Transcription
[music] Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts radio news.
You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio.
All right, so we just want to mention something that Bloomberg reported out back in May on how China is restricting overseas travel for top AI professionals and private firms such as Alibaba and Deepseek, suggesting an escalation in measures intended to safeguard its technology and catch up to the US in a pivotal sphere. We should point out that Beijing for years has imposed travel restrictions on key personnel from prominent college researchers to nuclear scientists and executives at state firms.
Okay. At the same time, yes, few things catching our attention. Apart from that, uh, a report about a Nobel chemist leaving the US to direct an AI materials lab in China. And then, Carol, an op-ed piece about how to stop China from leaprogging the US when it comes to biotech.
That was in the Washington Post. It actually caught the attention as well of our next guest. Robert Bloom Blum, excuse me, is with us. He's president and CEO of the nearly 11 billion market cap clinical stage bioarma and biotech company. It is Cytokinetics. He launched this company back in 1998. Stock, by the way, uh up about 27% year to date. Uh he joins us in studio. Welcome. Welcome.
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Um you know, if I can share before we got going when I said you've been there at the company long and you reminded us that you launched the company, but you don't necessarily you like to credit the research team that founded your company. Research is at the heart of so much in your industry. Tell us about what concerns you right now.
Yes. So, one of our core values at the company is science is in our soul. We have four scientific founders. We refer to them as our four amigos. And they came out of academia uh because they had good ideas, ingenuity leading to innovation. We joined them, several of us with business backgrounds in launching this company. And what concerns me and ours is a quintessential biofarmaceutical story is that in today's day it's harder to build these types of companies that could ultimately deliver sustainable enterprise and medicines for the longer arc of uh benefit to patients. And that's because I think and shouldn't be as a surprise to anyone there's an evolution that has reached an urgent call to action. I do believe that companies like cytokinetics would be far more difficult to build today in part because we don't have an industrial policy a nationwide commitment to science medicine and the pursuit of the kinds of things that cytokinetics does so well.
When did we lose that vision?
I'd say we've lost it over a period of years, but it's more acute care now over the last two to three years.
Because of the Trump administration's cuts.
I wouldn't say it's only because of that. I would say that there's a natural competitive advantage that is beginning to be seated to China for the fact that they've made a deliberate strategic commitment to a policy industrialization that we could do well to mimic and demonstrate again how we can win.
You know, it's interesting. It comes at a time when you think about something like critical minerals or rare earths. We certainly, it seems, increasingly, have a national policy about that. When it comes to semiconductors, you even have a government that's taking we all own pieces of an Intel or some other names.
Which by the way, not everybody thinks these are good industrial policies.
No, it's a really good point. And what's interesting is the US has often criticized China specifically for its role in in their businesses. Um, what's at risk? cuz you say this has been happening for a while. So maybe it's not political because it sounds like it's happened under different administrations. Um, so what are we missing? What are we losing? Because I also feel like if you go back to co we realized how exposed we were as a nation as well. Not just supply chains but for pharmaceuticals.
Absolutely. And you make a good point. It starts with commoditization of pharmaceutical ingredients, moves to supply chains, then to clinical trials and ultimately to medicines for patients. Cytokinetics is a great example of a company where patients are at the heart of everything we do. And we believe very much that science and medicine should know no borders. But at the same time, there are things we can do to out compete and to continue to capitalize on where there's ingenuity. For instance, where do early career scientists feel like they're going to have the best opportunity to make an impact, make a dent in the universe for medicine and patients? In the United States, there's been more recently a beginning of distrust around science. We need to restore that trust in science for the benefit of scientists who want to contribute to humanity and benefit mankind.
To be fair, I I do feel like that is certainly something you can point to the current administration for.
You know, I don't want to get into the politics of it all. Yeah. But I will say it has I believe transcended politics to the point where it's distrust for science funding for that which is uh government and academic science for the benefit of companies like ours that can industrialize that.
What I find notable about what you're saying is that I mean you're you roots are Silicon Valley. That's where your company's based. That's where the DNA of your company is. There's so much of Silicon Valley has gone to Washington with this administration. Do you do you have conversations with with the folks who used to be on your home turf who are now in Washington? They they they are the ones who they understand academia. They understand research. They understand science. They understand investing in the way that startups play a role in this ecosystem.
Yeah. All the time. And you're right. It just hasn't yet extended to biotechnologies the way it should. When nation states decide that biotechnology is an industrial competitive advantage, they'll be I think lining up together with us to be able to do what's right for all patients regardless of geopolitics. And that's something that I think cytokinetics can be an exemplar. We used to talk about how we can punch above our weight class at cytokinetics. Ours is a company built on the industrialization of science that started with federal funding of academic research and then we parlayed that into research development and now commercialization. It's taken us 28 years to get to a place where we have a sustainable R&D engine that can deliver medicine after medicine. We just launched our first uh commercial medicine earlier this year, a drug for uh the treatment of a disease called obstructive hypertrophic cardopathy. Over the course of 28 years, we invested billions literally 3 to four billion in net operating deficit till now. But for the fact that this can harvest return for patients, return to shareholders in a way that companies like Janentech or Amgen, Vertex, Regeneron have done. It took those companies 20 to 30 years and look at where they are now.
They were startups at one point too.
Hopefully cytokinetics can be an exemplar of that too.
Robert, unfortunately, and I hope we can continue this conversation in the future. Um, 30 seconds left here. So what would you like to see the administration do or I don't know what is it between public and p public sector just quickly.
I think public private can join together we're all oriented towards the same objectives mission and medical and to the extent that we can make this a national priority. We can compete on our own merits. We [music] don't need protectionism but we do need to know that everybody's aligned to the same hopeful objectives.
Yep. A common goal perhaps. Robert Blum, thank you so much. President and CEO of Cytokinetics joining us right here.