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... Read More
27
Jan
2021
Ukko Gets Bayer’s Backing for an AI Approach to Food Allergies
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24
Jan
2021
What’s Your DEQ? Why Data Empathy Is Essential For Health Data Impact
“Their story — yours, mine — it’s what we all carry with us on this trip that we take, and we owe it to each other to respect our stories and learn from them.” — Dr. William Carlos Williams to Dr. Robert Coles, from Coles’s “The Call of Stories.” The term “data empathy” is on the verge of entering the... Read More
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... Read More
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... Read More
19
Jan
2021
A Vision for an mHealth-Driven Biopharma Future
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17
Jan
2021
Two Doses or One? Let’s Stick To the Data
With COVID-19 surging and a chaotic political situation, we still have reasons to consider ourselves fortunate. We have two safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. While the rollout has been frustratingly slow thus far, these vaccines and others under study hold our best promise of pandemic control. Both products, the... Read More
14
Jan
2021
Our Communities, and Biotech, Need Local Journalism
National traumas force us out of our comfort zones. They can force us to search, to ask new questions, to think deeper about our world. This week, my first real journalism job came to mind. One day, when I expressed surprise to my editor in Madison, Wisconsin that the tiny Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota had won the Pulitzer... Read More
14
Jan
2021
How Worried Should We Be About Emerging Strains of SARS-CoV-2?
All virus strains mutate continuously. That’s normal. There’s nothing inherently concerning about that word, “mutation.” Unless, of course, the mutations give an evolving virus new properties that make it more transmissible or more pathogenic. That’s trouble. The news has been worrisome in recent weeks with reports on the B.1.1.7 strain first detected in the UK, and other new strains of... Read More
13
Jan
2021
The Politics of Speaking Up
We thought we had lived through the most difficult year of our lives in 2020, from the deadly COVID-19 pandemic to the delusional and autocratic ambitions of a sitting President of the United States. Then we were shocked once more, by deadly mob violence and ominous threats of more to come at the U.S. Capitol in the days before the... Read More
13
Jan
2021
Cell & Gene Therapy Boom Sparks Investment in Biologics Manufacturing
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12
Jan
2021
A Moment of Truth
Democracy is fragile. Its stability depends on the acceptance of its principles by the population as a whole, the resilience of the institutions that support it, an independent judiciary, a free press, free and open elections and, in the United States, the foundation laid by the Constitution. The struggle to balance those critical pillars has been waged across the... Read More
11
Jan
2021
EQRx Gets $500M To Hit the Gas on High-Quality, Low-Cost Drug Model
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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... Read More
7
Jan
2021
Fungus-Based Startup, LifeMine, Fetches $50M; Arsenal Attracts BMS Cell Therapy
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6
Jan
2021
mRNA Vaccines Inspire Hope for Emerging Technologies; Is Digital Pharma Next?
The mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, developed by Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer, were a conspicuous bright spot in a generally devastating year. Besides giving us a chance to bring the pandemic to an end, they remind us more generally of the profoundly transformative potential of emerging technologies. Audacious scientific and entrepreneurial ambitions can take years of grinding persistence, often sounding unrealistic or... Read More
6
Jan
2021
Startup Profiles: Senti and Myeloid Raise Cash to Push Cell Therapy Frontiers
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5
Jan
2021
The Vaccine Rollout Could Prompt Real Reform to the US Health System
When I received the COVID vaccine on Dec 24, it was the end of a tense, frustrating two-week period. Thousands of healthcare workers like me — doctors, nurses, physician assistants and more — at the Mass General Brigham health system were eager to get vaccinated, and antsy about whether we’d get the shot as soon as it was available. The... Read More
4
Jan
2021
Pan-Cancer Tests Have a Long Road Ahead
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22
Dec
2020
Creative New Treatments for Mental Health: Steve Paul on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Steve Paul. Steve is the chairman, president and CEO of Boston-based Karuna Therapeutics. Karuna is developing new treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders. By the time you listen to this conversation, Karuna will either be very close to starting a Phase III clinical trial of its lead drug candidate, or it will already have begun.... Read More