BioCentury This Week Ep. 302 - Takeaways from BioCentury Grand Rounds Chicago
Jun 12, 2025
In this engaging discussion, Ed Hodgkin, managing partner at Syncona, sheds light on the urgent challenges academia faces amid shifting VC priorities and federal funding risks. He emphasizes the need for innovative collaboration between academia and pharma to unlock first-in-class innovations. The exploration of drug development complexities and advancements in delivery systems reveals a bright future for biopharmaceuticals, while also addressing endometriosis challenges and the exciting potential of Europe’s biotech landscape.
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Pharma-Leveraged Academic Innovation
- Pharma increasingly relies on academia to access first-in-class innovation despite difficulty in collaboration.
- A full toolbox of modalities exists, but new modalities are useful for optimizing well-validated targets.
Innovation Focus on Known Targets
- Most innovation is about optimizing known targets using existing modalities rather than discovering new targets.
- Current constraints require smarter collaboration and scaling data to convince both federal funders and venture capitalists.
Collaborate to Build Scale
- Collaborate to build larger, more convincing data sets to attract federal and venture capital funding.
- Focus on scale and strategic objectives targeting bottlenecks to unlock drug development progress.