C-Suite Speaks

Taking over at the Swiss firm as CEO in 2018, Vas Narasimhan set about creating an "inspired, curious and unbossed organization." Two years on, he has put the spotlight on several initiatives that are up and running on a number of fronts to achieve that goal.

Founding CEO of the UK’s Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, Keith Thompson, will retire from the company this year. He looks back on the last eight years of progress for CGT Catapult and the  advanced therapies sector – and provides words of wisdom for the challenges still to come.

It has been a bumpy ride for some of the (still modest) number of European biotechs listed on Nasdaq, for various reasons. Yet most expect the direct-to-Nasdaq trend to continue. Europe’s public markets simply cannot compete.

In an exclusive interview, senior NICE director Meindert Boysen reveals the best advice he ever received and how companies whose products are under review can improve their chances of success.

The US Nasdaq exchange has become the only option for ambitious UK and European biotechs.

In the latest instalment of our VC playbook series, In Vivo sits down with Roel Bulthuis, managing partner at INKEF Capital, to discuss the group’s approach to health care investing in Europe, the importance of funding a team not just a project and how life sciences venture capital is evolving with the emergence of health tech.

Just over a year ago, AstraZeneca at last returned to growth and set about a reorganization that placed oncology at the heart of its plans for continued success. In Vivo talked to the executive vice-president of its Oncology Business Unit David Fredrickson about how the company hopes to become a major cancer player.

Steven Powell, chair of the board at Cambridge Cognition, talks about the group’s latest spin-off company, Monument Therapeutics.

A year into his role as a CEO of the Belgian mRNA biotech eTheRNA immunotherapies, industry veteran Steven Powell talks to In Vivo about his plans for the business over the coming couple of years. An important timeframe to move the company well into clinical activity.

In case you missed it: catch up with snippets from interviews with industry leaders recently published by In Vivo.

In December 2019, Jane Osbourn became the first woman to win Scrip’s Life Time Achievement Award for her work in human monoclonal antibody drug research.

In Vivo held its first executive briefing in December 2019 focused on the outlook for the biopharma sector in the 2020s. Looking to the next decade, six panelists debated in front of an audience of invited guests a variety of issues expected to dominate agendas: pricing and reimbursement, digital transformation, mergers and acquisitions, funding and more.

Dementia is one of the world’s greatest health care challenges. Globally, there is a new case of dementia every three seconds, adding up to around 50 million people worldwide. While it is good news that people are living longer, healthier lives, by 2050 the number of people with dementia is predicted to more than triple, reaching around 152 million.

Bayer’s ambitious campaign to reposition itself as a global leader in two complementary fields – health and nutrition – will face its toughest test in the US, with its highly litigious approach to product liability and a tendency to target pharmaceuticals as the source of the health system’s affordability and access problems.

Drug pricing and access issues expose the pharmaceutical sector especially acutely to calls for companies to meet ethical and social goals, alongside commercial ones. Digital is up-ending pharma’s processes, its workplaces and its consumers. R&D productivity is spluttering. Amid this turmoil, CEOs highlight company culture – the way an organization behaves – as a crucial ingredient for success. But what is a “right” culture? Organizational culture is neither static nor singular. It is continuously influenced by acquisitions, markets, new technologies and new generations. And pharma’s history suggests that culture change cannot happen without sufficient people change.

In case you missed it: catch up with snippets from interviews recently published by In Vivo.