David Southwell: CEO of Volastra Therapeutics
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What insights does David Southwell share about leadership in biopharma?
to the extent that you're relatively humble and transparent, it helps.
That's the voice of David Southwell, CEO of Volastra Therapeutics, headquartered in New York. Listen in to hear insights from David about leadership in biopharma and how Volastra is working to discover and develop oncology therapeutics targeting chromosomal instability, a vulnerability of cancers. I'm John Simboli. You're listening to BioBoss. Welcome to BioBoss, David. As you gained executive experience, did you find yourself at any point thinking, you know, I'm really, this is a natural fit for me. I'm really cut out to be a CEO. Or is it a more organic kind of thing that just sort of happens?
Well, I think to some extent, I just have a very low tolerance for boredom. And the one thing about biotech is you're never bored. You come into a company with most businesses you're trying to control the risks and your main risk is a competitor. And you come in and you figure out what your advantage is against the competitor and you maintain that advantage. And then you just kind of keep going and build the company.
How does David Southwell define success and risk in biotech?
In biotech, you deal with uncontrollable risks, whether you're a scientist or a business person. You know, preclinical data, unfortunately, more often than not, do not translate into good clinical data. And you can get tripped up by the business side of things. Often, we're a very science-oriented industry, and sometimes people get too deep into the science and that they realize that they've developed the perfect solution to a very small problem or the perfect solution to a problem that someone else has solved a few years ago and you just didn't notice it. So I think that the situational awareness component of this industry is something that really needs to be kept in mind. You know, you can have a really good scientific idea, but you've just got to keep an eye on the market.
And cell therapy is an example. is, I mean, it's really helped an awful lot of patients, but ultimately the question is, will the payers pay for it? And will the payers pay for it? And how many, once you start slicing and dicing your patients for people that have the particular antigen that you're going after or the particular HLA, how big is the market really? And then how many of those patients are covered by insurers that will pay for it? And then of course, now you're dealing with international reimbursement.
What challenges do biotech CEOs face in decision-making?
And I'm also on the board of PTC Therapeutics, which I've been on the board of for 20 years, and they've got many drugs on the market internationally. And over there, the reimbursement is often driven by one government. So you have one customer, and that customer can pull down a pretty attractive price. But then again, that creates the problem of most favoured nation status. So If you have a drug and you've negotiated a price that works really well, given the volume that you have in a particular European country, if all of a sudden you have to charge that price in the US, it could drive you out of business. So there are so many different variables, but I think any biotech CEO who honestly says that they sleep well at night is probably naive.
I've asked a variation on where you are right now on several of the BioBoss discussions along the lines of, well, in a framework in an industry where there are so many things that are not under one's control as CEO, how do you reach decisions? How do you just keep from being paralyzed by the lack of information or the lack of certainty? I've had CEOs say to me, well, I just had to learn that I could always go back and fix it. I've had other ones say, oh, no, the secret is to see around the corner and to anticipate the problems, have lots of options set up. And I know there's no simple answer to that. But how do you keep going when you don't know what you don't know?
Well, I think you just try to control the controllables. You hope that you're working with people who feel the same way, most notably boards. If you're a CEO, you ultimately report to the board and you need to be transparent about the risks.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What insights does David Southwell share about leadership in biopharma?
0:05–1:24
2
How does David Southwell define success and risk in biotech?
1:24–2:55
3
What challenges do biotech CEOs face in decision-making?
2:55–6:28
4
How does Volastra Therapeutics target chromosomal instability in cancer?
6:28–9:23
5
What is the significance of biomarkers in cancer treatment?
9:23–12:43
6
How does David Southwell's experience shape his management style?
12:43–16:12
7
What are the future plans for Volastra's drug development?
16:12–18:53
8
How does David view the intersection of science and business in biotech?
18:53–31:23