About William Feehery
William Feehery, CEO of Certara, discussed the company's initial public offering on CNBC's "Squawk Alley" on September 17, 2021. He described Certara as a "nice profitable growing business" that provides biosimulation technologies, which he said are "changing the way that drug development is done." Feehery explained that biosimulation involves creating computer models of how a drug is absorbed, metabolized, and interacts with targets in the human body, as well as modeling effects across different populations. He stated that over 90% of new drugs approved by the FDA since 2014 have been from Certara's customers.
Feehery noted that the company's software can simulate how a drug might affect different populations, and he said that some current events, such as allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine, would be "excellent use cases" for the technology. He attributed improvements in Certara's technology to advances in understanding biology and the accumulation of clinical data from the pharmaceutical industry. Feehery also stated that regulators, including the FDA, have been using the company's technology for a long time in evaluating submitted data.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from William Feehery's recent appearances.
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Transcript (10 segments)
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Interviewer0:00
Joining us in a CNBC exclusive interview, Certara CEO William Feehery. William, congratulations. Great to have you.
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William Feehery0:05
Thank you. It's really great to be here today. We're very excited. We had a nice opening trade. You mentioned the COVID-19 backlog, working with the Gates Foundation accelerator. It's hard to imagine a better dovetailing of market timing and industry dynamics.
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Interviewer0:24
You know, I think the fact that Certara has been around for over 20 years, we've been working with over 1,600 customers worldwide. We've built a nice, profitable, growing business that delivers biosimulation technologies, really changing the way that drug development is done in the world. That's what excites us, and we're just so proud to be at this point where we've met this public company milestone.
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William Feehery0:52
Looking at the company profile, the term 'biosimulation' comes up a lot. Is there a way to break that down and decompose it so the layperson could understand?
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Interviewer1:04
Yeah. What we do with biosimulation is we have a computer model of what a drug will do in a human body: how it's absorbed, metabolized, and how it interacts with the target. We can also model what happens across large populations of people that a drug might encounter when it's put on the market. By doing that, we can provide a lot of information during drug development that helps design clinical trials more efficiently, and it helps inform the safety and effectiveness of a drug. This has been used more and more by the pharmaceutical industry through our history. Right now, over 90% of new drugs approved by the FDA since 2014 have been to Certara customers, so we're really proud of that.
I wonder what the use case is in situations like we find ourselves in now, looking at this Pfizer vaccine that some people are having allergic reactions to. I think of you guys as maybe like an Autodesk for biology. Are you able to account for the variations in human biology and figure out why there are different reactions in cases like this?
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William Feehery2:19
Yeah, that's a great point. One of the key features of our software is the ability to simulate what's likely to happen with a drug in different populations of people. Obviously, I can't comment on any individual project, but some of what we're seeing here would be absolutely excellent use cases for our software and technology.
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Interviewer2:45
So then what would you say are the accelerants to the effectiveness of your technology over time? Is it technologies like supercomputing, cloud computing, that allow for more calculations to be done for less expense?
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William Feehery3:00
The key to improving our technology is that we've benefited a lot from the massive improvements in understanding the underlying biology. We're always informing and validating our technology by more and more clinical data that comes out of the pharmaceutical industry. That experience base is really important, especially as regulators think about our technology. One interesting feature is that regulators around the world, including the FDA, have been using it for a long time in questions they ask about data submitted to them.
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Interviewer3:40
Shepard Smith here. Thanks for watching CNBC on YouTube.
