The article ‘Biotech in the Balance’ features insights from Dr. Jeremy Levin, the Chair of Ovid Therapeutics. It explores the current state and future prospects of the biotech industry in balancing innovation and regulation.
Few industries have changed—and saved—more lives than biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Yet few industries face as much public distrust.
That contradiction is at the heart of this conversation with Dr. Jeremy Levin, chairperson of Ovid Therapeutics, on I Don’t Care with Dr. Kevin Stevenson.
The covenant with the patient
Levin has spent his career at the highest levels of biotech and pharma, and he doesn’t shy away from where the industry has gone wrong. His assessment is straightforward: somewhere along the way, the industry lost sight of what he calls its “covenant with the patient.”
The conversation explores why drug pricing is far more complicated than the number patients see at the pharmacy counter, the role PBMs and other intermediaries play, and why rebuilding public trust must begin with transparency and putting patients back at the center.
America’s biotech leadership at risk
Levin also addresses a much larger question: Is America at risk of losing its leadership in biotechnology? With China treating biotech as a strategic national priority, the stakes extend well beyond healthcare economics to American innovation, competitiveness and national security.
The question isn’t whether extraordinary advances in gene therapy, cell therapy, AI and diseases like Alzheimer’s are coming. It’s whether they will happen here or abroad.