Amitabh Chandra, Henry and Allison McCance Professor of Business Administration at HBS and Ethel Zimmerman Wiener Professor of Public Policy and Director of Health Policy Research at HKS (photo by Susan Young)

A key challenge in the life sciences is that the arc of discovery is very long. A notable example garnering worldwide attention is CRISPR-Cas9, a genome-editing tool that builds on the work of a host of international scientists. The effort began in 1993 with Francisco Mojica at the University of Alicante in Spain, subsequently passing from lab to lab through the years to the present day, where it is the focus of Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

“The world is now very excited about the possibility of curative medicines originating from CRISPR-Cas9 technologies invented at the Broad Institute, where Feng Zhang has given us the ability to edit human DNA,” says Amitabh Chandra, the Henry and Allison McCance Professor of Business Administration at HBS and the Ethel Zimmerman Wiener Professor of Public Policy and Director of Health Policy Research at the Harvard Kennedy School. “While we still haven’t figured out how to deliver a therapy from these insights, we now have the idea that this is possible, and companies around the world are working hard on it.”

To help senior executives and scientists at life science companies and related health care organizations advance cutting-edge medicines, treatments, and technologies, Chandra is exploring the development of a course that could enhance decision making by providing participants with the knowledge and skills to better manage, fund, and commercialize scientific discoveries that could potentially cure illnesses ranging from Alzheimer’s to cystic fibrosis to malaria. He hopes a course on this topic will also strengthen collaboration by helping managers and scientists understand each other’s perspectives—especially regarding language, goals, expectations, and timelines—so that they can reconcile the needs of commerce and science.

Chandra’s belief that the life sciences are the most powerful way to reduce human disease and suffering influences his work as a health care economist and researcher. “I imagine a world where we have treatments, ideally cures, for diseases where right now we have nothing,” he says. “So the big questions that motivate me are, what are the missing drugs that we could have, and how can we support their development?”

Chandra explains that because “science is long and hard”—running the gamut from basic research and drug discovery, to clinical trials, to FDA review and approval, to post-approval monitoring—it can take 25 to 30 years to move an idea from petri dish to patient. For companies to endure, they need to be prepared to encourage scientists, reassure investors, handle uncertainty, and navigate the regulatory environment.

Chandra sees the course as delving into the business strategy that revolves around scientific discovery and scientific insights related to the market. He says that the case studies he and his fellow instructors have written will encourage discussions about topics such as the ways companies determine the pricing of a novel drug to make it both accessible to patients and profitable for investors, and the questions managers should ask their scientists about therapeutics they are developing as their companies grapple with both clinical trial successes and failures. Classes also will focus on the most promising advances, including CRISPR-Cas9, base editing, RNA interference, and—to Chandra’s mind, the most exciting development—regenerative biology, as well ethical issues such as “playing God” by virtue of DNA editing.

“When we write the history of the early 21st century, I think we will remember this time as being a period when we achieved absolutely transformative discoveries in the life sciences,” observes Chandra. “I’m very excited about having HBS, and the University more broadly, be a part of the effort to reduce human suffering, because that’s what drives all of us. That’s the shared value among the scientists in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Medical School, the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, the physicians in our hospitals, and all the HBS professors and students. Ultimately, we want to make the world a better place by healing humanity.”

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