Sam Davis

.@dawallach explains why China's rise in drug development could be a bigger disruption to the biopharma industry than AI: "Over the past 5-10 years, China has both invested tremendously in early stage development, like discovery work, and pre-clinical biotech outsourced labor." "In China, what they have tried to do is [all the work we do in America] at a quarter of the price. And because the big pharma companies are multinationals, increasingly they've been comfortable doing that work in China." "Now it also turns out the quality of the work is outstanding because guess who's doing it? A lot of Chinese scientists who got their PhDs in the United States and then we kicked out because we're idiots." "China is ascendant and now the lifeblood of big pharma, which is buying new drugs from little biotech companies. Now they are buying double-digit percentages of their new drugs from China."

Susan would be so happy to see the launch of the SWF foundation on YouTube. Thanks to all the creators for their support!! youtu.be/jJ7r6p9Qjes?is=jLRA… via @YouTube

Having waded through 163 pages of the draft COINS rule published by Treasury, my team and I can now respond with a simple graphic. It will blind US companies and undermine our biopharma capabilities and national security, exactly opposite to what the policy is aiming to achieve. It does nothing to actually block a Chinese biotech from commercializing a drug in the US, with a European partner, European investors, or on its own. We value medicines highly and will now be paying others for them. Why would we do this to ourselves? We shouldn’t. But you can’t submit a comic to Treasury so we wrote out a detailed comment that both lays out how the draft rule would backfire on American biotech and what revisions would allow Treasury to better achieve their stated national security objectives. Have a look. Biotech investors and executives are welcome to sign onto our comment but the main purpose of publishing it now is to drive discussion that helps everyone sharpen their thinking and informs their own comment to Treasury, due Dec 7th. Anyone is welcome to crib from this. No need to ask. We wrote it after considerable input from legal experts and peers. Since coins draft rule is itself unclear on many points, reasonable people can disagree as to its intent and meaning, so some of our comments address broader points meant to encompass a range of possibilities. If you read what Treasury wrote, you might get the sense that they know this will backfire on America and are looking for support to revise their language to avert harm. So give this thought and submit your own analysis. We provide links in the article to the submission page. And thanks to all who have already signed on. @NPLB_org racap.com/rapport/comment-fr…

Why might the frontier labs be interested in biotech?

As someone who has helped companies pioneering the use of AI for drug discovery, this is BS. Sure, AI is a tool that we all should deploy to the best of our abilities, but the idea that AI is going to unveil new medicines at a stunning rate the way it will upend cinema, video games, financial services, advertising, gambling, etc., is a bit absurd. New medicine discovery will be one of the laggards in terms of AI revolution. Healthcare provision, diagnostics, and paperwork streamlining will all move ahead faster. Biology will continue to eat everything, AI included.

there is no moat