By

Luke Timmerman

25
Feb
2021

Pfizer/BioNTech Ace Real-World Test, J&J Faces FDA Scrutiny, & Merck Pays Up

Vaccine news keeps getting better by the day. The number of new people being diagnosed with COVID-19 has been plummeting for weeks. That’s the good news. Read on and synthesize the most important financings, deals, and scientific developments of the week in biotech. Vaccines Let’s start with the best news of the week. Researchers from Israel reported on the Pfizer...
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18
Feb
2021

Biotech as a Beacon for Youth

Biotech has always depended on the ideas and energy of young people. But it’s time to think more broadly about how biotech and young people relate. Let’s start with young people. Recall the column from two weeks ago, which cited a 2017 Pentagon study. That study found that a full 71 percent of Americans between the ages of 18-24 aren’t...
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4
Feb
2021

The Insurrectionist and the Visionary

One photograph captured our contradictions on Jan. 6. There was the man carrying the Confederate flag where it had never flown before – inside the US Capitol. A violent mob, carrying symbols like that and worse, sought to assassinate elected officials and overthrow our democracy. They were sent there by other elected leaders who were telling lies. It was horrific....
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28
Jan
2021

Ideas for an FDA Reboot

The FDA needs to get healthy, and fast. Its credibility as the world’s No. 1 science-based regulator of food and drugs has been tarnished. From the start, it had to play catch-up on RT-PCR diagnostic tests in the wake of CDC’s epic screwup. Partly to make up lost ground, it swung open the floodgates for antibody tests. A Wild West...
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21
Jan
2021

A Bold Idea for the NIH

Too many people don’t believe anymore in the American dream. But if you can’t dream big, you can’t accomplish big things. Today, I’d like to propose a bold idea for the future of biomedical research. Let’s triple the National Institutes of Health budget over the next decade. Impossible? Hear me out. We know the NIH, with a $41.7 billion a...
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19
Jan
2021

Gene Editing for Transplants and Cell Therapy: Luhan Yang on The Long Run

Today’s guest on The Long Run is Luhan Yang. Luhan is the founder and CEO of Hangzhou, China-based Qihan Biotech. Qihan is using genome editing technology to engineer pigs with organs that can be safely transplanted into humans. This is what scientists call xenotransplantation. The concept has been around a long time, but new CRISPR-based gene editing technologies make it...
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8
Jan
2021

Biotech Is Radiant In a Dark Moment

The virus, at the start of a New Year, has arrived on all seven continents. Even Antarctica. An estimated 2 million people have died worldwide from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and that’s surely an undercount. About 4,000 people are dying per day in the US. About 255,000 new people are being diagnosed with this dangerous and mysterious invader every day in...
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