John LaMattina was President of Pfizer Global Research and Development and ran an international team of over 13,000 scientists and professionals. He has authored several books, including the highly acclaimed Pharma and Profits – Balancing Innovation, Medicine, and Drug Prices. He is also a senior partner at PureTech Health and a contributor to Forbes. Last year, when John was a guest on the Vital Health Podcast, the potential impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) were still theoretical. But one year on, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released their prices for drug ..read more

This podcast features Kate Hudson, the Associate Vice President and Counsel for Policy at the Association of American Universities, and Joseph P. Allen, the Executive Director of the Bayh-Dole Coalition. They discuss the unintended consequences that the Biden Administration’s Draft Interagency Guidance Framework for Considering the Exercise of March-In Rights in the Bayh-Dole Act is having on small companies and VCs inside and outside of the biopharmaceutical sector.    As well, they detail how well-funded advocacy groups had promoted the use of march-in rights as an effective tool f ..read more

On December 8, 2023, The Biden Administration under the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) released a Draft Interagency Guidance Framework for Considering the Exercise of March-In Rights in the Bayh-Dole Act. VT’s Grumpy Old Men are back to discuss what this means to R&D. Vital Transformation released our report, March-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act & NIH contributions to pharmaceutical patents one week before the Biden Administration released its guidance. We found that of the 363 novel therapies we’ve investigated over the last ten years, only 5 had ..read more

With a six million EUR funding grant from the European Commission’s Innovative Health Initiative, the PRIME-ROSE project will implement, across Europe, a series of prospective, non-randomized clinical trials known as DRUP trials. DRUP trials started in the Netherlands and have successfully increased inclusion rates to offer additional lines of treatment to patients. On this Vital Health Podcast, Duane Schulthess speaks to PRIME-ROSE’s Project Coordinator, Kjetil Tasken of the University of Oslo’s Institute for Cancer, and PRIME-ROSE’s Work Package Lead of Social Innovation, Bettina Ryll of the ..read more

In this Vital Health Podcast, Duane Schulthess speaks with Peter Kolchinsky, Managing Partner at RA Capital Management. Peter has authored several critically acclaimed books, including The Great American Drug Deal and The Entrepreneur’s Guide to a Biotech Startup. Peter also serves as the Director of No Patient Left Behind, a non-profit organization. Peter outlines that not only are IRA’s provisions negotiating small molecules after 9 years a huge challenge, but the continuation of ratcheting up of increasingly hostile regulatory proposals is having a demonstrably negative impac ..read more

On this Vital Health Podcast, Duane Schulthess has a conversation with Bettina Ryll, the founder of the Melanoma Patient Network Europe. Bettina is regarded as one of the world’s leading Patient Advocates, who dedicated herself to advocacy after the death of her husband from cancer.   While most patient representatives don’t have a medical background, Bettina has a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from University College London. From 2015 – 2018, Bettina chaired the ESMO Patient Advocates Working Group, which was the first time that position was held by a non-oncologist. See omnystudio.com/li ..read more

Dan is the newly appointed Executive Director of We Work For Health, bringing more than two decades of experience in advocacy, policy, and public affairs to this role. He previously headed the Association for Accessible Medicines (AAM) and the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC).   In this podcast, we discuss the ten drugs selected for negotiation under the IRA and their unintended consequences on the availability and access of generic and biosimilar medicines. We also highlight the desire for many regulators to broaden government negotiations within Medicare under the Smart Pricing Act ..read more

In this Vital Health Podcast, we’re speaking with Steve Potts before his congressional testimony for the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Steve presented evidence regarding the negative impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act on U.S. venture capital investors, the development of small molecules, and the needed therapies that will most likely be lost to patients over the next ten years.  Steve is a hugely successful serial entrepreneur in the life sciences, leading several companies to develop new cancer treatments. He is a board member of AZBio and an expert on the development ..read more

The U.S. Congress and Biden Administration’s attacks on IP and Drug Pricing continue unabated as the 2024 election approaches. In this Vital Health Podcast, VT’s Grumpy Old Men (Duane Schulthess, Joe Hammang, and Harry P. Bowen) are particularly grumpy about the current state of affairs and dig into their research findings on the Inflation Reduction Act. They also ruminate on what the continued ratcheting-up of rhetoric and legislation against the industry means for tough-to-treat neurological disorders, late-stage cancers, and orphan diseases. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy informati ..read more

In this Vital Health Podcast, Duane Schulthess speaks with Rachel King, the Interim CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), who is steering the organization through the increasingly choppy waters of the DC drug pricing debate. With mounting regulatory pressure from all angles towards the global biopharma sector, Washington DC’s BIO sits at the center of the tempest. Rachel King comes to BIO with a wealth of experience as the former Chair of BIO’s Board of Directors. She has worked as a VC, and was both the co-founder and CEO of GlycoMimetics. She was also a senior VP at Novart ..read more