Hi everyone, welcome to the A6&Z podcast. I'm Sonal. Today we have one of our special episodes

live from the road, well, not really live, but recorded here during the JPM conference in San Francisco

this week. So in this conversation, A6 and C.Bio General Partners Jorge Kande and VJ. Pande

join me to interview special guest Vos Nero Simhan, the CEO of Novartis, which is one of the largest

healthcare and pharmaceutical companies in the world. In terms of volume, they're the largest

producer of medicines with 70 billion doses a year across a wide range of therapeutic areas from

cancer to cardiovascular disease and more. So in this episode, we cover everything from the latest trends in therapeutics,

from cell and gene therapies to RNA and proteins to other emerging areas and what's

science versus science fiction.

We also briefly touch on clinical trials, go to market, talent hubs, startups working with

big pharma, and throughout we consider where tech comes into

all of this and what happens when science becomes engineering. But we begin with the business of

science and innovation, both inside and outside. You build up R&D expertise in our industry over

long periods of time. If you think about cardiovascular disease, we've been in it 40, 50 years.

And you think about transplant and immunology, again, 40, 50 years,

oncology, 25 years.

So you build up an accumulated expertise.

And really the art of it is to make sure you have a depth of new medicines to keep filling

your pipeline in each one of those therapeutic areas.

Now, there are instances where we find new breakthroughs and areas we're not in. Those you have to

really think about, are you going to really stay in that area for the long term? The other element

of the story is when you really have exhausted your pipeline, we're not so good as an industry

...