Life science leader executive editor blog

An Introvert’s View Of The Industry — Or Travels With Incredulity When I leave my writer’s lair and go out into the world, I feel like the tortoise in a race of hares. People move around me at the speed of light, most lost in their screens, smiling at machines.  Continue Reading...

From Disney’s World To DC — City Hopping For ENDO & AACR Orlando, the city of warmth and happiness by design, hosted the Endocrine Society’s annual ENDO event this year, overlapping the Washington, DC-hosted AACR, the yearly confab by the American Association for Cancer Research, by several days. I was determined to visit both shows.  Continue Reading...

Contrasts & Creativity at BIO CEO & Investor 2017 At BIO CEO many of the companies on my radar this year are in the metabolic/endocrinology area, over which diabetes has long reigned. But the area is now expanding noticeably into other spheres such as neurodegeneration and cardiovascular. As Albion Fitzgerald, chairman of CohBar, says “During the next 15 years, there will be five times as many deaths from noncommunicable diseases as from the old historic communicable diseases, and most...  Continue Reading...

The Wider Net — JPM Healthcare Conference 2017 In SF At the JPM conference, I spend the bulk of my time meeting with a string of companies, but as various as they are, they all share the common challenge of risk and uncertainty in the development of human therapeutics. For us in the press, it can be tempting to toss companies into easy categories such as size, stage of research, market cap  - but then, it’s fun and interesting to let the patterns among the companies emerge spontaneously ...  Continue Reading...

Night Of Light: California Life Science Association (CLSA) Because I live only a day-trip away from San Francisco, it is convenient for me to travel there for industry events — a trek always accompanied by reflective reveries for the hometown of my film-student days. So, for the third time since June, and with another week scheduled for early January, I am once again city-bound, leaving home mid-day and getting into my hotel in plenty of time to make the 5:30 PM reception for the annual Pantheon...  Continue Reading...

BIO Shines In San Francisco This year, the BIO Investor Forum (#BIF16) in San Francisco enjoyed its largest turnout ever, basked in the light and warmth of a dynamic industry that may not solve all of the world’s problems, but shines upon us, a salubrious star. Will the industry’s star shine upon everyone, or leave most of humanity in the shadows?  Continue Reading...

IO: Science Still Drives The Business How much science does a business person need to know? In this industry, the more the better. Without at least an excellent layperson’s understanding of the company’s scientific underpinnings, a life science executive will remain vulnerable to the greatest of all hazards in managing the business — today’s news.  Continue Reading...

Living With Pricing Life Science Leader Launches a Search for Common Ground  Continue Reading...

BIO Still Delivers If the BIO International Convention did nothing but assemble the 16,000 people who came to this year’s meeting in San Francisco, simply giving them a space to talk, that alone would be a great achievement.  Continue Reading...

An Absent Life Science Blogger’s Backstory Alas, I am a specialized ignoramus, or dilettante; aka, a journalist. To ask even the most basic questions about the series topic — generally, new therapeutic approaches to neurodegenerative diseases — I first put myself through a veritable college course on the subject, reading and rereading through a tall (cyber) pile of related scientific, medical, and commercial literature. And yet, it is not the unseen labor I regret, but the...  Continue Reading...