Voicing the frustrations of an industry alternately battered and lauded amid a politicized pandemic, leaders of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) on Tuesday called for substantive changes they said are necessary to maintaining America's biomedical leadership.
In a world where the traditional way of conducting business has been disrupted for about eight months and counting, no one would have faulted the biopharmaceutical sector if its operations had been placed in a slow-down mode until the COVID-19 pandemic “all clear” had been sounded. Yet, despite the restrictions faced, companies have adapted quickly to the prevailing environment.
SAN FRANCISCO Investor sentiment around Biogen Inc.'s plan to soon seek approval for aducanumab in Alzheimer's disease yielded a clear bold reaction in its rising share price Tuesday. But a more nuanced reading was floated during a CNS panel at the BIO Investor Forum the day after, where a focus on new modalities and a call for open-mindedness carried the conversation. "It almost doesn't matter what investors think," said Ellen Lubman, a panelist and chief business officer of Impel Neuropharma Inc. "The reality is that if truly there's a percentage of people getting a benefit from the drug... that's the reason we're all in this business."
SAN FRANCISCO At what BIO CEO and President Jim Greenwood called a "Dickensian moment in the history of biotechnology arguably the best of times and the worst of times" for U.S. industry players, new rules piloted by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) have made things even more challenging. Confusion about CFIUS has led to a decline in Chinese venture capital investment in U.S. biotech and, at some firms, even a pause in cross-border investment as they wait for the dust to clear, experts said.