelines, budget, or an unannounced program — into a general assistant. Keep the "my need" line generic.
3. Ask the company directly to confirm capability claims that matter. A public services page is marketing, not a commitment.

If something goes wrong

• The briefing states facts you cannot find in your sources. Discard them; re-run and shorten what you paste so it stays grounded.
• The questions are generic. Give it more of the gap list from Step 2, and a sharper one-line need.
• The company has almost no public material. That is itself useful information — go in with capability questions and ask for a capability statement.
• You are tempted to paste the draft CDA or your program details. Do not — see Safer AI use at work: what to share and what to keep private.
• Two vendors sound identical. Compare only on the answers you wrote down, not the impression; add a question about a specific recent batch or project.

What to try next

• Competitive intelligence and fact-checking with Claude
• Which public bio database should I search?

Key terms

• CRO — contract research organization; runs studies or assays on your behalf.
• CDMO — contract development and manufacturing organization; develops and makes material for you.
• Pipeline — the set of programs a company is advancing, usually shown by stage.
• Modality — the type of product: small molecule, antibody, cell therapy, and so on.
• Tech transfer — moving a process or analytical method from one site to another.
• Scope of work — the document defining exactly what a partner will deliver, and what costs extra.
• Capability statement — a vendor document listing equipment, scales, and services.

Briefings assembled this way are preparation aids built from public information. Confirm anything that would influence a selection decision directly with the company.