Confronted by rising global competition, regulatory bottlenecks, economic challenges, and other obstacles, bold new strategies are essential to accelerate biomedical innovation. Yet many institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere are hampered by legacy systems, outdated strategies, or administrative inertia.
Two recent articles published in The Harvard Business Review and Nature Medicine presented strategic models with the potential to reinvent biotech systems for greater patient impact. The authors included leaders within the U.S. academic medical centers (AMC) sector, including Dr. Anaeze Offodile II, Chief Strategy Officer at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK); Dr. Ross Levine, MSK’s Chief Scientific Officer; Dr. Yashodhara Dash, Vice President of Entrepreneurship & Commercialization at MSK; Dr. Whitney Snider, Managing Partner of MSK Ventures; and Dr. Selwyn M. Vickers, MSK’s CEO & President.
For greater insight into the strategies they are recommending—and why they matter—we reached out to the MSK co-authors to learn more.
Q: The HBR article strongly argues that U.S. academic medical centers (AMCs) need a new model for drug development and discovery. What has changed?
A: For more than 50 years, U.S. AMCs have been the global engine for pharmaceutical innovation, with a dedication to fulfilling a mission centered on medical education, scientific research, and patient care. But U.S. AMCs are now facing a major challenge from China, which has emerged as a major rival in the last decade. Its pharmaceuticals R&D sector is on track to become the global industry leader, displacing its U.S. counterpart.
Q: You build a compelling case that, to compete, U.S. AMCs must rethink their approach. From a strategic perspective, what are you recommending?
A: We propose a model that rests upon five core strategies:
▶️ Embrace a new model for accelerating drug development
▶️ Integrate emerging technologies into the drug-development process
▶️ Use strategic partnerships to unlock the value of AI in drug discovery and development
▶️ Extend AMC research investments beyond early-stage science
▶️ Continue to drive global collaborations
Q: The article in Nature Medicine makes it clear that these changes at AMCs need to happen within a larger context of transformation. You argue that there’s a lot to be learned from other countries.
A: Absolutely. As we write, “China’s transformation illustrates what is possible when ideas and infrastructure move in concert: regulatory modernization creates the conditions for change, and institutional adaptation converts those conditions into sustained gains in development speed, patient access, and therapeutic output.”
Q: China is clearly a formidable competitor. But you make the point that this principle is not unique to China.
A: That’s right. These strategies are increasingly evident across countries from Australia to India. Increased focus on biomedical innovation benefits patients everywhere. We make the case that “the next era of biomedical innovation will be defined by systems that integrate policy and practice, where scientific progress is matched by the capacity to deliver it.”
Q: What motivated you to write these articles? Why now, and what do you hope to achieve?
A: We wrote these articles because we are concerned that traditional academic drug discovery models are not keeping pace with the scientific and technological opportunities—especially in AI and with new geographical realities around sources of innovation. The moment is urgent: without new approaches, transformative discoveries risk stalling before reaching patients. Our goal is to catalyze a more integrated, partnership-driven model that accelerates translation of discoveries.
Q: Why are the issues that you’ve addressed so essential to MSK—and its patients?
A: This is central to MSK’s mission—ensuring that groundbreaking science translates into real therapies. Closing the gap between discovery and delivery means faster access to innovative treatments for our patients. Ultimately, it’s about improving outcomes at scale and adhering to our mission of ending cancer for life.
Q: When you describe a new model for accelerating drug discovery, how is this happening at MSK? What is the vision for this at MSK, moving forward?
A: The model is integrated, data-driven, and partnership-enabled—linking discovery, development, and clinical validation. At MSK, this is being built through AI-enabled science, translational infrastructure, and flexible commercialization pathways. The vision is a seamless pipeline from lab to patient.
Q: What are the implications for MSK investigators and clinicians?
A: Investigators gain clearer pathways to translate their work and greater access to resources and partnerships. Clinicians become more directly involved in shaping and advancing new therapies. Overall, it creates a more connected, impact-oriented ecosystem.
Q: You stress the importance of using strategic partners to unlock the value of AI in drug discovery and development. Strategic partnerships have long been fundamental to MSK’s approach to translating research into real-world impact for patients. How does AI make a difference—and are there new or evolving ways that MSK is thinking about its strategic partnerships?
A: Both the advance of AI, and the shift of innovation to centers outside the US, require new types of partnerships—bringing together academic science, technology platforms, and industry expertise. These collaborations are earlier, deeper, and more integrated than before. At MSK, partnerships are increasingly structured as long-term, co-creative and co-development platforms.
Q: Can you give us some examples?
A: Here at MSK, we have already partnered with more than ten companies specializing in AI-driven drug development, enabling frontier algorithms to be deployed throughout each phase of drug testing.
Q: These articles also stress the strategic importance of global partnerships in helping to drive AMC innovation.
A: A good example is MSK’s membership in the U.S.-Australia Alliance for Cancer Research and Treatment. This is a multi-stakeholder public-private partnership for first-in-human and Phase 1 clinical trials. MSK also has multiple strategic partnerships in India, which include supporting the first-ever U.S.-India Cancer Moonshot dialogue to codeveloping trials with India-based biotech companies.
As we’ve written, successful global partnerships can help boost patient enrollment, avoid duplicative testing, and reduce operational costs, including by supporting regulatory harmonization between America’s FDA and other regulatory agencies around the world.
Q: Here at MSK, how do important new initiatives such as MSK Ventures, the Entrepreneurship Initiative, and TxBL –Therapeutics Bridge Labs—directly relate to the issues and priorities you’ve described?
A: These initiatives operationalize the model—TxBL creates new drug molecules; EI builds the entrepreneurial ecosystem; and MSK Ventures provides capital and strategy. Together, they create a continuous and streamlined pathway to patients.
Q: Finally, in thinking about the issues and priorities you’ve addressed, what do you view as the biggest challenges – and most important opportunities?
A: The biggest challenges are aligning priorities and incentives among various internal stakeholders and developing mutually productive AI and clinical collaborations, as well as managing uncertainty and complexity. But the opportunity could be transformative: dramatically accelerating drug discovery and delivering novel therapies to patients faster, while returning value back to the institution to fund our mission.
Read the HBR article here.
Read the Nature Medicine article here.
Learn more about the MSK Commercialization Ecosystem, including MSK Ventures and the MSK Office of Entrepreneurship & Commercialization here.