16
Jan
2020
Understanding The Ideology Of Digital Transformation
The phrase resounding in corporations these days is “digital transformation.” What does that really mean? According to proponents, digital transformation reflects the assertion that in order to remain competitive in the modern era, organizations need to radically rethink their approach to how they collect, manage, and analyze information. Change is clearly afoot, but the ideology informing this hasn’t been entirely...Read More 
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16
Jan
2020
Lilly’s Half-Measure on Insulin, Illumina’s Up-Market Play, & the Little Deals from SF
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15
Jan
2020
Atomwise and EQRx: Two Contrasting Strategies for the R&D Inefficiency Problem
Pharma innovation expert Bernard Munos captures the inherent inefficiency of drug development with two fascinating statistics he recently shared with me. First, for large pharmas, the average cost of developing a new drug (simply based on the total R&D costs divided by the total number of new drugs approved for sale) works out to about $5B per drug. It’s an...Read More
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13
Jan
2020
A New Cholesterol-Lowering Drug at a Low Price: Tim Mayleben on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Tim Mayleben. Tim is the CEO of Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Esperion Therapeutics. Esperion is bucking a few of the trends you’ve seen in biotech the past decade. It has developed a cholesterol-lowering drug, bempedoic acid. The drug is currently under review by regulators in the US and Europe. It is expected to be...Read More
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12
Jan
2020
EQRx Taps Zeitgeist, Raises $200m For Innovative Drugs at Aggressive Low Prices
Alexis Borisy is smart. As in high IQ. But there’s more to biopharma than that. “As my grandmother used to say, ‘You can be smart, smart, smart…but dumb,’” Borisy said. Some old wisdom is part of what’s driving Cambridge, Mass.-based EQRx. The company, started by the former Third Rock Ventures partner and backed by $200 million of “smart money” in...Read More
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10
Jan
2020
Entering JPM20 With a Grounded, Yet Hopeful, View of Health Tech
Health tech seems balanced precariously between excessive optimism and excessive skepticism, between the promise that emerging technology is poised to disrupt health like it has so many other areas, and the painful recognition that many idealistic technologists misunderstood both the scientific and human dimensions of the inordinately complex problems to be solved in both health care services and the development...Read More
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9
Jan
2020
MRNA Vaccines Impress, Blueprint Wins First FDA OK, & Calif. Gov. Stares Down Biotech on the Eve of #JPM20
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9
Jan
2020
Sanofi’s New CEO Captures Pharma’s Grounded View of Health Tech
Since taking over as Sanofi’s CEO in September, Paul Hudson has been blunt in his assessment of health technology decisions, and indecisions, made by previous management. Early in his tenure, Hudson took square aim at his company’s once-heralded $500 million collaboration with Verily on Onduo. This partnership was started in 2016 and intended to help diabetics better manage their condition. ...Read More
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7
Jan
2020
We’ve Been Neglecting Common Diseases. We Need to Reverse this Trend
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6
Jan
2020
Three Lessons for Business Ahead of JPM, from the Kilimanjaro Climb to Fight Cancer
While reflecting on the past year and preparing for the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, my mind has kept coming back to some simple life lessons picked up on a dirt trail half a world away. The Kilimanjaro Climb to Fight Cancer was a profound life experience last July. Ever since coming home from the highest peak in...Read More
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2
Jan
2020
HBV Curative Treatments Gear Up in the Clinic, as HCV Combos Help to Guide the Way
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1
Jan
2020
New Job, Same Thesis: Aligning Tech & Pharma To Elicit Best Of Both
With the New Year, I’m very excited to share a professional update: as of January 1, I’m the proud founder of “Astounding HealthTech,” providing advisory services to R&D-driven biopharma organizations and health tech startups striving to engage each other more effectively. The mission of Astounding is to catalyze drug development by aligning the specific capabilities and distinct needs of individual...Read More
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30
Dec
2019
Designer Proteins as Better Therapies: David Baker on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is David Baker. David is a biochemistry professor at the University of Washington, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and the director of The Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington. Just like the name suggests, this institute works on designing proteins with special properties. Sometimes these proteins are designed on computers,...Read More
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26
Dec
2019
Losing 80 Lbs Was Hard; Keeping It Off Was So Much Harder
Last year, at about this time, I shared my experience losing 80 pounds. I achieved this goal through a low-carb diet and coaching, guided by the Virta program, along with regular exercise. The overarching concern I expressed in that article, one year ago, was my recognition of how fragile weight loss can be. Most people who lose significant weight soon gain it...Read More
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10
Dec
2019
Biotechs Build on Single-cell Analytics for Drug R&D, as Human Cell Atlas is Mapped
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5
Dec
2019
Aural Pleasures, 2019 Edition
I listen to a lot of audio, spoken word content that edifies (or at least distracts) me during daily workouts and when traveling. Traditionally in December, I like to share with readers my annual podcast recommendations. But in reflecting on my listening habits of the last year, I realized that I’ve probably spent at least as much time listening to...Read More
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3
Dec
2019
Sticking With Epigenetics During Lean Times: Jigar Raythatha on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Jigar Raythatha. Jigar is the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Constellation Pharmaceuticals. This company is built to develop drugs against epigenetic targets. Simply put, this is a way to turn genes on or off without altering the underlying DNA. The pharmaceutical industry fancied this idea about a decade ago, as a way to shut...Read More
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2
Dec
2019
IFM, Staying Small, Raises (Merely) $55.5M, Promotes Former Novartis Exec to CEO
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26
Nov
2019
Tamping Down Inflammation & Synaptic Dysfunction in Alzheimer’s: John Alam on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is John Alam. John is the co-founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based EIP Pharma. This is a small company running clinical trials to test an unconventional idea for the treatment of Alzheimer’s. The gist is that if you can tamp down certain kinds of inflammation, you might be able to stop some of the...Read More
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21
Nov
2019
AI Can Help with Repeatable Processes, But Don’t Expect Thunderbolts for Drug Discovery
Biopharmaceutical and healthcare executives increasingly find themselves attending conferences and presentations featuring the evangelistic selling of AI by self-assured VCs, energetic entrepreneurs, and earnest consultants. The promise is that AI will change everything. Then the executives return to work, face the quotidian reality of their operation, and wonder whether AI will change anything. Enter Jim Manzi. Manzi, depending on your view, is a...Read More
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