Q&As

Since its inception ten years ago, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign has successfully developed a series of best-practice criteria—the International Guidelines on the

Management of Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock, which are currently being revised under Phillip Dellinger’s leadership—as well as engaged physicians and the general public around the world in a broad educational program to warn about the threat posed by the disease. Dellinger spoke with Roxanne Khamsi about the struggle to catalyze change in the sepsis field.

Since last November, six biopharma buyouts have exceeded $1 billion each, with Gilead Sciences' purchase last year of the hepatitis C specialist Pharmasset topping the charts at a whopping $11.2 billion, the highest ever paid for a clinical-stage biotech and an 89% premium to its share price at the time. Mark Ratner sought out biopharma analyst Joseph Schwartz, a managing director at Leerink Swann in Boston, for his views on what’s behind the recent buyout spending.

In April, China's Minister of Health Chen Zhu and his mentor, Wang Zhen-yi of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, received the Albert Szent-Györgi Prize from the Washington, DC–based National Foundation for Cancer Research, in recognition for their work on acute promyelocytic leukemia. On that occasion, Victoria Aranda and Roxanne Khamsi asked Chen about his plans for cancer research and for improving stem cell regulation in China.

Since inception of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) in 1999, the Washington, DC–based initiative has played an instrumental part in advancing a number of leading vaccine candidates, including RTS,S, the first to show clinical efficacy in a major phase 3 trial. Steering the ship in the next phase of the journey is David Kaslow, who spoke with Roxanne Khamsi about how his experience in the public and private sectors will help inform his decisions in the nonprofit world.

When Robert J. Beall joined the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in 1980, he launched a program aimed at absorbing the early financial risk involved in drug development as a way to entice for-profit companies to get involved in cystic fibrosis research. That strategy was vindicated with the approval in January of the first small-molecule drug that directly interacts with the mutated protein responsible for cystic fibrosis. Elie Dolgin spoke with Beall to learn more about his organization’s pioneering approach to venture philanthropy.

Patrick Soon-Shiong has only one mode of thinking: big. The South Africa-born surgeon-scientist has founded two multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical firms and is now setting his sights on transforming the entire US biomedical system with a modern, high-speed data network. Amber Dance sat down with Soon-Shiong to talk about how uniting physicians and scientists will surmount the most pressing challenges in biomedicine and cancer research.

In September, Ronald DePinho became the new president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center at the University of Texas in Houston. He arrived there after 14 years at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. Rebecca Hersher spoke with him about his decision to go to the Lone Star State and the current status of the cancer field.

Since its launch in 2001, the Center for Global Development (CGD) has been instrumental in convening working groups and issuing reports that shape the agenda for a range of topics that affect global poverty and people of the developing world. At the helm of its global health effort is Amanda Glassman. In recognition of CGD's ten-year anniversary last month, Elie Dolgin spoke to Glassman about how the think tank turns its words into actions.

The International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC), plans to document disease-related phenotypes for each generated mouse strain including metabolic, neurological and behavioral data. Hannah Waters spoke with Steve Brown, chairman of the IMPC and director of the UK Medical Research Council’s Mammalian Genetics Unit in Harwell, to learn more about the project.

In 2000, former Genentech executive Victoria Hale and her husband launched the Institute for OneWorld Health from the first floor of their San Francisco home. They called the institute “the world's first nonprofit pharmaceutical company” and intended it to address diseases of poverty, which are generally neglected by drug companies. For its first project, the group tried to revive paromomycin, a 60-year-old antibiotic, to treat a disease called visceral leishmaniasis. In September 2006, India approved the drug. OneWorld Health has in the meantime grown to 50 employees and a $90 million budget. On 27 September, Hale stepped down from her role as chief executive officer of the institute. Here she tells Erika Check Hayden what's next for her and for the unique organization she launched.