Frank Watanabe is the President and CEO of Arcutis Biotherapeutics, a dermatology biotechnology company based in Los Angeles. He’s also the Vice Chairman of BIO. Frank spent 30 years in biopharma after a prior career in national security — he stumbled into the industry at Eli Lilly and stayed for the mission. His mantra: “Cash is like oxygen. We all know what happens when you run out.”
Josh Vessel is a physician-scientist who most recently served as Chief Medical Officer and Director of the Office of Translational Medicine at NCATS (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences) at the NIH. He left federal service approximately 7-8 months ago after the landscape shifted in ways that conflicted with his values and oaths as a physician. His career advice: “Follow your heart and follow what fires you up.”
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
- Cash Is Oxygen: Be Exceedingly Judicious with Resources
- Investors Have Become Much More Discriminating Than 5 Years Ago
- The AI Bubble: If It Pops, Generalist Money May Flow Back to Biotech
- The Days of the Me-Too Strategy Are Waning — China Will Outcompete You
- Think Globally: Consider Opportunities Outside the US
- Diversify, Diversify, Diversify Your Funding Sources
- NIH Funding Is a Single Point of Failure for Many Institutions
- The 8-10 Year Divot in Basic Research That's Coming
- Brain Drain Is Real: Canada, France, Karolinska, Australia Are Recruiting
- China Has Been Building a World-Class Biopharma Industry for Years
- AI in Biopharma: Irrational Exuberance vs. Real Value
- State-Level Innovation: "50 Kids in a Trench Coat Pretending to Be a Country"
- Learning Health Systems at the State Level
- Central IRBs Could Make States More Competitive
- Coopetition: What Can We Do Better Together?
- This Too Shall Pass — But You Have to Weather the Storm
- The Hardest Decisions: Layoffs and Leaving Federal Service
- BIO as the Washington Office for Small Biotech Companies
