July 11, 2019 – Immunotherapy: The Long and Winding Road – Wayne Pan, MD, PhD

Somewhere, Somehow, Someone’s Going to Pay…for Gene Therapy

This is a unique point in time for healthcare. After decades of dedicated and dogged research by the scientific and medical communities, we are now seeing FDA approvals of gene therapies which can ease or cure a myriad of debilitating diseases. While biopharma companies seek to recoup their R&D costs, the market will struggle to price these treatments, particularly those developed for small and very targeted patient populations. Who and what will determine the cost to the patient? Big Pharma? Government? Insurers? Payers? Manufacturers? Many would say that the cost is more than just what the market will bear, as it will also need to encourage continued innovation, which is arguably, implicit. The next step is to collectively and thoroughly explore and understand the myriad pieces to this emerging “pie” – from there, the current challenges will be made clear, and we can then proceed in this new frontier.

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Speakers

Dr. Wayne Pan is currently a medical director in Global Medical Affairs at BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., working with a talented team of scientists and pharmaceutical professionals, developing innovative therapeutics for patients with serious unmet medical needs in rare diseases. He is responsible for leading the research efforts for medical affairs globally for the mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS) programs in Sanfilippo B (MPS IIIB), Morquio A (MPS IVA) and Maroteaux-Lamy syndromes (MPS VI).

He has over 20 years of broad healthcare industry experience from clinical medicine, to managed care, health information technology and biotechnology. After 5 years of clinical practice as a fellowship-trained orthopaedic hand surgeon, he served as Chief Medical Officer for several San Francisco Bay Area Medicaid managed care plans, where he helped establish two Medicare Advantage Dual Eligible Special Needs Plans. He then moved on to serve as Chief Medical Officer for two San Francisco Bay Area IPAs, as a Chief Medical Informatics Officer of Health Access Solutions, a healthcare software company, as an Advisory Chief Medical Officer for a healthcare-focused data analytics start-up, as Chief Medical Officer for Thrasys, a global healthcare technology company, and was the Chief Medical Officer for Applied Research Works (ARW), a healthcare technology company that developed a simple, effective cloud-based, physician and patient behavioral change platform that is being used in several health plans and medical groups across the US to drive improved performance in healthcare quality, better patient experience and clinical outcomes. Prior to his current position, he was a medical director and health economist in US Medical Affairs at Genentech, working on quality of care initiatives and health economic research in hemophilia, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, stroke and inflammatory bowel disease.

Wayne holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology from Johns Hopkins University, an MD and PhD degree from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  He completed his post-graduate clinical training in Orthopaedic Surgery at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals and Clinics and a fellowship in hand and microsurgery at the Philadelphia Hand Center.  He also finished a post-graduate fellowship program in design thinking at the California College of the Arts.