Biotechnology has changed what is possible in medicine. It has helped turn once fatal diseases into manageable conditions and opened the door to treatments that would have seemed impossible a generation ago. But what happens when science keeps advancing while public trust begins to break down? Today on the Russo Edge, we look at biotech at a critical moment. The innovation is real and the promise for patients is enormous. But the system that supports it, from research institutions and capital markets to public confidence, is under pressure. If biotech is one of America's most important strategic assets, what must we do now to protect it and rebuild trust?
Welcome to the Russo Edge. I'm your host Solomon Wilcox, and today we're joined by Dr. Jeremy Levin, co-founder and executive chairman of Ovid Therapeutics, former CEO of Teva, former chair of BIO, and a longtime biopharma leader whose career has included senior roles at Bristol Myers Squibb and Novartis. Jeremy's own story began far from the boardroom. His family were refugees, and his life was changed by people who saw potential in him and took a chance. That experience helped shape how he thinks about science, purpose, and responsibility. His new book, Biotech in the Balance: Saving a Strategic Industry in an Age of Distrust, makes the case that biotech's future depends not only on scientific progress, but on public trust, patient focus, and a renewed commitment to the people the industry serves. Jeremy, welcome to the Russo Edge. It's great to have you. How are you doing today?
Great pleasure being with you today. Thank you for having me.
Well, I got to tell you, I'm excited about today's conversation. Let's go ahead and get started. And before we get to the book, I want to start with the person behind it. Your life began with upheaval, but it was also shaped by people who took a chance on you. They saw something special in you. Now, how did that shape the leader that you have become?
That is such a question, Solomon. I think there are a couple of things that one should draw from one's histories. One is that teachers are a remarkable influence on you. And because I couldn't read, I had the great benefit of meeting somebody called Mrs. Capel, who took the time to sit down with me and understand that it wasn't that I wasn't reading. I was just more interested in what was going on in the bush. I could track. I could wrangle cattle and sheep, and reading just wasn't up there. But she taught me something. She taught me that if you look beyond the surface, you'll see something else. The second was Stuart Hampshire. Stuart Hampshire at Oxford I met by complete chance. Stuart was the head of Wadham College. He knew I had terrible grades at high school. My grades were two C's and two D's. And yet Stuart listened to me as a person. He asked me what I was interested in. And this extraordinary philosopher took an interest in trying to bring what was inside me out. I've never forgotten that. Those two people exemplify what I think we all should do as leaders. It's not about their success. They were leaders in their own particular world. It's about how you bring out what's best in everybody else. How do you make them win? How do you open doors so that they can walk through? Sometimes people don't walk through, but if they do, then you should be there to support them.
Yeah. I think it's amazing how they saw the curiosity that you had, which you and I both know is the key to learning. You had that innately. They were able to spark it and kindle it, and it's great that they saw what was special lying inside of you. And you're trained as a physician and as a scientist. So when did you first see biotech as far more than medicine, and as a way to build something even bigger for patients?
This was quite a revelation. I had every expectation that my life would probably end up as either a game ranger in the center of Africa, and then once that didn't happen, then I was going to be a scientist looking at the thermodynamics of DNA. And then one day I met a patient with xeroderma pigmentosum, and I asked the question, could I find a way to try and cure this patient? Was there something there? I never answered it at that time. But going to Cambridge and leaving behind the pure science that was the delight that I had at Oxford, I entered a world where in fact biotech came to me. I was asked to look at a new medicine, at the time a revolutionary medicine. It was a medicine derived from a snake venom, never before seen, and this was to become captopril. And I wrote a thesis on it. And I became not captopril, captivated. I became captivated with the concept that you could take a natural product, you could change it, you could test it, and turn it into something that hit a very specific mechanism in a human. And I determined at that time, at that moment, that I had to see what this entire world of biotech was in the United States. And so it wasn't one thing, it was several things. And each one layered in a choice. I made those choices.
It sounds like all of my favorite teachers that I've had in life, both in and outside the classroom. So I want to ask you this. You know, the science in biotech has never been more powerful. So what breakthroughs give you the most hope right now?
Wow, that is such an extraordinary question. I am beside myself at times in wonder as to what we're seeing being laid out in front of us. Solomon, imagine a world where it was just remarkable that you had an antibiotic that just cured you like that of an infection. Well, that's not so long ago. That was really at the end of the Second World War. Penicillin burst onto the scene. Now you fast forward to today. What do we have? We have cancers being knocked back really great. We have chronic diseases that otherwise were killers. HIV. An unimaginable disorder, but now can be completely constrained. These in and of themselves represent a huge advance in humankind's care. And then you have only to think about what would have happened without the vaccines that Moderna, Pfizer, J&J and others delivered at the time of COVID. All, let me be clear, all built on the back of biotechnology. Millions would have died had they not occurred. But that was just the door opener, because what we see today, most recently, an extraordinary event in cancer. This is very exciting. A horribly debilitating, awful cancer, pancreatic cancer, looks like we're on route to knocking it back. We're getting 60% cure rates. This is extraordinary. Extraordinary. Never before seen. And that's all because we're building on science.
And Dr. Levin, that brings us to your new book, Biotech in the Balance: Saving a Strategic Industry in an Age of Distrust. Why was this book needed to be written right now at this present time?
Solomon, against the backdrop of that remarkable tidal wave of innovation, America's never been stronger in that regard. We saw something else creeping in and beginning to erode the very foundations of biotech. And it became imperative for me because those things will destroy this industry from within if we don't put a stop to it. And what I mean by that is we've seen the inception of the disassembly of the very foundations of science that we had. The reduction in the NIH. We have the first introduction of politicizing science, saying that grants can't be given unless somebody agrees with a particular political stance. This is not an acceptable way to build the base. Going on from that, we have begun to see what I thought initially were very necessary changes at the FDA, but executed in a fashion which was extraordinary. Over a period of two or three weeks, 20% of the FDA simply tossed out. In addition to which, 90% of all of the deeply experienced and committed individuals who'd been there for years as leaders gone within 18 months. Then you look at something else, and that is the change in leadership, the change in direction. This institution built over many years shapes the thinking not of the United States but of the world as to how you develop drugs. So my view was very constrained by what I was seeing here in the United States, and that was the fundamental erosion of the pillars of what had allowed biotech to thrive. And by the way, I want to draw a clear distinction. Biotech is about innovation. Once you've innovated, you need some degree of predictability, i.e., developing through the FDA, so that investors can support it, because biotech ultimately depends on enormous amounts of capital pouring in. That's not the same as the pharmaceutical industry. They've never raised capital at all except debt, but that's not relevant. So we need to divorce them. This is why it was called Biotech in the Balance. It is not pharma in the balance. It is biotech in the balance. That innovation engine is at severe risk in this country.
