The BioCentury Show

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...

Leading biotech companies through the turbulence of the past few years and the uncertainty of the next ones takes not just resilience, but an ability to grapple with the CEO’s paradox, according to Climb Bio CEO Aoife Brennan. This paradox requires preparing for repeated setbacks while planning optimistically, a duality that has been the story of biotech since the outbreak of the pandemic, said Br...

With new governments both side of the pond, capital markets picking up, and some geopolitical overhang, there’s a mixed feast for biotech, with a net trend to the positive, says Sidley Austin’s Robert Darwin, who specializes in global M&A and private equity for life sciences and healthcare companies and investors. In conversation with Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn on The BioCentury Show , Da...

Richard Pazdur, director of FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence, joined FDA in 1999. Looking back on his 25th anniversary, he draws a line between unpopular decisions at the start of his tenure and a surge in cancer drug development over the last 20 years. He believes this and other lessons from the regulation of oncology can be applied broadly across FDA. The BioCentury Show discussed these lesso...

With most of the highly attractive late-stage assets already scooped up, pharmas are turning their sights to Phase II companies, and lining up their case to make an attractive offer and move fast. About 40% of the M&A deals in 2023-24 were completed in less than six weeks, from approach to announcement, according to Lazard’s data. Michael Kingston and Dale Raine, global co-heads of biopharma a...

CMS’s controversial decision to restrict access to Alzheimer’s mAb treatments, including Aduhelm, approved under FDA’s accelerated pathway was a unique case that is unlikely to set a precedent, former CMS CMO Lee Fleisher told BioCentury. “I do not think this will be repeated,” he said. In an interview with The BioCentury Show 's Steve Usdin, Fleisher gives a behind-the-scenes account of the...

Few CEOs have built a $20 billion biotech in under 15 years, as John Oyler has with BeiGene, managing to stay in that market cap band even through the downmarket. His strategy, to own clinical trials and manufacturing early on, looks particularly prescient in light of the cost and supply constraints threatening many biotechs today. On this episode of The BioCentury Show , Editor in Chief Simone Fi...

There is good news in this year’s Association for Accessible Medicines report on savings from biosimilars, including a 30% increase over the last year in savings attributed to biosimilars. The report also explores the economic, policy and regulatory headwinds that are preventing the industry from generating savings at a level that would have a dramatic effect on the U.S. healthcare system. In an i...

This is a previously recorded episode of The BioCentury Show from February 22, 2024. Subscribe to this channel to listen to each new episode. Visit TheBioCenturyYouTube.com to access and watch all prior episodes. In a wide-ranging conversation with BioCentury, Bob Nelsen, co-founder and managing director of Arch Venture Partners, said he is excited by the potential for AI to “create a language of...

As Jane Grogan anticipates the unmet needs in patients five years from now, she’s harnessing a wave of interest in targeting B cells as a key driver of an immunology expansion at Biogen. In conversation with Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn on The BioCentury Show , Grogan, who became EVP and head of research of Biogen in October, discusses how she’s approaching the mission to build diversity and ba...

As Astellas prepares to launch four products in parallel, Chief Commercial Officer Claus Zieler is balancing the complexity of this multi-faceted enterprise with a simple guiding principle: it has to work at a local level, and that will change with geography, circumstance and time. In conversation with Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn on The BioCentury Show , Zieler discusses how to factor local di...

Ignorance about the path from scientific discovery to approved drugs, high out-of-pocket costs, and a byzantine healthcare system that obscures net prices while inflating list prices have fueled policies that threaten biomedical progress, John O’Brien, CEO of think tank National Pharmaceutical Council, told BioCentury. In an interview with The BioCentury Show's Steve Usdin, O’Brien, who led e...

Pediatric cancer drug development is difficult: it requires high levels of safety, involves parents as well as the patients, and has small populations that can make it difficult to achieve the revenues that reward the investment. Squaring that circle, according to Day One Biopharmaceuticals CEO Jeremy Bender, is not impossible, but takes a dedicated strategy that considers both pediatric and adult...

The U.S. is experiencing events that are either the first stages of a widespread avian influenza outbreak or a fire drill that will show how well the nation is prepared for an outbreak. The U.S. has not stepped up to meet the challenge, Rick Bright, the former director of BARDA, told BioCentury. In an interview with The BioCentury Show 's Steve Usdin, Bright said there are opportunities for b...

Differentiating on tolerability, raising the bar for efficacy and concentrating small molecule development on indications with minimal IRA exposure are all pieces of Novartis CEO Vasant Narasimhan’s strategy to break into the top pharmas by U.S. sales. Two data readouts this week — one for CML drug Scemblix at ASCO and one for inflammatory disease therapy remibrutinib at the EAACI Congress — may t...

“The bar has gotten higher because science has gotten so much better,” John Maraganore says on the latest BioCentury Show. Reflecting on the capital markets and the state of innovation, the founder and former CEO of Alnylam painted a picture of a robust ecosystem fueled by sprawling innovation, where the higher scrutiny by investors will serve the industry well. In a broad-ranging conversation wit...

“I’m a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist” about the potential for AI to transform drug development, Derek Lowe, author of the In the Pipeline blog, told BioCentury Washington Editor Steve Usdin on the latest BioCentury Show . Lowe's skepticism about claims that AI will rapidly transform the field is driven by a belief that the “problems that we have in the drug industry that we wa...

This is a previously recorded episode of The BioCentury Show . Subscribe to this channel to listen to each new episode. Visit TheBioCenturyYouTube.com to access and watch all prior episodes. Within the framework of target, modality and path to clinic, causal biology is the axis along which Head of Research Robert Plenge is building and prosecuting research at Bristol Myers. It maps from late-stage...

It sounds obvious, but still needs saying, says Ysios Capital's Karen Wagner. “How do you rise above the noise? By having the most spectacular data.” In conversation with Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn on The BioCentury Show , Wagner discussed the theme of the upcoming Bio€quity Europe conference — rising above the noise: in a sea of competition where companies vie for attention among invest...

This is a previously recorded episode of The BioCentury Show . Subscribe to this channel to listen to each new episode. Visit TheBioCenturyYouTube.com to access and watch all prior episodes. Success for the Singapore biotech project will take a global network, one which Khoo Shih and other prominent drivers of the local ecosystem are keen to leverage to bring the right combination of talent, exper...

This is a previously recorded episode of The BioCentury Show . Subscribe to this channel to listen to each new episode. Visit TheBioCenturyYouTube.com to access and watch all prior episodes. In a wide-ranging conversation with BioCentury, Bob Nelsen, co-founder and managing director of Arch Venture Partners, said he is excited by the potential for AI to “create a language of biology,” is cautious...

This is a previously recorded episode of The BioCentury Show . Subscribe to this channel to listen to each new episode. Visit TheBioCenturyYouTube.com to access and watch all prior episodes. On the tenth anniversary of a viral media campaign for access to an unapproved drug that extended a boy’s life, bioethicist Arthur Caplan reflected in an interview with The BioCentury Show on how the experienc...

This is a previously recorded episode of The BioCentury Show . Subscribe to this channel to listen to each new episode. Visit TheBioCenturyYouTube.com to access and watch all prior episodes. Atlas Venture’s Bruce Booth believes the belt-tightening by biotechs in the past few years will presage a better financing outlook for companies, but the ripple effects will be felt for some time to come. In c...

This is a previously recorded episode of The BioCentury Show . Subscribe to this channel to listen to each new episode. Visit TheBioCenturyYouTube.com to access and watch all prior episodes. BIO CEO John Crowley believes that biotech is part of a “great global rivalry” between the U.S. and China. The role of biotech in determining the outcome of this rivalry, and a belief in the need for reducing...