Buss, Robert William; Dickens’s Dream; Charles Dickens Museum, London; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/dickenss-dream-191221
It is difficult to imagine how many times the opening lines to Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities, written over 160 years ago, has been used to describe the world’s current state of affairs. Yet, I am challenged to identify any other time during my lifetime, and most of my parents’, when the human condition has been this good and this bad, simultaneously.
Stock markets are booming. Global death rates across all diseases are 50 per cent of what they were in 1950. Deaths due to war and violent crime have been declining steadily at the same time that education levels are on the rise, including among women and across the developing world. Would anyone have predicted that Tesla would surpass Toyota as the world’s most valuable automaker in 2020? And that the innovator responsible for this radical shift in transportation also put us on track (again in 2020) to commoditize space travel and revisit the moon via private sector leadership?
All of us participating in this blog carnival understand how new gene editing technologies are revolutionizing health care, opening new possibilities for controlling human biology that both excite and, in some cases, terrorize our dreams of the future. (Access the other blogs here.)
And speaking of potential nightmares…The UK is leaving the European Union as populist sentiments spread across Europe. The U.S. President is ending his term without ever visiting Canada, historically the U.S.’s closest ally and the first place a President visits after inauguration. And is it true that he hasn’t articulated a single fault in the behaviour of Russia – the U.S.’s “mortal enemy?”
Meanwhile, China is playing “wolf diplomacy” in a trade war with the West that spans products and services from the lowest to the highest of technological sophistication, while iconic corporations, and globalization in general, are facing backlashes for their focus on “Wall Street” over “Main Street.” Finally, I am writing this blog as two hurricanes are bearing down on the U.S. and Death Valley is recording temperatures of 130 degrees Fahrenheit and my sons are debating one of the year’s hottest series – the Tiger King.
Oh yeah, let’s not forget that for the last six months of this Dickensian era, we have been in a battle with the worst pandemic in 100 years, driven by unprecedented global connectivity, but requiring enormous levels of financial intervention to tackle record unemployment, shortages of critical supplies (including toilet paper) and never-before-seen social and economic lock-downs.
Yet, the COVID-19 crisis has also led to the discovery of virtual/remote interaction by hundreds of millions of workers and students, put a microscope on how we manage the elderly and sparked incredible acts of kindness in neighbourhoods around the world. In essence, it is making us rethink how we work, learn, govern, socialize and innovate. It is an incredible moment of hardship and opportunity.
So, how will COVID-19 affect the cell and gene therapy (CGT) industry? First and foremost, the pandemic is a crisis of health care. As such, COVID-19 has focused a lens on life sciences as a major driver of social and economic impact, and a target for major investment.
Indeed, it is possible that investment levels in biotech in 2020 may exceed 2019 and 2018, combined. For the past three years, CGT valuations have been 2-4X higher than the biotech average, making it one of the hottest segments of the sector. Not only have advanced therapies, which include CGTs, offered treatment solutions for COVID-19, but they represent the future of medicine.
Governments will be stressed fiscally for many years due to the levels of stimulus funding they have had to provide in response to the current pandemic. This may limit government support for basic R&D (the discovery and innovation pipeline for the industry) and will certainly heighten the requirement to justify the high prices for these revolutionary products with robust clinical data and compelling health economic analyses. One of the positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has demonstrated how quickly innovation, development, validation and regulatory approval can happen, if the need and will are there.
CCRM, with its partners (e.g., Cytiva), has been tackling cost of goods in the sector for several years now by developing, optimizing and integrating manufacturing processes and tools. The development of manufacturing capabilities has an additional urgency associated with it due to COVID-19, as the pandemic has highlighted the fragility and security of domestic supply chains. As a consequence, many regions are considering significant investments in manufacturing infrastructure, which will ultimately accelerate the widespread adoption of new CGT products.
Globalization is under attack from a geopolitical perspective, but also at the corporate level. All social structures are networks of key stakeholders. For companies, there are three: employees/partners, customers and shareholders. Since the 1970s, maximization of shareholder value has been the mission of most large companies. Employees and consumers are starting to rebel. It is time to rethink the corporate mantra and start to focus on maximizing stakeholder value.
As a public-private partnership coordinating the interests of industry, government, academic researchers, investors and patients, CCRM has always lived its mission with the interests of all of its stakeholders in mind. I wonder if the post-COVID world will present a more balanced approach to wealth generation, giving public-private partnerships a heightened role in commercialization in the future. Since the CGT industry is still nascent, perhaps it can be held up as the post-COVID example for how to research, develop, fund, regulate, invest and deliver health care differently?
This month, McKinsey & Company published a nice summary of the effect of COVID-19 on CGTs that addresses manufacturing, the supply chain, clinical trials, remote medicine and basic research. One thing is certain: bringing complex CGTs to the masses in a Dickensian world will require collaboration on a global scale.
First step: figuring out how to treat “Zoom fatigue.”
Michael May
Latest posts by Michael May (see all)
- 10 days ago in Toronto…. - August 22, 2023
- Thinking about longevity makes me feel old - August 25, 2021
- “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….” - August 26, 2020
Comments