Many people who dedicate their lives to discovering, developing, and making new, lifesaving drugs don’t understand the extent to which the drug industry has failed to communicate its value proposition to society and to inspire its customers to pay for that value. That is to say, when the public and even legislators representing our biotech innovation hubs focus on the price of a breakthrough drug without a sense of its value or how it came into being and insist that innovators should not only invent medicines but pay for them, too, that’s a self-inflicted wound. Vertex’s Trikafta, one of our industry’s greatest success stories, provides an example.

We wanted to expand RA Capital’s Gateway library of teaching modules to cover compensation-related topics, so we peppered experienced board member Steve Hoffman with questions about everything from managing stock option grants to tying bonuses to stretch goals. His answers did not disappoint.

Over the course of just seven days, we saw two biopharmas do cannonballs into the collective cultural pool with marketing efforts that just might impact the trajectory of the national conversation about medicine, science, and progress.

In what for ten months was shaping up as a brutal year for biotech, it should come as no surprise that all five of RApport’s most popular pieces of the year speak to the market downturn. So whether you’re a biotech employee looking to de-risk your next career move, a CEO wondering how and when to shut down a company, or an investor thinking about next year, grab a mug of peppermint mocha and dig in.

It’s time to start thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. We asked ten experienced biotech board members what they consider useful, not useful, and downright irrelevant in terms of corporate goals. How do you know if goals are effective? And how important is it that they can actually be measured?

Our mission at RA Capital Management (RACM) is simple: to improve the health of each and every person in the world. Staying true to RACM’s mission, the Planetary Health team invests in profit-seeking companies that benefit people by improving the health of the planet.

Clinical trials can fail, regulators change their minds, manufacturing might run into an unsolvable glitch, and venture capital might dry up. Given all the risks small biotech companies face that are outside of their immediate control, might it be safer to just work for a more stable, revenue-generating company? Maybe! But before you rule out jumping into a small biotech, consider the pros and cons.

RA Capital’s TechAtlas team is currently accepting summer internship applications for 2023. Three of last year’s interns - Drew Biedermann, Ross Chikarmane, and Gabe Fox - are now permanent members of the TechAtlas team. Read their perspectives on their internship experience.

We asked ChatGPT some of the most common questions with which we see our elected representatives struggle. Does NIH invent drugs? What are profit margins like in the pharmaceutical industry? Will lowering drug list prices via imposing price controls on pharmaceutical companies lower patients' out-of-pocket costs? Find out what AI thinks.

Our year-end wrap of the site’s most popular articles of 2022 reflects a challenging year for the biotech sector, featuring tumultuous markets and the shifting drug pricing policy landscape. But those pieces also reflect the ingenuity, hopefulness, and opportunity that is inherent in drug discovery and development.

Thanks to the selfless efforts of a handful of smart and dedicated volunteers from a few tech transfer offices (TTOs), law firms, and investment firms, the fraught process by which technology licenses are extricated from universities is getting a significant upgrade.

Outgoing Forma Therapeutics CEO Frank Lee talks with Rapport about bringing a patient-centric mindset to a biotech steeped in science and Forma’s acquisition by Novo Nordisk.

At RA Capital, we love our TechAtlas team and the super detailed Landscape Maps they create to help us understand what can otherwise be an overwhelming amount of information. These maps explain the comparative strengths and weaknesses of as many as hundreds of competitive and complementary technologies, drugs, devices, and diagnostics in various stages of development for a particular disease or condition. Think of them like medical treasure maps that lead to the most promising technologies and companies in any given disease area. You can probably understand why we can’t afford to do all that work and just publish the maps freely for the whole world to study.

Then COVID came along.

The RA Capital team has developed short, insight-rich courses on a variety of advanced topics relevant to the business of biotechnology. Our goal is to examine and teach practical and theoretical concepts fundamental to the biotech industry that aren't being presented anywhere else.

“Remember how in love we were in those early days when we first met?” Sarah Reed, RA Capital’s General Counsel (and RApport’s most popular satirist), waxes poetic about her rocky relationship with our collective ex: the office.

When I received detailed communications about my companies on a regular basis, I found I was both more likely to remember what was going on when it came time for the next board meeting and less likely to continually call my CEOs to figure out the bottom line. “Board love notes’ are a win-win.

Lining up spring break plans for this month? If you’re anything like us, you’re probably looking for a good book to bring along. Welcome to the RApport Bookshelf, where we compile what we consider the most essential reads in biotech and health care.

Members of TechAtlas work closely with the Investment Team and our portfolio companies to put data into context, identify breakthroughs, and develop conviction about how to solve particular problems given what we know of all the different technologies in development.

Ah, the American Old West. Where the buffalo roamed, cowboys fought, and Coke still had cocaine. A LOT of things had cocaine. Only the most vigilant and educated physician or pharmacist could hope to keep harmful or useless drugs off their shelves. And if we can still find physicians prescribing ivermectin for COVID today, imagine how hard finding reliable information must have been back then. 

As a Swede who has lived in the United States for ~25 years, I’ve experienced two very different healthcare systems. As a child and young adult, I took free (or nearly free) healthcare for granted. However, when I left Sweden to pursue a graduate degree in the US, I was shocked to realize that the system here is very different. I learned new words like ‘deductible’ and ‘copay’ that were not previously part of my vocabulary.