Ep201: Jeremy Levin on Biotech in the Balance

What It Covers

Jeremy Levin, founder of Ovid Therapeutics and past BIO chairman, outlines why U.S. biotech faces a structural crisis of public distrust—tracing the decline from Martin Shkreli's 2015 price gouging through COVID vaccine backlash—and presents 10 concrete commitments companies can adopt to rebuild credibility and secure the industry's strategic future.

Key Questions Answered

• •Public identity crisis: Biotech's failure to distinguish itself from pharma created a political vulnerability. Because 70% of new drugs originate in biotech, yet the public conflates the two sectors, every pharma pricing scandal damages small innovative companies. Levin argues each biotech company should actively and publicly separate its identity from pharma—especially when incidents like Shkreli's generic drug price gouging have zero connection to drug invention.
• •China's five-stage biotech strategy: China executed a deliberate 25-year plan: first mastering API chemical manufacturing, then building pharma services, then attracting overseas talent, then producing biosimilars, and now targeting novel drug discovery by 2035. Levin warns that by 2035 China could dominate novel drug output and leverage medicines as a trade weapon—exactly as it has done with batteries, solar panels, and rare earth minerals.
• •FDA leadership turnover as systemic risk: Roughly 90% of FDA leadership changed within approximately one year under current conditions, creating regulatory unpredictability that Levin estimates will take three to ten years to stabilize regardless of which administration follows. Companies and investors should model extended timelines for regulatory approvals and factor in structural uncertainty when planning capital raises and development milestones.
• •Long-term capital reform levers: Levin proposes tiered capital gains taxation—lower rates the longer biotech shares are held—and transferable R&D tax credits modeled on real estate depreciation rules. Separately, replacing quarterly SEC reporting with biannual reporting would redirect roughly half the legal and accounting burden toward science and patient outreach, better matching capital market rhythms to biotech's ten-plus-year development cycles.
• •Ten commitments framework: Levin's book structures industry reform around ten actionable commitments: scientific truth adherence, patients as primary beneficiary, ethical trial conduct, radical transparency in results and failures, regulatory integrity, long-term capital formation, manufacturing resilience, immigration openness, strategic government designation of biotech, and proactive public communication. Each commitment targets a specific trust deficit rather than offering cosmetic rebranding.
• •Proactive mass communication strategy: Rather than relying on trade publications or podcasts, Levin argues biotech should fund broad consumer advertising campaigns—comparable in scale to direct-to-consumer drug ads—that explain the industry's role in creating medicines, not selling them. Patient-centered storytelling aired on mainstream television channels, including news and sports programming, could shift public perception faster than any policy lobbying effort currently underway.