Prediction #7 An Explosion in BioPharms innovation

The Pandemic has unleashed a world-wide “Manhattan Project” across all biochemical and pharmaceutical companies to find vaccines and treatments. Companies across the world are streamlining and improving their processes and technologies to quickly find cures and vaccines. Biopharmaceutical companies are learning agile techniques that they will use to speed up future innovations long after a Covid vaccine. Governments are “temporarily” removing regulations to get products to market which I expect will become permanent once they realize how many more life-saving drugs start appearing.   

We are likely going to see a golden era explosion in Biopharmaceutical companies as well as companies focusing tools/supplies for hospitals resulting in great businesses and much better care.  

On top of this, we are learning more about how to control viral spread daily which will reap long term health benefits. In the next 12-18 months, the world is going to likely be far more effective at protecting virus spread (better air filtration, masks during flu seasons, better hand-washing), better at detecting and helping to determine who specifically is most at risk (even on a genetic level), better at early detection of complications and better at identifying which techniques are most effective for reducing viral attacks.

NOTE: A counter-argument was provided to me that we may not see as much innovation here as viruses have much more variation than bacteria so finding general antiviral treatments will be much harder than finding antibiotics, and that loose regulations have been limited to Covid.    

Still, I am optimistic that a number of the learnings we will have from Covid in terms of innovative process improvements, regulatory improvements, and treatment improvements will be transferable to other current and future diseases.

There are going to be a huge number of opportunities in this space including:

• New software to help biopharmaceuticals be more efficient with the new regulatory landscape. 
• New types of supply and tool innovations to stop the viral spread.
• New tools and techniques for identifying viral load early (which can be used for other viruses in the future).
• Collaboration tool for pre-print papers. Think of a Figma or google docs for pre-print papers where scientists can post comments and questions.

If you currently are working on one of these opportunities or want to work on them, please contact me at charlie at iamcharliegraham dot com