Jonah Comstock

1 week ago | pharmaphorum.com | Jonah Comstock

Patients BIO 2025 this year came at a uniquely fraught moment for vaccination in the United States just days after HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. took the shocking step of firing the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP) and replacing them with largely unqualified and controversial appointees. The speakers on the panel "Shifting Attitudes Toward Vaccines Among Lawmakers" -- which included BIO EVP and Head of Policy and Programs Phyllis Arthur, former Member of Congress...

1 week ago | pharmaphorum.com | Jonah Comstock

Small transactions may not always make the headlines, but they’re the lifeblood of pharma innovation. So says Juergen Eckhardt, EVP and head of pharma business development and licensing at Bayer and head of Leaps by Bayer, the company’s startup accelerator programme. In an interview with pharmaphorum Editor in Chief Jonah Comstock at BIO 2025, Eckhardt discusses the importance of external innovation for Bayer and why the company is prioritising early-stage partnerships.

1 week ago | pharmaphorum.com | Jonah Comstock

Pharmaphorum Editor in Chief Jonah Comstock caught up again with Indaptus Therapeutics CEO Jeffrey Meckler after speaking with him last year at Reuters Pharma USA. Meckler refreshes our memory about Indaptus’s unconventional approach to immunotherapy, based on activating a wide swath of the immune system at a low dose rather than focusing on one activator.

1 week ago | pharmaphorum.com | Jonah Comstock

Market Access FDA Commissioner Dr Martin Makary took the stage at BIO 2025 to detail the way he and his team have been challenging “deeply held assumptions” about how the FDA ought to do its work. “We have got to try new things,” he said in a fireside chat with BIO President John Crowley. “We are seeing an increasingly competitive landscape internationally. We are seeing prolonged time and wasted steps result in a lack of investment, we are seeing companies get frustrated. … So we're going to...

1 week ago | pharmaphorum.com | Jonah Comstock

R&D Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey took some oblique shots at the Trump Administration's cuts to public science funding in her brief remarks from the main stage at BIO 2025 even as she celebrated $40 million in tax incentives to life sciences companies. “In this moment, we're not only making these investments, we're also making a statement,” she said. “At a time when federal science funding is being cut, when pipelines of international talent are being shut down, and when politics is...