- Alex, welcome.
Just talk me through the big challenges
facing the biotech industry at the moment.
- So besides the obvious challenges
of the economic downturn,
funding rounds being a bit more challenging,
I think the bigger picture
of what we are really seeing as a challenge
is that the way
we're currently doing biotech drug development,
and the way we're focusing our efforts in treating diseases
is very reactive.
So healthcare is not really healthcare,
it's more sick care.
Once you have a symptom,
you kind of get it treated,
and that leads to a lot of inefficiencies.
So what we are really trying to do
is become more proactive,
and by that,
really preventing the huge cost burden
that comes as we are treating diseases by their symptoms.
- What are the ways to become proactive?
- So that is the big challenge really because right now,
the healthcare systems are not designed to be proactive.
And in order to do that,
we actually need to generate a lot more data
to demonstrate that being proactive
actually makes a difference.
And also the ways we can be proactive,
we need to really target the underlying causes of disease
rather than the symptoms.
So what we need to do is really identify the right patients
before they actually develop the diseases,
so presymptomatically.
We need to do more screening.
We're doing that in cancer already,
and I think that's kind of the role model
of what we need to follow
with a lot of the different
other age-related and chronic diseases,
where we need to be screening
and identifying markers
that can suggest that someone is on their trajectory
to developing a disease,
and interfere then with the right treatments.
And those treatments still need to be developed.
- Where are the opportunities for investment?
- So that's exactly what we are currently focusing on.
So we are developing therapeutics
that are targeting the underlying biology of aging,
which is a main risk factor and probably the main cause
of the development of age-related chronic diseases.
So we are looking at the biology of aging
and the sense of mechanisms
that are associated with the aging process.
And we want to interfere with these mechanisms
so that we can actually prevent development of disease.
One example would be developing drugs
that can deal with protein aggregates.
So protein aggregates,
we all know that about Alzheimer's disease,
they lead to cellular dysfunction.
And if we can deal with the protein aggregates,
we can actually prevent
the development of Alzheimer's disease.
So that's one of the examples.
- What do you see as the future of medicine?
- So the future of medicine will be exactly that.
I envision that
people will, while they're still healthy,
go and see their physicians,
get a full checkup,
get their genetic background checked,
but also all of their biomarkers
associated with lifestyle, nutrition.
And based on those biomarkers,
physicians will be able to tell where they are
in that trajectory of developing certain diseases.
And there will be treatments available
that can be applied before someone develops a symptom,
and really keep people healthy.
- Alex, thank you so much.