The BioCentury Show

Elias Zerhouni personifies the American dream. He arrived in the U.S. from Algeria as a young man with a couple of hundred dollars in his pocket. Talent, ambition and hard work propelled him into a successful academic career. In 2002, he was nominated and confirmed as NIH director, and later he served in senior positions in the biopharma industry. That trajectory “would be almost impossible” today...

It took Sophie Kornowski under four years as CEO of Boston Pharma to bring it from a pipeline full of in-licensed assets to an acquisition by GSK for about $2 billion in total deal value for a single MASH program. Though her first gig as a biotech CEO, Kornowski’s success was built on her years of experience as head of partnering at Roche. She discussed that pivot and the value of rolling your sle...

Kymera Therapeutics has a clear mission: to transform immunology with targeted protein degraders that enable “oral drugs with biologics-like activity,” CEO Nello Mainolfi told The BioCentury Show. A pioneer in one of biopharma’s most closely watched new therapeutic modalities, Kymera is now over nine years into its story, with multiple pharma partnerships and a wholly owned pipeline, including a S...

The frenzy among Western companies to access China’s biotechnology innovation is remaking the landscape for cross-border dealmaking, with assets becoming more expensive and partnerships earlier and broader than ever before. That’s being driven by exceptional capital efficiency, access to patients and speed of development, said Frazier Life Sciences’ James Li on The BioCentury Show podcast. Among m...

President Donald Trump’s demands for “most favored nation” drug pricing presents the biopharma industry with an immense public policy challenge. Drug companies are convinced that meeting the president’s demand to reduce U.S. prices to levels below those of other industrialized countries would decimate the industry. On this episode of The BioCentury Show , Fritz Bittenbender, SVP of Roche's Ge...

If you could redesign FDA from the ground up, what would it look like? That’s the fundamental question underlying the 2025 BioCentury Back to School essay, authored by BioCentury Washington Editor Steve Usdin, who has been a leading voice on regulation and policy for over two decades. The topic is especially meaningful in this era of FDA turmoil, when regulatory risk has piled on top of the market...

A new head at MHRA, a streamlined government life sciences strategy, and a more sophisticated innovation ecosystem have Annalisa Jenkins optimistic about the future of U.K. biotech — and its potential to carve out a stronger global role. On The BioCentury Show , Annalisa Jenkins, chair of Gemma Biotherapeutics, discussed the evolving landscape of biotech in the U.K. and the critical hurdles it fac...

This is a previously recorded episode of The BioCentury Show from March 19, 2025. Subscribe to this channel to listen to each new episode. Visit TheBioCenturyYouTube.com to access and watch all prior episodes. Vertex’s approach to research, defined over a decade ago to beat the dismal odds of success in biotech, remains core to its strategy, even as the industry evolves and technologies expand. Wh...

In an environment where everybody hurts, it helps for biotech CEOs to understand the pressures driving pharmas, investors and other key players if they want to secure deals and financings that will help them succeed. That’s how John Lepore, CEO of Profound Therapeutics and former head of research at GSK, is navigating his early stage company through this capital-constrained era as he builds it fro...

Gillian Woollett, head of regulatory strategy and policy at Samsung Bioepis, discusses how FDA can deliver on its promise to “massively streamline” the regulation of biosimilars. Eliminating unnecessary clinical trial requirements could halve the time and cost of developing a biosimilar, according to Woollett. While regulators around the world are converging on ideas that will slash development ti...

Mounting clinical evidence suggests amylin agonists could supplant GLP-1 molecules as the foundational backbone of future obesity therapy, says Zealand Pharma CEO Adam Steensberg on The BioCentury Show . One of the leading cardiometabolic biotechs, Zealand received the largest-ever upfront payment in a biotech licensing deal when it partnered its petrelintide with Roche for nearly $2 billion. The...

Globalizing quickly and gaining a first-mover advantage are the winning strategies for South Korean biotechs as they look to compete on the world stage, says Orum Therapeutics founder and CEO SJ Lee in conversation with BioCentury Executive Editor Jeff Cranmer on The BioCentury Show . Lee’s company, a leader in degrader-antibody conjugates, provides an example of how to run that playbook. Lee also...

The macrophage field has seen its share of setbacks, but Faron believes bexmarilimab, its humanized mAb that binds to immune checkpoint target Clever-1, has what it takes to get across the goal line at FDA. On a special sponsored edition of The BioCentury Show , Juho Jalkanen, founder and CEO of Faron Pharmaceuticals, explains how the Finnish biotech landed on Clever-1, and why the target might mo...

Notwithstanding the bad start that the Trump administration got off to on FDA, Tim Opler is optimistic that the agency will serve drug developers well, and sees enough good signals that the direction the agency is headed will not bring the difficult regulatory era that many in the industry feared. Opler, a managing director at Stifel, spoke to Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn on The BioCentury Show...

As CEO of a vintage 2021 biotech, Jorge Santos Da Silva has had his leadership mettle tested by a pandemic, rising interest rates, a bear market, and a tumultuous U.S. policy environment — all while building the case for Moonlake’s lead program to become a top therapy for hidradenitis suppurativa and, eventually, a “pipeline-in-a-product.” The key for Santos Da Silva as founder and CEO of  Moonlak...

Europe did not ask for this opportunity, says VIB’s Jérôme van Biervliet, but with FDA and the U.S. research funding situation headed into uncertain territory, it needs to use this moment to capitalize on its strengths in research, and address the shortcomings of its business and regulatory systems that have made it hard for biotech to fulfill its potential there. Van Biervliet is managing directo...

The U.S. will cede its preeminence in biotechnology to China within three years unless the government acts urgently, an independent commission chartered by Congress warns. “Our window to act is closing,” the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology said in a newly released report . “We need a two-track strategy: make America innovate faster, and slow China down.” BioCentury Washingto...

On the latest episode of The BioCentury Show , Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn speaks with Bahija Jallal, CEO of Immunocore and the former president of Medimmune. While some biotechs are circumspect about gathering data during clinical trials that might not support the product in question, Jallal sees it as part of the obligation to patients and the field to learn as much as possible, as efficient...

Vertex’s approach to research, defined over a decade ago to beat the dismal odds of success in biotech, remains core to its strategy, even as the industry evolves and technologies expand. While that strategy, which EVP and CSO David Altshuler calls “serial innovation,” has seen the company launch eight drugs since 2011 and jump market cap tiers on the success of its cystic fibrosis portfolio, it’s...

Since the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco in early January, biotech has seen a notable surge in enthusiasm, Zahid Moneer, senior managing director of investment banking at BNP Paribas, told The BioCentury Show. Moneer, who is more upbeat than many in today’s biopharma sector, sees capital raises from million-dollar seed rounds to nine-digit series A, B, and C rounds drivi...

Biotechs need to get used to the new normal, says SR One CEO and Managing Partner Simeon George, and that will require significant adjustments to the business model. This new normal comes from an extended tough capital environment against a backdrop of political uncertainty, but while biotechs face a different set of factors than they have in the past, there are still first principles of value cre...

Clinical trials will be launched in the next year or two to test predictions about causal biology made by artificial intelligence models, Vik Bajaj, co-founder and CEO of Foresite Labs and managing director of Foresite Capital Management, believes. Foresite teamed up with Arch Venture Partners last year on a $1 billion venture round to fund Xaira Therapeutics, which aims to reinvent the R&D pr...

All presidential transitions with a change of party come with disruption and threats as well as opportunities. But this one, in particular with regard to the implications for FDA, is different from all those Steve Usdin has been covering in his 30-year tenure as Washington editor at BioCentury. In particular, this is an inflection point for the agency that currently serves as the global gold stand...

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), an influential voice in Congress on life sciences issues, gained stature last week when he was appointed to serve on the Energy & Commerce Committee, giving him a seat at the table for debates over legislation affecting FDA, CMS and NIH and a host of issues of critical importance to the biopharma industry. In an interview with Washington Editor Steve Usdin on T...

Specialist public investors are doing their best to hold up the sector, but biotech still has to wash out many of the lower quality companies that were funded during the boom and ended up driving the generalists away, said MPM Bioimpact's Chris Bardon on The BioCentury Show . Bardon said the market hasn’t yet found the footing that will see an opening of the IPO window and a swing of positive...