Strengthening Pandemic Preparedness Through Collaboration

In this Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Marcel Botha, CEO of 10XBeta, discusses shortcomings in the US' emergency plans for rapid innovation and manufacturing during public health crises, highlighting the need for innovation pipelines, supply chain resilience, and regulatory clarity. He also emphasizes the importance of localized manufacturing, public-private partnerships, and advanced manufacturing techniques like AI and additive manufacturing. Botha notes the success of the Spiro Wave project in reducing ventilator size and the need for better coordination and funding structures. He also advocates for a more agile and collaborative approach to ensure rapid response in future emergencies.

Pharmaceutical Executive: What role does collaboration between private industry, government agencies, and research institutions play in strengthening pandemic preparedness and ensuring medical device resiliency?

Marcel Botha: Collaboration is critical. Consumer level or civilian-led companies do not have the same access and reach as a government agency or research institution. If I take MIT, the city and state of New York, and what we did during the during the pandemic—we all responded as a collective to the pandemic response, specifically the ventilator rapid response here in New York. Making sure that we had a stockpile of our own ventilators should we run out. That project could not have been successful without that consortium of research institution, government agency, and private sector.

That said it was completely under the radar, because at that moment in time it was frowned upon for anybody from MIT to even be on campus. While Moderna and the biotech cluster around MIT was highly active, MIT was hesitant to offer approval at that moment in time to support things that weren't guaranteed.

They definitely doubled down on everything in the biotech space, but it is essential that all parts of society to come together to make sure that we can offer a seamless response and bring different perspectives. Politicians, government agencies, and bursaries open routes for engagement with the publicly funded health sectors, the military, and others. Research institutions crossover with both military and civilian tech and see a lot of early-stage innovation that we cannot see as the civilian population on a daily basis. Then we bring together a very agile commercial sector approach to commercializing products, so that we can effectively guarantee the cost basis. You can't make everything on a Cost Plus [Drugs] basis and not be held accountable for how you bring innovation to market.

How we as the private sector show up when it comes to government or public private interactions or contracts to do our best and to be held accountable is very much in the crosshairs in DC right now.