25
Mar
2020
Unsung Heroes Who Give Me Hope
The spread of COVID-19 is likely to be one of the defining issues of our time. Just like those that lived through the Great Depression, World War II, and perhaps even 9/11, it will live with us for the rest of our lives and leave its imprint for decades. Our children, and grandchildren, will remember this — and be influenced...Read More 
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25
Mar
2020
A Surge of Gratitude, From a Doctor on the Front Lines of COVID-19 in Boston
Eleven days ago I wrote an article for Timmerman Report on my initial emotions as a doctor on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic: fear, frustration, and confusion. Today, I’d like to add another emotion to that list. Gratitude. Above all, I am grateful that I can do something to help. My impact is small—miniscule in fact. I’m working...Read More
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24
Mar
2020
What Not To Do: Lessons From Spain’s Cavalier Response to COVID-19
I grew up in Catalonia, in the north-east of Spain, and came to Boston in my late 20s for a PhD at MIT. Today, I am the CEO of Vedanta Biosciences, a Boston-based biotech I co-founded. As I write this, the coronavirus epidemic is extending across Spain faster and more broadly than it has anywhere else in the world (see...Read More
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24
Mar
2020
Doctor, Mother, CEO: Balancing Competing Needs, and Opting for the Front Lines
Yesterday I woke up on an island. I am temporarily – but purposefully — isolating myself and my two children, ages 10 and 12, in a familiar place that carries with it a slower rhythm from a different time. It’s our second home. It also happens that, on the first day of spring, there are still no cases of suspected...Read More
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24
Mar
2020
Digital Tools in Clinical Trials Find Opportunity During Pandemic
The current crisis represents a potentially defining moment for at least some health technologies and technology-enabled services. Telehealth, as discussed in my last column, is one conspicuous example, and the jury is still out. The potential benefit seems especially striking at a time when so many Americans are being told to stay at home, yet there are also serious concerns,...Read More
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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...Read More
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23
Mar
2020
Let it Rip or Shelter at Home? Choosing Between Two Bad Options on Coronavirus
Like most of you, I have been obsessively following “the virus.” It is having a devastating impact on human life, hospital systems, governments and economies. The worst is still to come, based on what we know about this new coronavirus and its ability to spread with exponential force. Here are some thoughts on the difficult choices laying ahead. Before I...Read More
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23
Mar
2020
Staying Mentally Healthy to Weather the COVID19 Crisis
The Mind Set The message to people on the front lines of the healthcare system — and citizens alike — has been: “This is going to be a marathon, not a sprint.” We have heard that phrase many times in the past weeks to help healthcare workers prepare for what’s coming next in the COVID crisis. It sounds inspired, thinking...Read More
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22
Mar
2020
Why Telehealth Champions Are Worried About Trust
Crises can serve as catalysts. History has shown they increase the recognition that change is needed, and lower the activation energy required for it to occur. The COVID-19 crisis has already been widely recognized as potential catalyst for telemedicine, and more generally for the accelerated adoption of digital tools in both clinical medicine and clinical trials. In just the last...Read More
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21
Mar
2020
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
The Seattle community is about two weeks ahead of the rest of the US in adapting to our new coronavirus-driven reality. My three kids have been out of school for two weeks now. Although incomparable with the challenges facing our health system, as all parents of young children know, having them at home all day, every day without the structure...Read More
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20
Mar
2020
In Times of Coronavirus Pandemic, it Takes a Global Village
For some US biotech companies today, the ability to maintain business and societal continuity during the COVID–19 pandemic comes with assistance from a surprising source. Contract research organizations (CROs) based in China were the first – and most severely — impacted by the new coronavirus outbreak in January. But they are now rebounding to provide their traditional services to biopharma...Read More
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20
Mar
2020
Biotech Can Help the Most Vulnerable. Here’s Are a Few Ways
There has never been a more important time for all of us to practice physical distancing. Our only chance to prevent our heroic women and men who work in healthcare from being overwhelmed is to STAY HOME, and remain physically separated. That being said, I submit that it is even more critical that we remain socially connected during what will...Read More
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19
Mar
2020
COVID-19 Response – the Roadmap Not Followed
Public health is not sexy. Vaccines haven’t been a good business investment. But what has become abundantly clear is that infectious disease preparedness can have a greater impact on morbidity and mortality than all the sexy innovative therapies combined. We are looking down the barrel of a gun. We are about to get blown away by a pandemic as the...Read More
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19
Mar
2020
Singapore: What We Can Learn From a High-risk Country’s Response to COVID19
I was born in Malaysia, but left my family for the promised land of Singapore at the age of 12 under a scholarship program known as the ASEAN program. I lived more than half my life in that country, and have long since become a Singaporean. I currently manage a major Singaporean life sciences VC fund from a San Francisco...Read More
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19
Mar
2020
The Biopharmaceutical Counterattack
The latest contagious and deadly global virus, COVID-19, is invisibly sprinting across the world and across America. As the crisis engulfs our nation, it has exposed failures to heed the warnings of experts that would have allowed us to arm ourselves for what we have long known to be this inevitable threat. Worse yet, critical capacities that would have allowed...Read More
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18
Mar
2020
8 Days Later: Italy vs. US
The following is an update to my article on March 10, also published on Timmerman Report. The initial article is available (free to read here). Before I begin, I would like to sincerely thank everybody who has reached out with comments / feedback after my first article. Thank you also for the outpouring of well wishes for my family in...Read More
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17
Mar
2020
Dangerous Shortages of Equipment: A Nurse’s View from the Front Lines of Pandemic
[Editor’s Note: this is a statement from a nurse in New York City who I spoke with earlier today. Her concerns about dangerous shortages of Personal Protective Equipment for healthcare workers were echoed in an article today by Seattle physicians in the Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network. The nurse wishes to remain anonymous.] I am a registered nurse...Read More
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17
Mar
2020
Solid Tumors Have Eluded CAR-T, But Novel Targets and Techniques Are At Hand
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16
Mar
2020
The Value And Necessity Of Tinkering
This week, I reviewed for the Wall Street Journal a pair of books about the increasing use of experimentation by businesses and other organizations: Experimentation Works, by Harvard Business School professor Stefan Thomke, and The Power of Experiments, by Michael Luca and Max Bazerman, also of Harvard Business School. These books in some ways represent the sequel to one of...Read More
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14
Mar
2020
Life on the Front Lines of the COVID-19 Pandemic
The Massachusetts General Hospital COVID-19 Surge Clinic is a converted parking garage normally used as the ambulance bay for the Emergency Department. It is isolated from the rest of the ED by two sets of sliding glass doors and can only be accessed by badge. The garage has blue fluorescent lights and no windows, making it impossible to tell day...Read More
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