More and more, artificial intelligence is becoming inseparable from drug development. But it needs to be well integrated with the right people and support technologies in order to be successful, according to Josep Bassaganya-Riera, the founder and CEO of Nimmune Biopharma Inc. Nimmune has leveraged methods of AI-enabled drug discovery to develop a number of late-stage therapeutics using a strategic model Bassaganya-Riera first developed at Landos Biopharma Inc., a previous venture which was sold to Abbvie in 2024. As the founder of several other companies, Bassaganya-Riera has more than 20 years in the industry and he shared his insights and experience on the podcast about the crucial importance of getting technology and people in balance. The key, he said, is to have the right people in the same room interacting with each other and the technology.

 As pharma deals with the impact of NIH grant cuts and what could follow with the imposition of tariffs, Robert Williamson, CEO of Triumvira Immunologics Inc., and Hernan Bazan, CEO of South Rampart Pharma LLC, brought their extensive experience in the industry to the podcast. Their concerns include how tariffs will bring lower margins for U.S. companies, higher costs and eventually drug shortages. They also spoke about the impact on drug development as more than 90% of all drugs are NIH-supported and the challenges private investment faces as it steps in to fill the gap. “What we’re doing by freezing the domestic biotech innovation and supply space, is that … we're gifting China this future leadership in the biotech space with some of these tariffs,” Williamson said.

The biopharma sector is still trying to get its wind and resume its once-powerful investment ways. Medical technology has sidestepped much of biopharma’s issues by being more flexible along the development path, according to BioWorld MedTech Editor Annette Boyle in this edition of the podcast. This year’s med-tech investment numbers have improved over those from last year and the year before by bringing in $2.76 billion by financing 56 transactions in January alone. Boyle described the current financing climate on the newest BioWorld Insider podcast and explained why the sector is performing well year to date.

Billion-dollar M&As are commonplace now, but not too long ago they were a rarity. So many have occurred in the past few years, they’ve become the norm. But were all these multi-billion-dollar mega mergers worth the money? Karen Carey, BioWorld’s senior managing editor and chief analyst, crunched the numbers on 21 of the biggest M&As in a three-part BioWorld series and found very few have been, so far, good deals for the buyer. In this podcast, Carey sifts through the winners and losers and explains the analysis.

As a new BioWorld investigative report shows, decades of research excluding women from clinical trials and investment decisions made in male-dominated boardrooms have led to half the world’s health needs being underserved. Of the drug development companies working on women's health solutions, the proportion of funding and partnering for the sector is quite small. But it’s slowly growing, as is the depth of science. Karen Carey, BioWorld’s managing editor and chief analyst, and the managing editor of Bioworld Science, Anette Breindl, join this episode of the BioWorld Insider podcast to talk about the business and the science of women’s health.

Modifi Biosciences Inc. was recently acquired by Merck & Co. Inc. for $30 million up front. Modifi shareholders could receive milestones of up to $1.3 billion. It all happened in the dizzyingly short span of a little more than two years. Modifi’s founder, Ranjit Bindra, and a small group of advisers brought the company through preclinical work on DNA repair for treating glioblastoma and then twice faced running out of money and shutting down the company. Confounding the typical wisdom, Bindra and co-founder Kevin Rakin ended up putting the Merck deal together all by themselves. “People would actually ask, ‘Who is your banker that did the M&A deal?’ I said, ‘You're looking at them. It's me and Kevin Rakin.’ I learned a lot.” Bindra talks more about Modifi in the newest episode of the BioWorld Insider podcast.

In the newest BioWorld Insider podcast, Victoria Lipinska, the America's lead for Quantum Innovation Centers at IBM Quantum, talks about the future of drug development using quantum computing. “The new technology is a completely different branch of computing as opposed to what we know right now, and it's meant to complement what we know, not to really replace it,” she said.

Quantum computing could lead to more efficient drug discovery by identifying promising compounds faster, understanding their effects at the molecular level and then reducing the need for costly or time-consuming lab experiments.

Lipinska is one of the more than 100 experts who will evaluate the future of health care at the upcoming 2024 Biofuture conference. Each year, a group of trailblazers, disruptors and forward-thinking executives converge to evaluate and forecast the future of health care. This year, BioWorld is a sponsor of the Oct. 28-30 event in New York. If you attend, you'll have the chance to hear panels and join workshops and fireside chats with key opinion leaders like Lipinska.

Gene and cell therapies will drive innovation for the next 10 years, Claus Zieler, the chief commercial officer at Astellas Pharma Inc., said in this episode of the BioWorld Insider podcast. Developers are on the cusp of breakthroughs because a gene can now be replaced “and that means we can potentially cure a disease rather than intervening in a disease.” Zieler also shared his thoughts on creating sustainable health care in aging societies, the innovation cycle gap between the U.S. and Europe, and how collaboration between business and government is critical in forging ahead in this wide-ranging discussion.

Capricor Therapeutics Inc. just wrapped up a visit with the U.S. FDA and is prepping to file a BLA in October for its Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment. Linda Marbán, Capricor’s CEO, is the guest on the newest BioWorld Insider podcast and she talks about deramiocel (CAP-1002), the company’s  allogeneic cardiac-derived cell therapy, for treating the rare disease and how the FDA has made strong efforts in helping lay the groundwork for deramiocel. Marbán has been working on the Duchenne treatment for many years and she has strong insights into how to tackle a rare disease development program and how the FDA has changed its ways over time to help out. She has been in the biopharma space for more than 20 years and also is a co-founder of Capricor. 

Karen Carey, BioWorld managing editor and chief analyst, takes a look at the numbers from the first half of 2024. She finds the first six months to be healthy for the biopharma market while the rest of the year is populated with question marks that include the U.S. presidential election and potential interest rate cuts.