Diagnostic Dysfunction for COVID19: Mike Pellini on The Long Run

Mike Pellini, managing partner, Section32

Today’s guest on The Long Run is Mike Pellini.

Mike is a managing partner with Section32, a venture firm that invests in biotech startups.

Mike is an expert in diagnostics. He was previously the CEO of Foundation Medicine, a company that looks at a wide range of gene mutations in tumor samples to can act as molecular drivers of cancer. I’ve known Mike for about 10 years. It was cool to see that company grow up, and mature. It was acquired by Roche in 2018 for $2.4 billion.

Lately, Mike has been putting his 20 years of experience in diagnostics to work in helping leaders in industry, and policymakers, think about how to better meet the urgent need for national testing in the COVID19 pandemic.

The federal government’s initial testing plan was an epic failure, but he and I didn’t spend time talking about that today. We’re both more interested in what can be done going forward to create a new testing system – with the people, the supplies, the coordination, and the resources they need – to test all 330 million Americans. Getting that much data, and aggregating that (along with a few more kinds of data we talk about) into a national shared surveillance system is the kind of thing we need to think about creating over the coming months. It’s what we’ll need to get the country back to something approximating normal life.

For background, you can read a guest editorial Mike wrote for Timmerman Report on Mar. 28. Headline: Knowledge is Power.

Now, please join me and Mike Pellini on The Long Run.