Innovation in the Life Sciences
Rising to the Challenge
“If you are a public [biotech] company with an approach that has promise [against COVID-19], I don’t think there is going to be an issue of funding. If you are a public or private company not active in this [COVID-19] then I do think this is going to be a little bit tricky for a few months.”
Otello Stampacchia, Founder, Omega Funds Xconomy Special Report, Containing Coronavirus Through Innovation and Investment
“In a matter of weeks, regulatory barriers to telemedicine in the U.S. have largely fallen. Doctors in the U.S. now perform remote visits across state lines, can email and video-chat patients in compliance with HIPAA, and Medicare and health insurance providers have to now reimburse telemedicine services.” Emma Rose Beinvenu, 7 Predictions for a Post-Coronavirus World, Medium.
From the sudden focus on healthcare workers and the biotech world, to the acceleration of the digitization of medicine and the difficulties of social distancing in labs; the life sciences industry has been has been thrown into the spotlight during the COVID-19 pandemic. Xconomy’s Dan Stanton tell us that “industry is rising to the challenge. Supported by nervous investors hit hard by volatile markets, products are whizzing through the clinic at unprecedented speed. Tech-sharing partnerships are beginning to blossom. Meanwhile, money is being thrown at clinical trials and manufacturing facilities with faith that diagnostic products, therapies, and vaccines will spin a stronger and healthier world out of the current crisis.”
CapGemini research declares that the solutions are there for life sciences R&D to excel during this crisis, but they lie in pushing beyond "old boundaries to accelerate". Companies such as Novartis, recently interviewed by Pharma Intelligence, are successfully pushing those boundaries, as their Chief Digital Officer Bertrand Bodson explains: "Many things that we had planned to take a couple of years to get into full motion have happened in two months. Everybody, including the regulators, have come together on this, and so we have been able to change gears strongly."
Our life sciences survey results illustrate this pushing of "old boundaries"; 36% of respondents have developed a new product, service or business initiative while 22% have sped up development of an already planned product. The products and services people described were exciting: one shared that their organization was in the process of certifying the first 3D printed face mask in the world, a few were working on remote patient monitoring and remote clinical trial recruitment, and several were working on developing a treatment or vaccine for COVID-19.
Burning Glass Technologies Labor Insights tells us that "the number of (life sciences) job postings in mid-May increased from the number in early February" and MassBio's discussions with industry leaders have found that "most employees are as busy as ever." In a May McKinsey study of life sciences R&D leaders, the picture is less rosy, with reported productivity having fallen "between 25 and 75 percent due to remote working" and "an average of 40 to 50 percent of their time (spent) on crisis management".
In our survey of global life sciences professionals, we discovered that fewer than 10% of respondents had a crisis management team in place before COVID-19, which parallels the McKinsey data showing that a great deal of workers' time needed to be spent on that. Our data found, however, that life sciences professionals were positive about the change to "work from home"; over 88% of respondents saw this as sustainable business practice for their organizations in the long term. 45% agreed it was sustainable for at least some to work from home, and 44% for large numbers of employees to work from home.
Digital transformation in healthcare has been accelerated by COVID-19 and 84% of our survey respondents agree that the disease has had an impact; 62% feel that the impact will be long term, 22% short term. In the pharma industry this has certainly been demonstrated; for example, tools such as "sentiment/voice analysis, behavioral analysis, (and) strategic intelligence" are coming out of the "innovation shadows" to challenge the "status quo". With people unable to or afraid to leave their homes, digital health via telemedicine has filled the gaps - and regulatory bodies have been forced to speed up their approval processes. A new Deloitte study affirms that: "increased digitization is likely to change how therapies are provided, how clinicians practice, how health plans pay for care…and where investors place their bets".
Ryan Browne of CNBC informs us that: “The outbreak has led to increased uptake of telemedicine services from the likes of Teladoc, Babylon Health and Kry” and “Research firm Forrester estimates U.S. virtual care visits will top 1 billion this year due to the pandemic and other factors.”
The spotlight has been on healthcare workers in hospitals, but Browne reminds us not to forget about those in labs, labs which are both ramping up testing for coronavirus and developing vaccines. Their workplaces too have had to ramp up social distancing efforts, by adjusting staffing and rearranging schedules to practice social distancing. Informa Connect Life Sciences is following someone on the front lines who is working for a cure in their Coronavirus Diaries series, how they've had to quickly pivot the kinds of studies they were doing and apply new cleaning regimes. You can read their story here.
In Money’s March article “5 Stocks That Are Actually Up Since the Coronavirus Market Implosion” - not surprisingly two of the stocks were biotech companies - Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc. both working on drugs related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Moderna Therapeutics is another company that's doing well with a recent $483 million funding from the government for a “RNA-based SARS-CoV2 vaccine” they’re working on. Johnson & Johnson is making progress with development of its vaccine; and CEO Alex Gorsky has pledged to make it available on a not-for--profit basis. Other organizations working on Coronavirus cures - from repurposing drugs to Covid-19 treatments include: AstraZeneca, Sanofi, Roche, Novartis, Ergomed PLC, Synairgen PLC, CytoDyn Inc, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, Tiziana Life Sciences, CureVac, The Vaccine Group, Amgen and Adaptive Biotechnologies, AltImmune, BioNTech and Pfizer, Heat Biologics, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Novavax, Takeda Pharmaceutical, Vaxart, Vir Biotechnology, and several Universities as well. As of early May there were over 800 clinical trials working on COVID-19 treatments and 124 coronavirus vaccines in development.
