27
May
2020
The Recovery: A Long Road Ahead for Patients, Healthcare Workers, and Hospitals
The Patient As the patient rolls down the hall in her hospital bed, thankful to be getting out of this place alive, there are many things she can’t bring herself to think about now. Spending 30 or so days in the hospital, mostly in the intensive care unit on a ventilator, will do that to a person. Maybe someday later...Read More 
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26
May
2020
Finding a Path in Biotech Venture Capital: Nina Kjellson on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Nina Kjellson. Nina is a general partner with Canaan Partners on the West Coast. Her investing style leans toward high science, which you can see in portfolio companies like PACT Pharma, a company developing neoantigen targeted T cell therapies for cancer, Tizona Therapeutics, a targeted antibody developer for cancer, and Vineti, a software...Read More
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26
May
2020
Miscommunications, Misapplied Policy & Misunderstood Liberty: Why the US Pandemic Response is in Trouble
On April 17 — seemingly a long time ago — I wrote about what steps would have to be taken in order to (cautiously) “reopen” US states from their various lock-downs and stay-at-home advisories. The piece tried to focus on the “how”, versus the “when”. By the early days of May, most states had begun re-opening, and now all 50...Read More
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21
May
2020
A Glimmer of Hope, and a Premature Celebration
We all woke up Monday morning and saw an encouraging headline. Then things started to go downhill. To recap, Moderna, the Cambridge, Mass.-based messenger RNA therapeutics and vaccines company, provided a snapshot of preliminary data from its Phase I trial of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate, being tested in collaboration with Tony Fauci’s crew at the National Institute of Allergy and...Read More
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21
May
2020
Creating Leaner and Meaner Clinical Trials for the Long Run
The clinical trial enterprise has been due for a reckoning for a long time. The good news is that a fundamental re-thinking of how clinical trials are done – one that could bring lasting positive changes – has started to happen. I believe there is good reason to be optimistic that some long-overdue changes will be made permanent after the...Read More
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21
May
2020
Day One, Taking a Page from Rare Disease Playbook, Raises $60M for Kids With Cancer
Please subscribe and tell your friends why it’s worthwhile. Quality journalism costs money. When you subscribe to Timmerman Report at $149 per year, you reward quality independent biotech reporting, and encourage more. Subscribe Now Sign in to your account.
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20
May
2020
Pharma’s Digital Champions Should Focus On Solving One Problem Well
Come for the tech, stay for the culture. That seems to be the hope of most digital champions inside large pharma companies. These executives hope to instill in their organizations not only important new capabilities, but also a “Silicon Valley” mindset, an innovative spirit characteristically associated with tech entrepreneurs. The reality, of course, is more complicated; pharma executives – and...Read More
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19
May
2020
Getting the COVID-19 Numbers Wrong
When I was in college, everyone wanted to major in psychology. I signed up, but switched out after only a few weeks. Why? Well, the more I read, the less I seemed to know. Psychology, after all, is an inexact science. I sought refuge in the exact worlds of computer science and mathematics. Those courses led me to build a...Read More
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19
May
2020
COVID Doctors Navigate Tension Between Individual Autonomy and Systematized Care
I was recently speaking with a friend of mine, a pulmonologist at a large academic medical center in the Midwest, about his COVID-19 experience. I was especially interested, in the context of iterative experimentation, to learn how his hospital was working on improving the care of COVID-19 patients, especially those in the ICU, which he oversees. It’s real problem, he...Read More
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19
May
2020
Stepping Up One’s Game, Pandemic Style
Luke Timmerman calls me his humor columnist. That’s become a laugh line of its own in our house. My adult daughter, staying with us during the pandemic, said this to me just last week: “If you’re going to need frequent comedic validation, you’re going to have to step up your game.” Giggles have been hard to come by these past...Read More
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18
May
2020
Biopharma Gets Serious, In a Hurry, About Virtual Clinical Trials
Please subscribe and tell your friends why it’s worthwhile. Quality journalism costs money. When you subscribe to Timmerman Report at $149 per year, you reward quality independent biotech reporting, and encourage more. Subscribe Now Sign in to your account.
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14
May
2020
Meet My Friend Who Supported Trump in 2016
[This week, I’m re-publishing this column written Nov. 9, 2016. It’s probably more important to read now.—Luke] I’ve been dreading this moment since June. That’s when I started telling people: Trump was going to win. I could feel it in my bones, because of where I’m from. We’ve heard enough by now that the elites have let us down. The...Read More
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13
May
2020
Coronavirus Vaccine Strategy: Larry Corey on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Larry Corey. Larry is one of the nation’s best-known virologists and vaccine developers. Much of his research over the years has been on HIV, herpes simplex viruses, and viruses associated with cancer. He’s the founding director and principal investigator of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network – a collaborative group to study vaccine candidates...Read More
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13
May
2020
If Trikafta Isn’t Good Enough for ICER, What Drug Is?
Last week ICER released a report concluding that Vertex’s groundbreaking triple-combination cystic fibrosis (CF) drug, Trikafta, is too expensive for the value it provides to patients. By all scientific and clinical standards—including ICER’s own—Trikafta, a novel combination of a CFTR potentiator and two correctors, is a transformative drug. It compensates for a mutation present in 90% of all CF patients, turning a disease...Read More
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11
May
2020
Science in Plain English for the Pandemic
Art Krieg is one of the leaders in the field of oligonucleotide drug discovery, going back to the 1980s. Today, he’s the founder and chief scientific officer of Cambridge, Mass.-based Checkmate Pharmaceuticals, a cancer immunotherapy company. It’s his job to explain scientific concepts to a variety of professional audiences. But he leveraged that skill recently to do an interesting thing...Read More
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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...Read More
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7
May
2020
Randomized Controlled Trials For Healthcare Delivery Work; Now Let’s Do More At Scale
The value of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in healthcare delivery was highlighted earlier this year with the publication in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) of a paper that rigorously evaluated a deeply appealing hypothesis: that you can improve care and reduce costs by focusing on “superutilizers” – the patients who consume the most healthcare resources. I discussed this...Read More
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6
May
2020
Extending an Immune Medicine Platform Against the Common Foe
Every few days, I walk through our labs to say hello to my colleagues. They are the ones who are literally and figuratively keeping the lights on at Adaptive Biotechnologies. Rest assured, I’m maintaining physical distance while seeking human connection. With a Telepresence Robot that I can drive with a remote control from my home, I’m able to get real-time...Read More
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5
May
2020
Giving Models and Modelers a Bad Name
As someone who has spent a career building and studying disease models, primarily for cancer, the latest update from Chris Murray and the IHME model makes me cringe. The IHME model, readers will recall, has been frequently cited by the White House coronavirus task force. On May 4, the IHME called a press conference to release the results of their...Read More
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5
May
2020
The Spirit of Giving Is More Powerful Than Ever
When people look back on the pandemic, they will be amazed by the outpouring of generosity. The response from frontline healthcare workers, scientists, and the biopharmaceutical industry is simply extraordinary. Food banks and social services are also saving lives. The common thread is the inherently human capacity to be generous. The word philanthropy brings to mind a variety of images,...Read More
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