Opinion: STAT+: Recursion CEO: Publicly funded research built the biopharma industry. Now it needs our help
If policymakers fail to act swiftly to restore medical research funding, then it’s up to those of us in the industry with the resources to bridge the gap, writes Recursion…
America is the global leader in health care innovation. We lead in medical research and in rapidly developing treatments for emerging health care priorities. That leadership isn’t free.
But it isn’t very expensive, either. At this critical moment, those of us most invested in this industry’s future may need to help shoulder the cost.
In the early 1990s at Stanford, Ronald Levy was working on his vision of a therapy that could train the immune system to attack cancer cells precisely, avoiding the collateral damage of chemotherapy. His research focused on monoclonal antibodies, proteins designed to lock onto cancerous B cells and destroy them. To turn the science into a real-world treatment, Levy had co-founded IDEC Pharmaceuticals, a small biotech startup.
