The public has taken a renewed interest in discussing vaccines, with many people asking to be convinced that vaccines are safe and effective enough to be used as widely as modern medicine recommends. In the hope of reaching some more people seeking answers to common questions, we’ve prepared this Q&A document. Medicine is complicated, and the current discourse is noisy, but it’s possible to bridge the gap between experts and patients by breaking down the jargon. We’ll try to do that here. We wrote this with our own friends and families in mind because we believe that everyone should be able to get clear answers to their questions. We hope it is useful to you.

Big pharma once again showed up for the Superbowl, or their ads did at least. But those pricey spots, while didn’t connect the dots to inspire the American public with their role in getting important therapies to the patients that need them. Were they moving? Sure. But will they move the needle where it really counts? Probably not.

Last March, our Planetary Health team convened investors from 25 of Boston's leading climate tech firms for our own version of March Madness, to predict which planetary/climate tech sub-sectors would have the most successful 2024. Well, it's the moment we've all been waiting for. The results are in!

Since the original version of this article was published in 2023, the market has continued to be tight for biotech investment. New companies continue to form and get funding, but overall, investors are reducing risk with an increasing preference for companies with clinical data – or at a minimum validation in animal studies – before follow-on investments are attractive. 

One of our guiding principals here at RApport and RA Capital is that we learn collaboratively; not just internally, but with the rest of our community as well. RApport is an important part of that (and as always, we encourage you to reach out with questions, comments, and op-ed ideas: rapport@racap.com), but RA University – in which many of our readers are already enrolled – is another. Recently, we’ve been rolling out RAU’s newest, on-demand course: Biotech Unveiled: Understanding the U.S. Biomedical Innovation Marketplace and its Global Role.

Wouldn’t it be better if everyone in our ecosystem were candid with one another?

After all, within companies it’s common to encourage everyone to speak their minds. If you see a problem, call it out; give honest feedback; feedback is a gift; people have a duty to dissent if they disagree with something. So, what stops this corporate if-you-see-something-say-something from going beyond managers and employees? If we normalized candor, we could learn more from one another, cross-pollinate best practices, and correct misunderstandings.

As we break for the holidays and begin to look forward to 2025, we're also taking a beat to look back on what most drew our readers' attention in 2024. 

On the occasion of a documentary about living with cystic fibrosis and the drug that turned his life around, Gunnar Esiason reflects on his personal struggle, the roles of patients and their caregivers in drug development, and the scientific struggle we so rarely see publicly depicted.

On RA Capital's Gateway, Peter Kolchinsky, Managing Partner at RA Capital Management, and Travis Wilson, Partner at Gurnet Point Capital, delve into how biotech companies can achieve more with lean, strategically staffed teams. Small, agile teams of versatile professionals who leverage external expertise when needed lets companies maintain operational efficiency and financial discipline.

Hear from our cast of biotech executives and board members on Gateway as they discuss how they utilize the investors on their boards.

In the high-stakes world of corporate governance, conflicts among board members and executives are almost inevitable. But how can these tensions be turned into constructive conversations that drive organizations forward?

Discover the keys to outstanding board leadership in this Gateway video featuring top industry experts. This engaging discussion explores what truly defines a great board chair, bringing together insights from:

Starting with a blank slate is exciting – the ability to create a platform, a pipeline, a team from scratch is a big reason why one comes to biotech – but it requires a fearless and innovative team and bold investors and partners. The story of how PKU became the first killer app for Jnana’s SLC discovery platform -- a key pivot point in demonstrating the platform's value -- is emblematic of the calculated risk taking that we embrace in biotech.

The bottom line is that when it comes to global revenues for innovative medicines, US revenues for “winners” (the top selling drugs) matter most, since these come at the highest profit margin and launch more quickly, and serve as the primary incentive for biomedical innovation.

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.