Good Day BIO: Back to routine

Back to work, back to school—and back to routine care. We explain why it’s important to schedule a check-up, and also look at pandemic lessons and holiday weekend news. (910 words, 4 minutes, 33 seconds)

P.S. It’s Dr. Michelle’s one-year anniversary at BIO—read our recent profile of her!

It’s time to return to routine care

As COVID-19 fears in the U.S. recede and we start returning to BBQs, summer camps, and schools, another important thing must return to our lives: routine care.

“In our global efforts to curb one infectious disease, we have inadvertently lost ground in ensuring adequate protection against other infectious diseases,”writes Dr. Julie Gerberding, EVP & Chief Patient Officer of Merck and former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Over the past year, “an estimated 80 million children under the age of one [are] un- or under-vaccinated,” she explains—leaving us susceptible to outbreaks of preventable diseases like measles.

Children are often vaccinated through school-related programs—leaving 1 in 5 behind on routine vaccinations, says The Power to Protect, an awareness campaign developed by a coalition of teacher and school board associations with recommended vaccination schedules and tools for parents and schools.

The better news: The CDC recently updated its COVID-19 vaccine guidance to say it may be administered with other vaccines “without regard to timing”—which means kids could have one vaccination appointment ahead of going back to school.

But it’s not just vaccines. By last summer, 41% of U.S. adults had delayed or avoided medical care, reported the CDC—and 9.4 million breast, prostate, and colon cancer screenings were missed during the pandemic, which could indirectly cause unnecessary cancer deaths.

So, schedule that check-up! This includes key cancer screenings as well as eye, hearing, and dental exams, and NPR says you should add visits for mental and sexual health as well as chronic disease follow-ups if you haven’t done so recently.

Listen:“Cancer doesn’t stop in a crisis,” said Christi Shaw, CEO of Kite Pharma, on the I am BIO Podcast last year. She discussed how the pandemic posed challenges for treatment of other patients and what’s next for personalized CAR-T therapies.

During BIO Digital, a panel of experts from Merck and key patient advocacy groups will discuss how to ensure patients return to care and the role for the biotech industry. Get the details.

More Health Care News:

Biopharma Dive: In first, FDA approves KRAS-blocking cancer drug from Amgen
“‘KRAS mutations have long been considered resistant to drug therapy, representing a true unmet need for patients with certain types of cancer,’ said Richard Pazdur, the FDA's top official for cancer drug reviews, in a statement.”

JLABS: A sneak peek at JLABS @ Washington DC
Johnson & Johnson Innovation’s JLABS @ Washington, DC has “32,000 square feet of lab, prototype, office, and conference room space, providing millions of dollars of laboratory instrumentation and specialty equipment to support [J&J’s] portfolio of companies, all located on the new Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus in Northwest Washington.”

4 key lessons from the pandemic

Washington D.C. is officially opening its metaphorical doors on June 11—but “we cannot pretend this never happened,” writes BIO’s Cornelia Poku. She details four lessons we learned from the pandemic—and how biotech can help us move forward.

1. We have to have sanitary alternatives for plastics.

Demand for plastic increased over the last year, given the necessity of things like personal protective equipment and takeout containers—but this cannot continue.

Luckily, biotech companies including Anellotech, Danimer, and Virent are developing biobased alternatives to traditional plastic, while Novozymes is working to mass produce an enzyme that can eat and digest old plastic.

2. Black and Latinx communities are more susceptible to dangerous events because of historical disadvantages.

“Black and Latinx communities were both diagnosed with COVID-19 and dying from the disease at higher rates than white Americans,” Cornelia explains, because they’re more likely to be essential workers and more likely to live in polluted living conditions.

“With biotechnology, we can help solve for poor air quality through sustainable fuels and carbon recycling, as well as address access to healthy foods with longer lasting fresh foods.”

3. One Health needs to be prioritized because animal diseases are a constant threat.

“Due to our constant engagement with animals, humans will always be susceptible to animal-borne diseases such as swine flu, dengue, yellow fever, or COVID-19,” she continues.

Biotechnology can help us keep our food animals safer and lessen or eliminate the threat of illness-carrying mosquitoes, as two examples.

4. This pandemic is the first in recent memory, but the next one is not too far behind it.

Read the whole thing to learn more about what we can do.

More Agriculture and Environment News:

Wall Street Journal: Genetically Altered Mosquitoes Target Deadly Dengue Fever and Zika
Across the Florida Keys this week, newly hatched mosquitoes are swarming from damp flowerpots, waterlogged spare tires, trash cans and drainage ditches. In six neighborhoods, however, a change is buzzing in the air. Scientists have genetically modified thousands of these mosquitoes and, for the first time in the U.S., set them free to breed.

The New York Times: More than a third of heat deaths are tied to climate change, study says
“The sweeping new research, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change...found that heat-related deaths in warm seasons were boosted by climate change by an average of 37 percent, in a range of a 20 percent increase to 76 percent.”

BIO Beltway Report