Assertion Not checkable as stated
Conde: AI has not yet compressed biotech clinical trial timelines
“We still haven't seen, and I think it's coming, but it hasn't happened yet. We haven't seen artificial intelligence or other technologies massively compress the amount of time it takes us to do the clinical development, the clinical trials, the enrollment of p…”
Assertion Supported
Novartis's one-time gene therapy for spinal muscular atrophy costs $2.1 million
“You know, in the case of treating a baby that had, you know, something like somatic muscular atrophy that would have otherwise died, a one and done gene therapy from Novartis, this is a therapy that's worth about, it's cost about 2.1 million dollars, effective…”
Insight
Conde: Engineering principles make later drug programs more valuable than earlier ones
“The second drug is more valuable than the first if you're using engineering principles, because what you learn from example one sort of imbues value to example two and so on and so forth.”
Insight
Conde: Biology is transforming from experimental science into an engineered discipline
“It's really just one subset of what we think is the broader theme here, which is the shift away from biology being primarily an empirical or an experimental science to becoming more of an engineered discipline.”
Insight
Conde: Platforms focused solely on target discovery struggle to capture value
“And so if your platform is to identify novel targets, it's going to actually be very hard. That's sort of the end of the line for what your technology can do. It's really hard to capture value there. And certainly hard to get that from a collaboration standpoi…”
Insight
Conde: Engineering principles make subsequent drug candidates more valuable than earlier ones
“But in your world, in the world you're describing, this engineering world, it's actually the reverse is true. That the second drug is more valuable than the first if you're using engineering principles, because what you learn from example one sort of imbues va…”
Prediction Held up
Conde: Medicine will cure sickle cell anemia within 10 years
“And so if I had to bet, I would bet that in the next 10 years, we will have solved sickle cell anemia, much like we've solved cystic fibrosis, that had a very similar profile in terms of what we understood about the disease.”
Insight
Conde: FDA regulatory risk is fundamentally scientific risk
“FDA risk or regulatory risk is really just another way of saying scientific risk, of saying we're going to conduct an experiment, and we are not quite sure what's going to happen.”
Insight
Conde: Healthcare payers are value assessors, not cost cutters
“But the reality is payers aren't cost cutters. They're assessors of value. And if you have transformative drugs, or if you can transform how we think about diagnosing and screening disease, the payers are willing to pay for that value.”
Assertion Supported
FDA creates new office and Warp Speed pilot for rare diseases
“The FDA is looking to the skies and taking a page out of the FAA's approach to aviation safety, rigorous yet adaptive. Recently launching its own new office for therapeutic products and piloting Operation Warp Speed for rare disease to create more transparent …”
Assertion Supported
FDA approves first CRISPR gene editing therapy for sickle cell anemia
“The breaking news is that the first CRISPR therapy has been approved. This is a therapy for sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia that was developed by a biopharmaceutical company called Vertex Pharmaceuticals, working with another company called CRISPR Ther…”
Assertion Supported
CRISPR progressed from initial discovery to FDA approval in just 10 years
“It's barely been 10 years since the concept of CRISPR was discovered and described in the scientific literature. So we went from the initial discovery of CRISPR as a potential use as a medicine, all the way to an approval in just over 10 years. That is lightni…”
Insight
Advanced cell and gene therapies require novel pricing and reimbursement models
“If we're gonna make this widely accessible to patients that need them, it's gonna have to be affordable. So we'll need new models for how pharmaceutical companies charge for this, and we're seeing early days of this. We're going to need new models for how paye…”
Insight
Conde: CRISPR and Asimov are turning genetic engineering into true design
“And now I think with the advent of things like CRISPR and things that companies like Asimov are doing where they're actually making DNA a design medium. I think it's, we're actually starting to make genetic engineering be an engineer discipline, but I think th…”
Insight
Conde: Enterprise 'land and expand' failed in biotech due to bespoke science
“The famous concept of land and expand on the enterprise side. You can actually start to see some of that in biology. The reason why land and expand historically hasn't existed in biotech. Is because the expand part was really hard. Because things were so bespo…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Conde: Illumina's sequencing breakthrough was driven by engineering, not biology
“And really what drove that wasn't some fundamental discovery on the biology or the science. What drove that was Illumina was able to apply Three very specific and distinct engineering disciplines and converge them. One was the use of microfluidics, the, just a…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Conde: Medicine is on the verge of creating intelligent living drugs
“And I think one of the things that we're seeing is that now when we can start to design cells, we can actually start to design cells that have logic, that will know where to go in the body, what to do when they encounter disease, and how to essentially termina…”
Assertion Partly supported
Conde: Facebook recruitment reduced Parkinson's trial acquisition costs by 96%
“A great data point that I heard recently was a partnership that Facebook made with the Michael J. Fox foundation to find ways to pilot the use of social networks to recruit patients for Parkinson's disease trial using social media. They were able to reduce the…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Living medicines are finding cures for leukemia, blindness, and PKU
“And as we can see in leukemia, as we can see in inherited forms of blindness, as we can see in PKU, these living medicines are finally leading us to where we've always wanted to be, which is to find cures.”
Insight
Conde: Bio entrepreneurs must prioritize and execute early killer experiments
“If you're developing technology in the biology space, you should know what your near term killer experiment is. And the experiment that if it does not work, It's, you know, kill mode for whatever you're developing. And you should know what that is. You should …”
Insight
Conde: CRISPR and new tools make genetic engineering a true discipline
“And now I think with the advent of things like CRISPR and things that companies like Asimov are doing where they're actually making DNA a design medium. I think it's, we're actually starting to make genetic engineering be an engineer discipline.”
Insight
Conde: 'Land and expand' business models failed in traditional biotech
“The reason why Land and Expand historically hasn't existed in biotech is because the Expand part was really hard. Because things were so bespoke.”
Assertion Supported
Conde: Average drugs require $2.5B and 10 to 15 years to develop
“And so when you add all of this up, it takes an incredible two and a half billion dollars and 10 to 15 years of investment to get the average drug to market when you account for all of the failures along the way.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Conde: Future cell therapies will use programmed logic to target diseases
“Well, if we get really good at understanding biology, and we get really good at engineering biology, on the horizon, we have the ability to begin to program cells so that we can imbue them with logic. So we can take a cell and have it understand how to find di…”
