On Monday afternoon, David Block ’81 addressed Wesleyan students and faculty in a presentation offering insight into the constantly growing and often confusing field of biotechnology.
A former chief operating officer of Celera Genomics, Block assessed the strengths and weaknesses of large pharmaceutical companies.
To their advantage, he said, these industry giants have ample funds, the ability to attract top researchers and an abundance of research resources. Their major drawback, Block continued, is the lack of trained scientists in decision-making positions, placing too narrow a focus on the business aspects of the company.
“[The pharmaceuticals industry is] a high-risk business in which one attempts to make better than average decisions in the face of many unknowns for the benefit of patients and shareholders,” Block said.
Block graduated from Wesleyan Phi Beta Kappa, with a self-designed degree in biopsychology. He went on to get his M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania while simultaneously earning his master’s in Business Administration at the Wharton School of Business.
Block then entered the world of biopharmaceuticals, where he first encountered one of the fundamental questions discussed in his presentation—the degree to which access to health care is a basic human right.
“I am an idealist, I believe health care should be a human right, but I don’t believe it is treated that way,” Block said.
Block devoted much of the latter part of the lecture to tracing a product from its conception to its production. At the idea stage, a product only has a six percent chance of making it to the market, and only three out of every ten products that make it to market earn enough profits to cover the costs of research and development.
The process begins with an idea, he said, which then gets discussed by a project team that makes plans for the research. The product is then researched extensively, and safety testing is conducted.
Next comes a stage of exploratory development, wherein problems with the product are discussed and possible solutions are examined. The product then enters full development and clinical data analysis. After large-scale tests on human samples and further safety screening, the product is ready to be registered and put on the market.
Block said that the entire process can take anywhere from 10 to 20 years. Only then, he added, can the product begin to make money to compensate for the millions, and even billions, of dollars that went into research and design.
Block explained that the long and costly process of taking a product to completion, among other factors, makes the biopharmaceutical business a risky one. On top of the goal of making money, companies must also create a product that is as easily accessible to patients as possible, which means pricing products affordably.
According to Block, another problem facing the biotech industry is the ever-increasing cost of production.
“[Biopharmaceuticals] will get more costly until society can’t pay anymore or technology becomes more efficient,” Block said.
While advanced technology has opened up the fields of genomics and proteomics, the various methods of studying these fields have also increased. Balancing cost, risk, and profit, while also keeping patient convenience and health coverage in mind, is a challenge that continues to occupy the minds of biopharmaceutical companies.
“I think the sense among those who attended is that they were just given a very inside and candid glimpse of how biotech works,” said Professor of Microbiology and Biochemistry Robert Lane.
Jisoon Lee ’05 said she came to the lecture for similar reasons.
“I wanted to know about the biotechnology industry—it was very informative and encouraged me in pursuing it,” she said.
The biotechnology industry is one of the fastest growing career fields and is of interest to many scientifically inclined students searching for a career.
“This topic [includes] such valuable information for our undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom will consider careers in this rapidly emerging industry,” Lane said.
Leave a Reply