Jan 2, 2019 · 29m · a16z
a16z Podcast | Move Fast But Don't Break Things (When It Comes to Computational Biology)
Jeff Kindler · 10m spoken Vijay Pande · 6m spoken Andrew Radin · 5m spoken Michael Copeland · 4m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
This episode of the a16z Podcast explores how computational technology, automated cloud biology, and big data are modernizing drug discovery and healthcare infrastructure while overcoming traditional regulatory and cultural hurdles.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
The host as informed peer 3.1 Guest teaching 3.4 Guest disagreement 0.7 The host pushing back 0.9
speaking balance: gold is the host, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 12:35 Vijay challenges host premise on health outcomes
Vijay directly disagrees with the host's claim that better outcomes are the sole goal, pointing out that lowering cost is an essential partner metric.
Hardest push from the host ▶ 8:56 Host challenges software application to biological complexityThe host challenges the premise of cloud biology by asking how rigid programming can account for the messy reality of biological systems.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 12:35 Vijay reframes primary objective of health technologyVijay educates the host on healthcare economics by shifting the framing from outcome quality alone to achieving outcomes efficiently at lower prices.
The host holds their own ▶ 4:43 Host introduces banking industry cloud transition parallelThe host demonstrates domain insight by drawing a parallel to how the banking industry initially resisted cloud adoption before eventually embracing it.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The host as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The host pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Hollywood Analogy and Unbundling Pharmaceutical Infrastructure | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The host facilitates conversation by drawing parallels between AWS infrastructure and pharmaceutical unbundling. The guests elaborate on how virtual biotech companies operate using on-demand resources. | |
| Cloud Biology and Process Automation in Drug Discovery | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The host offers a relevant comparison to cloud adoption hesitancy in banking, prompting guests to detail AWS security parity and automated animal model testing. | |
| Solving Biology's Reproducibility Crisis with Software Tools | 4 | 4 | 2 | 3 | The host pushes back on the limits of programming when applied to complex human biology. Andrew gently reframes the premise by clarifying that software assists rather than replaces human creative thought. | |
| Big Data Analytics and Data Sharing Challenges in Healthcare | 3 | 5 | 3 | 1 | Vijay explicitly disagrees with the host's premise regarding health outcomes, clarifying that cost reduction is equally vital. The panel goes on to explore data silos and open-source models. | |
| Virtual Pharma Models and the Future of Drug Commercialization | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The host asks whether big pharma will shrink in size, leading guests to explain virtual pharma structures and non-traditional development models like foundation funding. | |
| Early Disease Diagnostics and On-Demand Personalized Medicine | 3 | 3 | 0 | 2 | The host questions the realistic timeline of on-demand personalized medicine given regulatory friction, leading the guests to discuss consumer pressure and computer simulation replacing animal testing. | |
| Bridging the Cultural Divide Between Silicon Valley and Pharma | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | The host frames the topic of cultural friction between tech and pharma. Andrew and Jeff discuss how outside disruptors historically drive industry transformation. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Former Pfizer CEO: Pharma is unbundling into an outsourced model
“I think pharma is in the process of making a similar shift. For many years, until even relatively recently, they were one of the full, one of the few fully integrated industries in the sense that they did everything in house from discovery through the end of a…”
TwoXAR CEO: Our only physical assets are a refrigerator and microwave
“Our company owns a refrigerator and microwave. That is what we own.”
Radin: On-demand cloud bio infrastructure gives startups big-pharma capabilities
“And so we acquire resources on demand. And so this ability to go out and get millions, if not tens of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure, whether that's computer, whether that's lab resources use it in that, that moment. And that moment might be 10 mi…”
Former Pfizer CEO teases stealth startup automating pharmaceutical animal models
“So I'm involved with a company that's still in stealth, but you'll hear a lot about it very soon. And what it's doing is addressing a sort of small corner, not much spoken about part of the pharmaceutical industry, which is animal models.”
Vijay Pandey: Biological research faces a severe reproducibility crisis
“So what makes us better is not just the fact that it's cheaper, but there's a huge disaster and, you know, real challenge in biology right now for reproducibility, that many biology experiments are just not reproducible.”
Pandey: Cloud biology solves reproducibility by turning experiments into code
“But the beautiful thing about a cloud biology-like setup is that since it's programming on robots, you have the best chance for reproducibility, that rerunning the experiment is rerunning the code.”
Kindler: Payers will force pharma to adopt widespread data sharing
“The payers probably have more and better real-world data than the pharma companies do, and one of the reasons that the pharma companies will eventually, in my opinion, have to do data sharing, as Andrew suggests, is that the payers are going to aggregate their…”
Kindler backs a 10-person virtual pharma company generating $150M EBITDA
“So for example, I'm an investor in a specialty pharma company that has about a hundred and fifty million dollars of EBITDA and it's got 10 employees because it never built that infrastructure because like my movie analogy, it puts together each deal as it need…”
Kindler: Pharma will virtualize and outsource all functions except commercialization
“And in my opinion, the thing they're really good at that I find it hard to imagine being disrupted in the very near future is that translational stage from late stage assets to initial commercialization, figuring out what the market wants. And again, By analog…”
Pandey: 80% of cancers could be cured if caught early enough
“There is some really tantalizing possibilities here that 80% of all cancers could be cured with existing drugs if we caught them early enough and we knew to give them early enough”
Kindler: FDA only recently permitted direct electronic clinical data entry
“It was only relatively recently that the FDA Allowed clinical data to be entered directly into computers as opposed to put on paper because there was a reluctance to trust the quality and integrity of that data, which I think we would all agree is kind of sill…”
Radin: Computer simulations will eventually replace animal models in drug testing
“And so when we look at some of the data models and what we can do in terms of the predictive power of those models, you know, I see a future where we're getting rid of the animals, because what we can simulate in the computer is going to do a better job of pre…”
Kindler: Future pharma innovation will originate outside big pharma incumbents
“I imagine a lot of this Innovation will come outside of big pharma, but the big pharma's that succeed will be the ones that get it.”
Pandey: Exponential compute and genomic cost declines make health tech transformation inevitable
“The, there's almost like a deterministic nature of Moore's law, that the cost of compute and cost of genomics and these things decreasing exponentially. That actually is something that's really hard to avoid, and so in my mind, it's not really a question of if…”