Experts warn the U.S. biopharma industry is "burying their heads in the sand" by underestimating Chinese innovation, labeling it as incremental or having peaked. This mirrors the complacency that allowed the U.S. to fall behind in industries like EVs and solar.
Despite prior speculation of a slowdown, the prominence of Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) in first-in-human trials at ASCO is "skyrocketing." The volume of new ADC trials now nearly equals that of small molecules and far surpasses traditional monoclonal antibodies.
Beyond its unprecedented survival benefit, RevMed's latest ASCO data quiets safety concerns and provides broad validation for the therapeutic strategy of targeting the RAS-on state, setting a hopeful jumping-off point for future RAS-targeting programs.
While Akiso's Harmony 6 trial in China showed a survival benefit for its PD-1/VEGF bispecific with chemotherapy, it doesn't resolve the key question of whether these impressive results from Chinese populations will translate to a global patient population.
Pharma CEOs, many of whom have President Trump's direct contact information, are being called on to intervene against the anti-science OMB proposal. They have historically opted not to spend their political capital on defending biomedical research, a position now deemed untenable.
A sweeping new OMB proposal would require senior political appointees to approve every discretionary federal grant, including from NIH. The rule explicitly makes expert peer review non-binding, allowing political judgment to override scientific consensus without cause.
Alkermes CEO Richard Pops' career illustrates how evolving public policy forces continuous shifts in a biotech's core strategy. Over decades, he had to repeatedly change how the company developed, priced, and marketed drugs in direct response to the changing regulatory and reimbursement landscape.