After nearly two decades at the NIH and almost 10 years as founding director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), Christopher Austin is crossing over to the ‘dark side’, joining Boston-based Flagship Pioneering, the highly respected bioplatforms innovation company. He’s one of Biopharma’s true visionaries, with an expert’s knowledge at the highest levels of government funded NIH research, translational innovation, and industry commercialization.

In this podcast, we touch on the litany of proposals emanating from the US congress including international reference pricing and APRA-H, the proposed DARPA of healthcare. Chris Austin approaches the increasingly caustic debates around discovery, R&D, and pricing with a nuance and subtle understanding that is truly unique in its depth and wisdom, articulating why the U.S. ecosystem from the NIH through to commercial Biopharma has been both successful and effective.

Chris provides a background to many R&D breakthroughs with which he’s been personally involved, whilst explaining in detail how the US innovation engine works, and what makes it tick. We also outline how well-intentioned proposals such as price controls and IP waivers put the US ecosystem, and the future of drug discovery, at risk. Chris Austin graduated with a degree in biology from Princeton in 1982, and received his MD at Harvard Medical School. He completed his clinical training in internal medicine and neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital.

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