Over the next ten years, cell therapy, informatics/machine learning and precision medicine will lead to the most important health care and life science breakthroughs, according to panelists who spoke on “What’s Next: 2020 and Beyond,” held on September 11, 2019, at BioPharm America, in Boston.
The panelists included Christiana Bardon, a portfolio manager at Burrage Capital; Christiana layasere, director, Department of Medicine Innovation and cofounder, Dynamix, Inc; and Chandra Ramanathan, vice president and head of Bayer’s Open Innovation Center North America East. Roger Kitterman, Vice President, Venture and Managing Partner of the Partners Innovation Fund, served as moderator.
As Harris Communications Group founder Anita M. Harris reports in an article written behalf of Informa’s EBD Group, a life science partnering organization based in San Diego, panelists said that over the next decade, they expect to see advances in treatments for solid tumors and multigenetic , epigenetic and environmental diseases; that increased use of informatics, machine learning, digital health and personalized medicine will continue to unlock clues to complex biological systems and impact patient care, and that despite much “hype,” artificial intelligence will have huge impact on new drug targets selection, lead optimization, patient selection and patient engagement.
Chandra Ramanathan, of the Bayer Center for Open Innovation Center North America East, pointed out that despite scientific and technologic breakthroughs, regulatory, funding and investment issues have “a very direct impact on how treatments will evolve.” Although “the world’s number one killer is cardiovascular disease, if you look at the percentage of cardiovascular-related companies in the Boston ecosystem, it’s less than 5 percent,” he said. “There is a lack of correlation between investment focus and disease states. The scientific know-how coupled with clarity of regulatory path might be ripe for previously difficult-to-treat diseases. He asked, do we need to revisit our priorities?”
Anita’s complete article is available at https://knect365.com/partnering-insight/article/a441e528-13fd-4603-a4f5-c5ada031b039/whats-next-2020-and-beyond .
–Anita Harris is a writer and managing director of the Harris Communications Group, which provides integrated content, public relations, digital marketing and design for health, science, biotech, cybersecurity, finance and technology, and design, worldwide.