Vanguards of Health Care: Penumbra Expands CAVT Awareness “With pulmonary embolism, just like with stroke and some other things, where there’s an acute moment usually happening — the patient’s not doing well, decompressing on the table — time matters a lot. And because of the STORM-PE trial, we have the data on what that device time is in a pretty rigorous randomized study. And it just doesn’t compare to anything else out there. It’s dramatically less”, Penumbra CEO Adam Elsesser explains to Bloomberg Intelligence.

In this Vanguards of Health Care episode, Elsesser sits down with BI medical technology analyst Matt Henriksson for an in-depth interview on Penumbra and how computer-assisted vacuum thrombectomy (CAVT) technology continues to improve, cutting the time to remove the clot while limiting blood loss. He also dives deep into the clinical results of the STORM-PE randomized clinical study, highlighting how CAVT demonstrated superiority over the standard of care to treat pulmonary-embolism patients, and its partnership with the PERT Consortium to drive public awareness of the need to treat this devastating disease.

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“Drug development has become slower and more expensive despite all the new technology,” says Eric Hughes, executive vice president of Global R&D and chief medical officer of Teva Pharmaceutical. “That’s caused by increased regulatory scrutiny, more needs for quality, more needs for real treatment effects. But we’re in a unique position where we can stay really hyper-focused on what we’re doing. I’m on calls every week driving teams on enrollment studies, looking at data as quickly as possible, being able to pivot on things that I see that they’re bringing to me and being able to make decisions very rapidly and drive programs forward. I think that that ability to be like a biotech in a very large company is part of the secret sauce of what Teva’s doing right.” In this episode of the Vanguards of Health Care podcast, Hughes sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ann-Hunter van Kirk for an in-depth interview about how the legacy generic manufacturer has built an R&D engine by replacing silos with a matrix structure, building partnerships and capitalizing on speed with AI.

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“AI agents are at the knee of the curve in terms of where things are headed,” says John Beadle, Aegis Ventures co-founder and managing partner. In this episode of the Vanguards of Health Care podcast, Beadle joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jonathan Palmer to unpack Aegis’s thesis-driven approach to founding AI-native health-care companies. He details how its 14-system consortium sources problems directly from operators, why automation is the biggest near-term value driver and how ventures like Ascertain have emerged from that model. Beadle also discusses the evolving venture market, the rise of agentic AI and why his personal experiences, shaped by his mother’s medical journey, fuel his mission to make the system more accessible and equitable.

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“In the case of iLet, we're going to say, this is how much insulin they're getting for what they consider to be a usual meal. And we learn that and we can set it that way. So we just take the responsibility of learning carb counting, which is really tough, off the user's plate. That's an extra level of automation that traditional pumps don't provide,” Beta Bionics CEO Sean Saint explains to Bloomberg Intelligence. In this episode of Vanguards of Health Care, Saint sits down with BI analyst Matt Henriksson for an in-depth interview about Beta’s iLet pump, designed to eliminate the human stress of making insulin dosing decisions. The conversation also touches on the company’s pay as you go strategy through the pharmacy channel and future product development, including the Mint patch pump.

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“If you’re not going overseas, you’re going out,” says Dr. Xingli Wang, Co-President of Fosun Pharma. He tells Bloomberg Intelligence’s Sam Fazeli how Fosun is transitioning from generics to novel medicines and positioning itself as a global innovator. With 90% of R&D now focused on oncology, autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, Wang details Fosun’s ambition to move from a China-based manufacturer to a multinational developer with true blockbuster potential. He also reflects on how disciplined capital investment, scientific partnerships and cultural persistence could make Fosun the “Takeda of China.”
Listen to this episode of Vanguards of Health Care on Apple Podcasts and Spotify

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“What you have to do in a market like that, where it’s highly genericized, is first you have to have a clinical differentiation,” says Richard Lowenthal, CEO of ARS Pharmaceuticals. “You have to have a benefit to the community, benefit to the patient population. Neffy achieves that very effectively by providing an option that’s very simple — it’s easy to carry, it’s very easy to use.” In this episode of Vanguards of Health Care, Richard sits down with Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ann-Hunter van Kirk for an in-depth interview about how the company has navigated the commercial launch of its needle-free epinephrine nasal spray, neffy, in a highly competitive genericized market.

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“In a world where we have so many wearables — smart rings, watches, glucose sensors — it’s challenging to integrate all of this information,” say Biolinq founder Jared Tangney and CEO Rich Yang. “So we decided to make it available to everybody in one device.” In this Vanguards of Health Care episode, the pair speak with Bloomberg Intelligence’s analyst Matt Henriksson about Biolinq’s microsensor-based patch that uses silicon semiconductor technology to track glucose and potentially other biomarkers. They also discuss the company’s commercial strategy for type 2 diabetes patients following its FDA de Novo approval, a US regulatory designation granted to first-of-its-kind medical devices that have been shown to be safe and effective.

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“We were able to show multiple datasets that actually deliver against this vision that antibody drug conjugates can improve on and therefore displace chemotherapy” says Dr. Susan Galbraith, AstraZeneca’s EVP of oncology R&D. Galbraith joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Sam Fazeli to break down key findings from ESMO — from early-line HER2 breast cancer data to progress in bladder and lung cancer. She details the promise of Enhertu and Datopotamab, AstraZeneca’s antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), and how their work may transform cancer treatment in curative settings.

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“The same was in neuro intervention for aneurysms, it was open clipping or it was endovascular. And I think that’s what’s happening in BCI. So there’s a bunch of craniotomy-based, open BCI companies, and then there’s an interventional approach”, Synchron’s founder and CEO Tom Oxley explains to Bloomberg Intelligence. In this Vanguards of Health Care podcast episode, Tom sits down with BI analyst Matt Henriksson for an in-depth interview about the company and how he utilized his experience with minimally invasive endovascular procedures to create its Stentrode as novel way to utilize brain-computer interfaces (BCI) without open brain surgery.

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“It’s hard to overemphasize how broken we are in how we care for older adults.” says Seth Sternberg, CEO of Honor. Sternberg joins Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Jonathan Palmer to unpack how Honor’s AI-driven logistics and the Home Instead network tackle the hardest problem in home care: scaling quality. In this episode of the Vanguards of Health Care podcast they dive into matching the right caregiver to the right client, why stability is the No. 1 caregiver need, franchise advantages, and making private‑pay care more affordable for the middle class plus how quality metrics and “defect rates” power growth.

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