focus on life sciences - Chemical & Engineering News - American ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

C&EN TALKS WITHG. STEVEN BURRILLLife sciences investment guru sees ‘WELLNESS CARE’ as the next frontierRICK M ULLIN , C&EN NO RTHEAST N EWS B UREAUG. STEVEN BURRILL reaches into his pocket and pulls out an electronicdevice. “This is my iPhone,” he says, scrolling on its screenand poking an application. He holds it against his trademark pinkshirt. “And this is my EKG.” Sure enough, a pulsing fever graphmoves across the screen in a pattern very similar to an electrocardiogramreading. “This records it, sends it to the cloud, and downto my cardiologist.”Outside the window of his 27th-floor suite overlooking SanFrancisco’s Embarcadero, a small cluster of morning cloudsagainst the sunrise lends its effect as Burrill flips the phone backinto his suit jacket pocket, quite proud of the demonstration.And why shouldn’t he be? Theconsummate biotech insider,Burrill sits on the board of Alive-Cor, the San Francisco-basedtechnology start-up that developedthe iPhone app. His investmentfirm, Burrill & Co ., is thelargest investor in AliveCor.Burrill’s enthusiasm over anapp developer may seem likenew behavior, given his record ofinvestment in traditional biotechfirms. The most recent coup forBurrill & Co. is the sale of the hepatitisC drug developer Pharmassetto Gilead Sciences for $11 billion.Burrill & Co. was one of the largest investors in Pharmasset, andBurrill was chairman of its board until January 2011. But Burrill nowviews traditional biotech in a broader health care perspective.His main talking point for some time now has been “The ThreeP s”: personal, preventive, and predictive. It’s an approach to medicinethat he says will amalgamate small and large molecules withdigital technology to define the future of health care—a future thatbig pharmaceutical companies are struggling with.The route to bringing drugs to market has changed fundamentally,he points out. “It used to be you basically had to prove safetyand efficacy, you threw it over the wall, and the system absorbedit,” he says. But insurance coverage is posing a heightened risk ashealth care legislation evolves. “Now, the real question is, ‘What isthe pharmacoeconomic equation that will determine that a drugwill be paid for?’ ” He adds that regulatory hurdles have“It is notapparent todaywho will bethe dominantplayers in2020, but youmight not beton big pharma.”WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 10 MARCH 2012also become higher as the Food & Drug Administrationstruggles to develop approval pathways for new scientificand therapeutic approaches.“The burden is on the innovator to prove a new drugis better and costs less than products on the market,”he says. “This puts an enormous barrier on innovationand a protective layer on things already on the market.”Burrill believes that good technology will get financing,“but remember that the power is on the side of thepeople with the capital, not on the side of the entrepreneur.”And the hill is steep. As investors, “we would say no to 99 outof 100 things we see,” Burrill says.Moreover, investors are uneasy about staking companies withnew ideas that face economic and regulatory uncertainties on topof the usual risk of a new drug’s failing. “Those things in the aggregatespook the investor,” Burrill says.Big drug companies, meanwhile, are acting strangely, Burrillsays. “There is clearly a kind of bipolar nature to big pharma,” hesays. “They are paying up for developed compounds where therehas been a substantial risk reduction and they can see the marketopportunities. On the flip side, they are putting out some reasonableamounts of money on pureplaydiscovery hits. What is evenmore strange is how big pharmais reaching all the way back to theRICK MULLIN/C&ENacademic institutions.”What is obvious, he says, is thatmajor pharmaceutical companiesare well into the process of convertingfrom vertical enterprisesengaged in everything from discoveryto marketing, to far morehorizontal operations heavilyengaged in marketing and distribution.But the shift is not happeningeasily. He points to formerPfizer chief executive officerJeffrey Kindler’s failed effort to “turn the ocean liner called Pfizeraround” with forays into biologics and digital health as an exampleof how large companies are resisting fundamental change.Others are also resisting change, he notes. “Twenty-two percentof our gross domestic product is in health care, and a lot of peopledon’t want to vote themselves off of the island,” Burrill says. “Thereis an enormous amount of perverse incentive to keep the systemthe way it is in the face of this onslaught of technologies that will totallydisenfranchise large amounts of the health care system today.”Still, change happens. “Health care is a funny label, because we areactually in a very dysfunctional ‘sickness care’ system,” Burrill says. “Butwe are moving to an increasingly effective ‘wellness care’ system, usinga confluence of technology to improve outcomes at the patient level.”The trick will be to identify the companies that best define thefuture.“I think we are going to see some strange bedfellows,”Burrill says. “ Samsung has a major biosimilarsdeal with Biogen Idec . Six months ago, you would havesaid, ‘Samsung? What do they have to do with biotechnology?’” He points to Google, Facebook, and Twitter,which came from nowhere to become major economicforces in just a few years. “It is not apparent today whowill be the dominant players in 2020,” Burrill says,“but you might not bet on big pharma.” ◾Reprinted from C&EN, Feb. 6, 2012
GOVERNMENT & POLICYNEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCESA DUAL-USE DEBATEIn light of controversial H5N1 BIRD FLU experiments, expertshashed out myriad issues at a public forum in New York CityWILLIAM G . S CHULZ , C&EN WASHINGTONA SPIRITED—at times, bordering on nasty—publicforum on recent H5N1 avian fluresearch highlighted the diverse opinionswithin the scientific community on justhow to deal with dual-use research, whichis officially defined as research that canbe used for good or ill purposes. The experimentalwork discussed at the Feb. 2forum involved directed mutations of theH5N1 virus such that aerosol transmissionbetween mammals (ferrets) was achievedfor the first time, a mutation that has notoccurred in nature (C&EN, Feb. 6, page 6).The forum, hosted by the New YorkAcademy of Sciences (NYAS), capped anintense week of news about the yet-tobepublished research. Just days earlierthe National Science Advisory Board forBio security (NSABB) recommended thatwork done by independent groups in theU.S. and the Netherlands and reported intwo different papers be published only ingreatly redacted form—that is, with theexperimental methods and results excisedfrom the publications. The on-hold papershave already been peer-reviewed and acceptedby the journals Science and Nature .The event also followed a call for a 60-day moratorium agreed to by one of thetwo principal investigators involved, YoshihiroKawaoka of the University of Tokyoand University of Wisconsin, Madison( Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature10884 ). Theother PI is Ron A. M. Fouchier of ErasmusMedical Center, in the Netherlands, whois said to be in agreement. Neither researcherattended the NYAS forum.The H5N1 research brings to light a biggerquestion about the broad definition ofdual-use research and the absence of anyagreed-upon protocols to deal with it. Thisambiguity, NYAS panelists noted, potentiallyraises concerns about a multitude offederally funded research projects acrossscientific disciplines.“The <strong>focus</strong> is on H5N1, but there arebroader issues at play—this is just an example,”said NYAS panel moderator IanW. Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology,neurology, and pathology at Columbia University.He pointed out that there is a needin the scientific community to <strong>focus</strong> on the“intellectual, emotional, and ethical” concernssurrounding dual-use research fromany discipline.THE FORUM ATTRACTED a packed auditoriumof students, academics, journalists,and members of the general public at NYASheadquarters in lower Manhattan, just afew blocks from the new 9/11 Memorial andthe rising towers of the city’s new WorldHOT ISSUE TheNew York Academyof Sciencesconvened anexpert panelto discuss thecontroversysurroundingrecent H5N1 avianflu experiments.Trade Center. Theirony of holding thisdual-use discussionso near Ground Zerowas noted by forumparticipants.The panelists includedprominentinfluenza researchersin the U.S., NSABBmembers, a former science journalistwho has written extensively about pandemichealth threats, and editors fromScience and Nature who were intimatelyinvolved with the handling of the papersin question.Lipkin in his opening remarks commentedon the many stakeholders in influenzaresearch—the public, scientists,pharmaceutical companies, and people inthe developing world where such diseasesare often endemic. “Scientific investigationof pathogenic diseases is essential,”he said, and H5N1 is no different. “If wedon’t make a plan ourselves,” he said,regarding the dual-use characteristics, “researchcritical to the public interest couldbe curtailed.”NSABB Acting Chair Paul Keim, a microbiologyprofessor at Northern ArizonaUniversity who attended the forum viawebcast, and other members of the boardsaid the H5N1 papers were brought to theirattention in October 2011 from varioussources, including program officers at theNational Institutes of Health. Editors fromScience and Nature insist that they neverreferred either of the papers to NSABB—and never would. Science Deputy EditorBarbara R. Jasny, who was an NYAS forumpanelist, said that her journal did conveneits own body of advisers when the difficultethical issues regarding publication of theresearch became apparent.Michael T. Osterhelm, NSABB memberand director of the Center for InfectiousDisease Research & Policy at the Universityof Minnesota, emphasized that the 23members of the advisory board were unanimousin their recommendation that onlygreatly redacted versions of the Fouchierand Kawaoka papers be published. He wasalso a forum panelist.“I would hesitate to say that we areestablishing a protocol,” Osterhelm said.“We are not the final arbiter.” NSABBmembers, he said, are recommending astep back because once the papers’ researchmethodologies and results becomewidely available, “you can’t unring theWWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 11 MARCH 2012
Page 3: CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING NEWS1155—1
Page 6 and 7: NEWS OF THE WEEKRoche hopesto expan
Page 8: NEWS OF THE WEEKChung’s team used
Page 15 and 16: international community. The U.S. i
Page 17 and 18: Mayo’s view is backed by a coalit
Page 19 and 20: to ensure that they work, and the s
Page 21 and 22: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGYCOURTESY OF MAR
Page 23 and 24: workhorse lab bacterium Escherichia
Page 25 and 26: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGYPICTURING BIOLO
Page 27 and 28: BEHIND AMUSHROOMSCOURGEScientists s

focus on life sciences - Chemical & Engineering News - American ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?