An Audience With in 2022

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.

Fouad Namouni, head of R&D at Blueprint Medicines, discusses how dual blockade of a single target could push the tyrosine kinase inhibitor envelope.

As Galvani Bioelectronics advances its first ‘electroceutical’ candidate for a chronic disease into the clinic, company president Kristoffer Famm discusses the bioelectronic medicines R&D roadmap.

Ellen Sigal, the founder of Friends of Cancer Research, discusses the origins and future of the FDA’s breakthrough therapy designation as well as the changing patient advocacy landscape.

Ray Deshaies, head of discovery research at Amgen, discusses the role of PROTACs, RIBOTACs, molecular glues, multispecific biologics and DNA-encoded libraries in industry’s future.