Derek Lowe is one of the biopharma industry’s most prolific commentators — in just the past month, he’s written about generic drug manufacturing, Sarepta, and the TrkB receptor in his column, In the Pipeline. He joins Post-Hoc Live to talk about the state of drug discovery, being a skeptic, and what he has his eye on next.

The relationship between big pharma and the UK turned south this year. Companies like Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb want the NHS to pay more for drugs, and others are playing hardball by pulling investments and sharply criticizing the government. And every action is wrapped up in the companies' “most favored nation” negotiations with the Trump administration. Ahead of the Financial Times’ Global Pharma and Biotech Summit, held in partnership with Endpoints, Financial Times global pharmaceutical editor Hannah Kuchler joins Post Hoc Live to offer the view from her side of the pond on how the UK and Europe are reacting to pharma's shifting global politics.

In February, a team of scientists achieved a long-held scientific goal — creating a bespoke CRISPR editing therapy to treat a single patient with a unique genetic mutation. “Baby KJ” got his own custom treatment only six months after he was born. Now, Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas, a pediatrician and gene therapy scientist at CHOP, and Kiran Musunuru, a UPenn gene editing scientist, have a plan to replicate that success. They’re joining Post-Hoc Live to talk about what’s next.

The obesity wars just got spicier. Today, a month after Pfizer said it would buy Metsera, Novo Nordisk swooped in with its own bid for the cardiometabolic drug developer. Metsera says Novo’s offer is “superior.” Pfizer says it’s breaking their terms. We’ll tell you what comes next on Post-Hoc Live with BMO Capital Markets Head of Healthcare Research Evan Seigerman.

Don’t look now, but there are signs of life in the biotech market. The XBI has been ticking up. There were 22 M&A deals in Q3, according to John Carroll’s analysis with DealForma, and deal values are already close to the totals from all of 2024. Is it a mirage, or is the worst really over? And how much will we jinx things by saying it out loud? John and Tim Opler, Managing Director at Stifel's Global Healthcare Group, will join the show to break it all down.

Vijay Pande left Andreessen Horowitz this summer after 11 years as a life sciences investor. Now, he’s building a new firm focused on AI. He joins Post-Hoc Live to take the 10,000-foot view of AI in biotech and Silicon Valley: what do investors get right and wrong about biotech? What are the business models for AI in biopharma? Which moonshot project will stick? We’ll continue the conversation next week at Endpoints AI Day. Sign up for the virtual program here: https://events.endpoints.news/aiday2025

On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it had cut a deal with Pfizer on drug pricing and tariffs, and said it’ll launch a government website called TrumpRx where people can purchase cheaper drugs. But there are a lot of lingering questions: How big might Medicaid discounts be? What role will insurance play in the direct-to-consumer website? How are negotiations going with other drugmakers? Join us to recap all this and more from a busy week in Washington.

What would it take for US biotech to match the speed and cost of China? Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who now works as an investor and board member, will talk about how the US can play defense against China's surging biotech startup ecosystem by moving faster and smarter, and if we're making steps toward doing so, or moving backward.

There are hundreds of digital health tools out there claiming they can do everything from manage diabetes to treat depression. But unlike drugs or devices, these tools don’t have to prove they work before they go on the market. Caroline Pearson, executive director at the Peterson Health Technology Institute, is working to fill that gap by evaluating how good some of these tools actually are. Her team is about to release a new report on virtual solutions for opioid use disorder, so she’s joining our health tech team on Post-Hoc Live to talk through what they found — and why their approach matters.

Will the XBI ever go up again? Today, we’re posing the intentionally provocative — but revealing — to Cantor’s Josh Schimmer, who has a new analysis out on the index. He’s joining Post-Hoc Live to tell us why, after years of flat numbers, things might be better than they seem.