Richard Pops has lived the biotech roller coaster over three decades as CEO of Alkermes: an IPO, M&A, near-death events for his company, FDA setbacks, battles with an activist investor, and the satisfaction of knowing that millions of patients have benefited from the company’s medicines. He has led PDUFA reauthorization negotiations for industry, chaired BIO, and advocated for the interests of mid-sized biotechs.
As Pops prepares to retire as CEO (he will remain chairman), he spoke with BioCentury Washington Editor Steve Usdin about the ways policy and economics shape the development of medicines. Pops discussed the impact of the Trump administration’s most favored nation (MFN) drug pricing policy and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), concerns about FDA’s loss of talent, and competition and collaboration with China’s life sciences sector.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/659601

#DrugPricing #BiotechLeadership #FDAPolicy #LifeSciencesPolicy #DrugDevelopment

00:00 - Introduction
01:40 - Alkermes’ Evolution
05:12 - PBMs, Pricing & Access
10:54 - IRA
18:14 - MFN
24:36 - PDUFA Negotiations
28:05 - FDA Staffing
31:40 - China & U.S. Policy

Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, believes the central problem in cancer drug development is not discovery, but a broken “translational middle.”
In a wide-ranging interview on The BioCentury Show with BioCentury Washington Editor Steve Usdin, Knudsen discussed the Parker Institute’s focus on accelerating the path from scientific breakthrough to medical impact.
As it approaches its tenth anniversary, the institute has deployed about $400 million, catalyzing roughly $4 billion in follow-on investment across 17 companies.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/659476

#CancerImmunotherapy #TranslationalScience #DrugDevelopment #Biopharma #CancerResearch

00:00 - Introduction
01:34 - Optimizing Translation
07:42 - Training the Immune System
16:33 - China’s Opportunity
20:50 - Need for a Cancer Strategy
24:40 - Enhancing Cancer Survivorship
27:55 - Scientific Foundation Under Threat

A paradigm shift in research tools, combined with large-scale unbiased screening, has positioned the biopharma industry not only to rethink target discovery, but also to execute more faithfully on causal biology, according to Syncona CEO Chris Hollowood.
Hollowood spoke on The BioCentury Show with Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn about how discovery is evolving, why causal biology has been stuck in a loop of circularity, and where the U.K. investor is headed. He also discussed the firm’s approach to gene therapy investments, how it is surmounting the field’s challenges and Syncona’s pivot last year, with a portfolio shift from 25% to over 85% clinical-stage companies.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/659341

#CausalBiology #GeneTherapy #BiotechInvesting #DrugDiscovery #ClinicalStage

00:00 - Introduction
01:06 - Rational Target Discovery
16:48 - Gene Therapy
23:15 - Syncona’s Strategy

The European biotech ecosystem has gone through a substantial maturation process over the past 20 years, as VC funds such as Forbion have experienced exponential growth to fund the region’s innovation. But Forbion co-founder and managing director Sander Slootweg says there’s still more that can be done to fund future European innovations and improve Europe’s competitiveness globally.
“We’ve observed in Europe that although we see great science, and we’ve been able to build great companies, in terms of the absolute magnitude of the ecosystem, we’re still lagging behind the U.S., and also China is coming up quickly,” Slootweg said in conversation with BioCentury's Stephen Hansen.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/659150

#EuropeanBiotech #VentureCapital #BiotechFunding #Bioeconomy #GlobalInnovation

00:00 - Introduction
01:34 - Forbion’s growth
05:35 - Deal flow in Europe
10:20 - Green Investing
14:24 - Sourcing Asia Deals
22:20 - Unlocking the EU’s Capital
27:54 - Speeding Up Trials
30:13 - Building a Thriving EU Market
34:38 - Central & Eastern Europe

The U.K. is excellent at invention and science, and creating institutions to further innovation, but poor at capturing their economic value, says Daniel Mahony, a problem that various forces in the U.K. are now putting serious efforts into solving.
Mahony, one of the major influential figures in U.K. biotech, is a senior partner in growth investments at Novo Holdings, and was until December chair of the U.K.’s BioIndustry Association (BIA). In conversation with BioCentury Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn on The BioCentury Show, Mahony discussed the future of U.K. and European biotech, and the intersection of reforms related to financing and clinical trials, as well as the need for a rethink on drug pricing.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658997

#UKBiotech #BiotechInnovation #DrugPricing #HealthcareReform #LifeSciencesPolicy

00:00 - Introduction
01:40 - U.K. Clinical Trial Reform
04:23 - Funding U.K. Biotech
10:40 - Propagating Innovation
15:08 - Measuring Progress
18:22 - Drug Pricing
22:40 - Scaling Europe’s Biotechs
25:16 - AI in Biotech

As AI spreads across biopharma, what will matter most is not who has the flashiest tools, but who can use them to make better medicines. In this episode of The BioCentury Show, Recursion CEO Najat Khan discusses where AI is showing measurable value now, how public techbio companies are being pushed toward proof points, and what comes next — from out-of-domain prediction to stronger data foundations and precompetitive collaboration.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658829

#ArtificialIntelligence #DrugDevelopment #AgenticAI #ClinicalProof #BiopharmaInnovation

00:00 - Introduction
01:41 - AI Hype to Proof
04:52 - Where AI Adds Value
13:30 - AI for Clinical Trials
17:01 - Agentic AI in R&D
25:34 - Out-of-Domain Prediction
28:24 - Future of Techbio
31:13 - Precompetitive Consortia
35:24 - CEO Leadership and Catalysts

There is a real opportunity for artificial intelligence to dramatically transform the speed, cost and efficiency of drug development over the long term, but the uptake of AI tools across biopharma has been much slower relative to the broader healthcare environment, SoftBank’s Jacqueline Fok said on The BioCentury Show.
In conversation with BioCentury's Stephen Hansen, Fok, who is investment director, Life Sciences & Health Tech at SoftBank Investment Advisers, also detailed SoftBank’s investment strategy in life sciences and the opportunity the U.K. has to stand out as a globally competitive player, with SoftBank’s obesity portfolio company Metsera as a recent example of success.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658661

#ArtificialIntelligence #DrugDevelopment #BiotechInvestment #UKBiotech #ObesityDrugDevelopment

00:00 - Introduction
01:30 - SoftBank Strategy
08:40 - Metsera
14:48 - U.K. Biotech
21:38 - AI
28:20 - Women in Leadership
32:03 - Fok’s Catalysts

Caution: This episode of The BioCentury Show contains strong language.

In a candid interview with BioCentury, RA Capital Managing Partner Peter Kolchinsky warns that staffing losses and growing conservatism at FDA are slowing drug development and pushing companies to launch early-stage trials outside the U.S.
In conversation with BioCentury Washington Editor Steve Usdin, Kolchinsky also discusses U.S. policy headwinds, including most-favored-nation (MFN) pricing proposals and the Inflation Reduction Act’s “pill penalty,” and why he’s concerned that the biopharma sector is too “genteel” in its advocacy. Kolchinsky explains his decision to speak publicly about regulatory and political issues, including immigration, and reflected on China’s expanding role in the global life sciences innovation ecosystem.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658433

#BiotechPolicy #FDALeadership #DrugPricingPolicy #LifeSciencesInnovation #CapitalMarkets

00:00 - Introduction
00:37 - Impact of FDA Policy Changes
06:17 - MFN & Drug Pricing in Europe
20:16 - The Importance of Speaking Up
34:26 - China & Innovation

With disease biology still murky and trials notoriously noisy, psychiatry R&D is advancing fastest where teams can solve engineering problems. Delivery, selectivity and tolerability fixes are turning long-standing hypotheses into usable medicines, says veteran CNS drug developer Steven Paul. Few drug developers have had a closer view of the field’s false starts — and occasional breakthroughs — than Paul, who has moved from NIH to pharma R&D leadership and now to company building at Karuna, acquired by BMS for $14 billion, and Seaport.
In conversation with The BioCentury Show's Selina Koch, Paul explains why serendipity still plays a disproportionate role in psychiatric drug development and how critical it is for teams to engineer and execute their way from an unexpected signal to a usable medicine. He also discusses psychedelics, brain shuttles, Karuna’s muscarinic approach in schizophrenia, and the delivery and trial-design choices Seaport is using to revisit neuroactive steroid biology in depression.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658314

#PsychiatryTherapeutics #CNSDrugDevelopment #BiotechEngineering #Psychedelics #NeuroScience

00:00 - Introduction
01:32 - Psychiatric Drug Discovery
06:56 - The Karuna Story
22:09 - What’s New in Depression
32:06 - Gene Therapies, Brain Shuttles
33:53 - Psychedelics

Why does great science so often stall before it becomes a medicine? Astellas Pharma CEO Naoki Okamura argues the bottleneck isn’t capital — it’s translation: a shortage of people, processes and platforms that can move ideas across the boundaries of biology, manufacturing, regulation and commercialization. That theme threaded through his conversation on The BioCentury Show with Executive Editor Selina Koch, surfacing most clearly in his diagnosis of what Japan’s biotech ecosystem lacks — and in his rationale for why Astellas is doubling down on cell and gene therapy as other multinational pharmas pull back. The discussion also touches on Astellas’ journey in commercializing a women’s health product, the company’s China strategy, and its plans for life after Xtandi’s patent cliff.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658141

#BiotechTranslation #CellAndGeneTherapy #JapanBiotech #PharmaStrategy #DrugDevelopment

00:00 - Introduction
00:39 - Cell & Gene Therapy
07:22 - Women’s Health
13:00 - Japan’s Biotech Ecosystem
19:00 - Astellas’ China Strategy
22:45 - Astellas’ Near-Term Strategy