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
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
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
19
May
2020
Stepping Up One’s Game, Pandemic Style
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18
May
2020
Biopharma Gets Serious, In a Hurry, About Virtual Clinical Trials
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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
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
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
11
May
2020
Science in Plain English for the Pandemic
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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
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
6
May
2020
Extending an Immune Medicine Platform Against the Common Foe
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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
5
May
2020
The Spirit of Giving Is More Powerful Than Ever
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5
May
2020
Beyond CAR-T: New Engineered Immune Cell Types Head to the Clinic
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4
May
2020
If We’re Smart, COVID19 Will Strengthen Our Defense Against Drug-Resistant Bugs
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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... Read More
30
Apr
2020
Real-Time Tracking of Viral Outbreaks: Emma Hodcroft on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Emma Hodcroft. Emma is a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Basel, and the co-developer of Nextstrain. NextStrain is the open-source toolkit built for real-time tracking of viral outbreaks. In the early days, teams led by Trevor Bedford at Fred Hutch and Richard Neher in Basel used it to track viral evolution of... Read More
28
Apr
2020
Keeping an Academic Lab Afloat in a Pandemic
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28
Apr
2020
We Didn’t Become the World Biotech Leader By Sealing Ourselves Off
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