By

Luke Timmerman

7
May
2020

Keeping the Faith and Bracing for the Long Slog

We’re suffering from a social disease. It ranks up there with COVID-19. It’s boundless cynicism. We need to tamp this down. Just like we need to wrestle the new coronavirus to the ground. I’m not willing to accept “shit happens” as the national motto. This is a country of can-do problem-solvers. We can do so much better. You can see...
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1
May
2020

A Time for Empathy

This is a fragile moment. It’s May 1. Some of us have been in social isolation for two solid months. Everyone’s at some point on the continuum of stir crazy. More than 30 million people are out of work. Tempers are flaring. Protestors are carrying guns. It’s obvious we can’t sustain a maximalist social-distancing policy much longer. Today, we have...
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24
Apr
2020

A Sad Week of Reckless Leadership

The first US death from COVID-19 was reported on Feb. 29. Today, Apr. 24, the US death toll exceeds 50,000. That’s more than Italy and Spain combined. Even though we had early warning. It’s tragic. There’s also a reason why the death toll hasn’t been higher. It’s because of large-scale physical distancing in this expansive country of 330 million people....
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9
Apr
2020

GSK Partners With Vir on Antibodies, Pfizer With BioNTech on Vaccines, & the Testing Fiasco Continues

Here we are heading into Easter Weekend. We’re the wealthiest country in the world, and the undisputed superpower of biomedicine. Yet we’re still playing a game of catch up against SARS-CoV-2, which apparently our intelligence community knew was emerging around Thanksgiving. Even after months to get our act together, we still don’t have a coordinated national strategy on exactly how...
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23
Mar
2020

New Drugs at Low Prices: Alexis Borisy and Melanie Nallicheri of EQRx on The Long Run

Today’s guests on The Long Run are Alexis Borisy and Melanie Nallicheri. Alexis is the chairman and CEO of EQRx, and Melanie is the president and chief operating officer. EQRx is a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It aspires to develop new medicines for serious diseases like cancer. That’s nothing unusual. What is unusual is that EQRx is seeking to create...
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12
Mar
2020

COVID-19: Collective Problem-Solving Time

The alarm bells have been ringing for weeks. Stunningly, millions of people in the US weren’t listening, or didn’t want to listen. We have wasted precious time in defending ourselves against the coronavirus pandemic. The horrible news from Italy is slowly starting to sink in for us in the US, and other parts of the world. Sports cancellations, a prime-time...
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9
Mar
2020

Living Life Fully with Stage 4 Lung Cancer: Isabella de le Houssaye on The Long Run

Today’s guest on The Long Run is Isabella de la Houssaye. Isabella is a former attorney on Wall Street, a mother of five kids, and a terrific endurance athlete. She’s run marathons around the country, ultramarathons, and even completed an Ironman triathlon. She’s also a Stage 4 lung cancer patient. She owes her life, and her vitality, to some extraordinary...
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27
Feb
2020

Gilead, Moderna Rise to the Occasion, Esperion Goes Back-to-Back, & Sangamo’s Big Neurology Deal

This week’s Frontpoints is a compilation of two weeks of deals, financings, and personnel moves. Coronavirus Thoughts If we learn one big lesson from this public health crisis, it should be that we need to continue to invest in our public agencies dedicated to science and public health – CDC, NIH and FDA, for starters. We also need to continue...
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