Last year saw the organizers behind Advanced Therapies Week (ATW) move the conference from Miami to Miami Beach to accommodate a larger audience. As the Covid-19 pandemic was still going strong in January 2022, making international travel more difficult, attendance was lower than anticipated. In fact, on-site testing resulted in some delegates being turned away at the door after testing positive. Networking events were muted.
Fast forward to this January and the conference climate appears to have returned to its pre-pandemic heyday, with in-person events taking place and people excited to see acquaintances, friends and colleagues in real life. No Covid protocols were in place at ATW2023 – although some people masked – and we were told that 2,000 people registered for the conference, proving that the organizers made the right decision in moving from a conference hotel to a convention centre that could accommodate twice as many people as previous events.
Apart from more people and a larger venue, much of the program was unchanged: ATW2023, running from January 17-20, kicked off with the popular afternoon fireside chat moderated by Anthony Davies of Dark Horse Consulting. Conference favourites, like Susan Nichols’ recap of the last year’s milestones, and the Day Two yacht cruise took place (absent last year). There was lots of partnering, multiple concurrent talks throughout the days, many opportunities to network and lots of sunshine!
New features of this year’s conference included a screening of the moving documentary Of Medicine and Miracles, hosted by the Emily Whitehead Foundation (watch a trailer here), and the inaugural Advanced Therapies Awards on the final night, hosted by Andy Buckley of “The Office“ fame. Here is a list of the winners, and the Lifetime Achievement Award went to a very deserving Carl June, MD.
Fireside chat
Kudos to Anthony Davies and the organizers on an excellent selection of guests to be interviewed, starting with Dr. Peter Zandstra, Professor at the University of British Columbia, Founding Director of its School of Biomedical Engineering, (read more here) and Chief Scientific Officer of CCRM. (This is a blog so I am allowed to be biased.)
After gently teasing Peter, er, Dr. Zandstra, about being included as a Member of the Order of Canada, Dr. Davies got down to business. He pointed out that we’ve seen societal backlash to mRNA technology and we’re now proposing to bring new cell types to the market. What do we need to do differently?
Dr. Zandstra answered that there will always be tension in society as you adopt new technologies. The key is not to do this behind a veil: “We’re going to develop new technology and don’t worry about it. Any technology will be a choice with risks and benefits. We need to be transparent about this.”
Dr. Davies also wanted to know how often Dr. Zandstra talks about patients in his lab (in reference to Emily Whitehead’s important anniversary) – “something that we hope will be the norm in the future.”
In reply, Dr. Zandstra said that his lab worries about access to new technologies. “How do we ensure everyone in society has access? My lab thinks about this a lot. How do communities in Northern Canada benefit from these new therapies. We talk about this a lot.”
Steven Miller, Chief Clinical Officer of Cigna Corporation, also took part in the fireside chat and had many provocative things to say. For example:. “We have the best people thinking about how to get these therapies into patients [125 million patients across 30 countries.] We are not just a payer, we’re a conglomerate with pharmacies and distribution. We move people to generics when possible or to the best-priced branded product. We remove the waste so we can pay for things of value. One-third is waste.” (Emphasis is mine.)
To which Dr. Davies continued, with this summary of what we had heard so far: Peter is creating robust products (i.e. cheaper products); the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (c/o guest Gwen Nichols, Chief Medical Officer) is further streamlining the system; then we have the commoditization of risk – “risk which is a bad thing becomes a good thing” – (c/o guest Michael Meyers, Vice Chairman, Head of M&A and Strategic Advisory Services of HC Wainwright) and then Cigna reduces waste. “They all come together to give us hope that the financing will work.”
On the topic of insurance to pay for catastrophic problems, Dr. Miller answered that “We all pay into the insurance system so the money is there when we need it to pay for expensive cell and gene therapies.” He went on to say that 20 million people are paying $1 per month for these therapies. “The bigger we can make the risk pool the more likely we can support the costs. But we have to get the costs down, as low as possible.” This is a production and manufacturing challenge.
Dr. Davies followed this up with the comment that, “for the first time in history, we can make life-saving therapies that we can’t afford.”
Dr. Miller was more optimistic. “As more therapies enter the field, theoretically the prices should come down.” But then he discussed the risk pool idea, which he referred to as “more problematic when we have therapies that slow down a condition and improve quality of life, but don’t offer a cure.” He gave the example of macular degeneration.
He also brought up non-medical switching in the U.S., which he described as preventing physicians from moving patients to less expensive generic products for non-medical reasons (usually cost) and said insurers could save millions by allowing this and the money could then be put towards cell and gene therapies. Patients and physicians don’t appear to agree that non-medical switching is a good practice.
To end the fireside chat on a positive note, Dr. Davies asked the guests to share “reasons to be cheerful.” Dr. Zandstra: “Our understanding of the cell products we are manufacturing and the match to clinical efficacy is finally getting closer together, compared with how we started.” Dr. Nichols: “We are starting to understand why some of the therapies aren’t working for everyone.” She went on to say that the costs will come done with that understanding. Mr. Meyers was optimistic about all the companies doing great work with vectors and manufacturing, and Dr. Miller stated that “this will be a robust industry in the future.”
For more coverage of the “superplenary” from BioProcess International, read Dan Stanton’s takeaways.
Top 10 2022
Wrapping up this post, here are Susan Nichols’ industry highlights from 2022, along with a recap of the Top 10 from the year before. As Susan kindly shared her slides with me, I’m including them here.
Dan Stanton, BioProcess International, also wrote about this session. Read his recap.
In closing, it seems fitting for Dr. Carl June to get the final word. Watch this tribute video for the inaugural recipient of the Phacilitate Lifetime Achievement Award.
Stacey Johnson
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