The story behind Allergan’s bold decision to formalize its social contract with patients told to our Chief Editor by Brent Saunders, Allergan’s chairman, president, and CEO.

At this year’s BIO International Convention in San Diego (June 19 – 22), I moderated a session, Navigating A Clear Path To Public-Private Partnerships, and we talked about the good, the bad, and the ugly of P3s. After a brief introduction, the first question was posed, resulting in the following edited dialogue.

Forbes once called Merck’s Ken Frazier a “quote machine,” but I’d say David Hung is just as deserving of that moniker. I interviewed Hung, the new CEO of Axovant Sciences, at the BIO conference in June, and throughout our discussion I found myself smiling. Hung, who saw the company he founded, Medivation, be acquired by Pfizer for $14.3 billion, will be the subject of a Life Science Leader magazine exclusive feature in our October 2017 issue. During our conversation he provided a plethora of statements I found so memorable that I decided to put together a list of my top 10 favorites — listed in the order they occurred during conversation.

Have you ever experienced a ransomware nightmare? Merck did recently, and chief editor Rob Wright talks about that incident and the questions raised from such an attack.

It’s been a little over a year since Sanat Chattopadhyay was named president of Merck Manufacturing Division (MMD), and this month he gives an exclusive interview on the status of the division’s transformational turnaround.

In July I had two interesting opportunities. The first was on July 12, 2017 when I attended the Partnering For Cures (Twitter hashtag #FCP4C) conference in Boston. The second took place on July 19, when I got to tour GSK’s vaccine manufacturing facility in Marietta, PA. And while you might not think that a biopharmaceutical conference and a manufacturing facility would have much in common, in actuality they do, as both are focused on delivering safe and effective, high-quality medicines to patients as quickly and efficient as possible. Here are some highlights from my recent experiences.

It was the fall of 2016 when I began pursuing the idea for this month’s cover feature: Interview a group of former CEOs to gain their perspectives on our industry’s extremely bright future balanced with its currently tarnished image. What advice might these mentors have for today’s current industry executives on drug pricing, corporate culture creation, and so much more? But on Friday, May 12, 2017, the project turned bittersweet as one of the participants, Henri Termeer (71), died after collapsing in his home in Marblehead, MA.

Find out what life is like after retiring from a pharma CEO role. These 6 leaders  speak — unrestrained by corporate lawyers and PR teams — about the current state of the industry.

As usual, the BIO International 2017 Convention was a top-shelf event. This year’s show theme was, “breakthroughs.” And while I didn’t see a single breakthrough therapeutic take center stage at this year’s event, there were still a significant number of them worth noting. For example, in the first can’t-miss session listed in my pre-BIO blog, attendance nearly broke through the walls — literally. Not only was this session standing room only, it was the first time I experienced a non-keynote/non-super session have to utilize an overflow room so attendees could watch via live video.