An Audience With

Robert Plenge, head of Research at Bristol Myers Squibb, discusses his vision of sequential immunotherapy for autoimmune diseases — including multiple sclerosis.

Stuart Schreiber discusses his plans to tackle inefficiencies in the translation of biomedical research, through the newly launched for-profit institute Arena BioWorks.

Monica Bertagnolli, the newly appointed director of the NIH, discusses diversity, inclusion and access to biomedical research.

Stuart Orkin, of Harvard Medical School and HHMI, discusses how the discovery of BCL11A paved the way for Vertex and CRISPR Therapeutics’ exa-cel therapy for haemoglobinopathies.

Jane Grogan, Biogen’s new head of research, talks about immunology, rare diseases and her longstanding interest in the cancer target TIGIT.

The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative’s Delali Attipoe, Director of the non-profit’s North America branch, discusses the rising risks of climate-sensitive diseases such as dengue.

ICER’s incoming President, Sarah Emond, discusses drug pricing, multimillion dollar gene therapies and innovation incentives.

Vividion CEO Aleksandra Rizo discusses emerging lessons from the firm’s use of fragment-based screening — including the potential for allosteric covalent drugs to drive different functional effects through a single binding site.

Incoming FogPharma CEO Mathai Mammen discusses the next frontier of cell-penetrating peptides, as the company advances a first candidate into the clinic to take on β-catenin.

Shiva Malek, head of oncology at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, discusses her drug development ambitions — including drugging transcription factors, tackling drug resistance and curing KRAS-mutant cancer.

Joni Rutter, director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), discusses the centre’s audacious goal to have 25% of diseases covered by the experimental drug pipeline by 2032.

Nobel laureate Bob Lefkowitz discusses the future of G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR)-targeted drug discovery.

Aled Edwards celebrates 20 years of open science at the Structural Genomics Consortium — and keeps calling for more focus on understudied proteins.

Hans Clevers, head of Pharma Research & Early Development at Roche, discusses the role for organoids in drug discovery and development.

Our Future Health CEO Andrew Roddam discusses the UK’s largest-ever health research programme, an ambitious attempt to tackle prevention, detection and treatment of common diseases.

Recently retired head of vaccine R&D at Pfizer, Kathrin Jansen, discusses the lightning speed development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines — and the implications for vaccine platforms.

Bluebird bio has now secured FDA approvals for two lentiviral vector gene therapies for rare diseases. Melissa Bonner, the company’s head of research, discusses the rocky road to success and future applications.

Pearl Huang, incoming CEO of Dunad Therapeutics, is betting that covalent drugs can push the boundaries of the small-molecule modality to supercharge targeted protein degradation.

The UK Biobank houses an extensive collection of biological samples and health information from 500,000 volunteers, providing clues to the genetic and environmental drivers of disease. Naomi Allen, the project’s chief scientist and an epidemiologist at Oxford University, discusses the exploding body of findings from this 20-year-old biomedical resource and the prospects for the expansion of this biopharmaceutical treasure trove.

Julie Gerberding — incoming CEO of the Foundation for the NIH (FNIH), and former Director of the CDC and executive at Merck & Co. — discusses COVID-19 learnings, centralized clinical trials and trust in science.