Biotech has always been an American strength. We built the science, seeded the capital markets, and set the regulatory standards that the rest of the world followed. That lead did not happen by accident, and it will not be maintained by assumption.
About our Board of Advisors
The Russo Partners Board of Advisors serves as a strategic sounding board for the agency and its clients. The board brings together a diverse group of senior industry voices spanning venture capital, equity research, regulatory policy, public health, media, and biotech industry leadership.
The board convenes annually to assess the state of the industry, identify emerging challenges and opportunities, and stress-test the narratives that matter most to biotech companies, investors, and policymakers. Their collective insight informs how Russo Partners counsels clients on strategic communications.
At our recent Russo Partners Board of Advisors meeting, the conversation turned to three issues that when taken together, tell a story about our country that is still running the race but no longer pulling away from the field. In Part 2, I explore what our board had to say about capital concentrating at the top while smaller companies struggle to survive, China advancing with discipline, resources, and a long-term strategy, and how the U.S. risks falling behind on the preventive side of mRNA while other countries move to own the vaccine infrastructure America pioneered.
None of this is irreversible. The companies and investors who see it clearly today will be best positioned to act on it tomorrow.
When Biotech Capital Concentrates at the Top
The biotech funding market looks healthy from a distance. The headlines are strong, deal activity is robust, and nine-figure Series A rounds have become almost routine. Our board was clear about the gap between perception and reality.
The capital is there, but it is not reaching the companies that need it most.
That’s the financing conundrum we’re in right now, even though it looks so nice from a headline standpoint that we’re raising a lot of money, but a lot of small companies are not even catching the crumbs.
The concentration at the top reflects a structural shift in how the venture community operates. Limited partners are consolidating around fewer fund managers, those managers are receiving more capital, and that capital demands bigger bets. The result is a market where a $500 million reverse merger raises eyebrows for its size rather than its ambition, while a promisingearly-stage company trying to raise $10 million finds the door closed.
What our board found most pressing was not the imbalance itself but the absence of a structural solution to address it. “Is there a way to go and try to find some kind of intergenerational or more permanent capital? Because the venture capital money is 10-year money and that’s just the way it is,” said one board member. Opening retirement savings vehicles to private biotech investment and shifting toward product-specific financing models that fund clinical trials directly rather than entire organizations are two ideas gaining serious traction. Neither is a quick fix, but for an industry running a marathon, that is exactly the point.
China: The Long Game Is Already Underway
China’s biotech ambitions did not emerge overnight. The investment began with their five-year plan in 2010, quietly and deliberately, with a time horizon that most Western capital markets would find uncomfortable. “I find that they are doing some very clever things and they do them very quickly,” said one board member. The ability to move a drug from concept to human trials through the Investigator-Sponsored Trial method, the development of Hainan as an international biopharma free zone, and the systematic modernization of regulatory sciences are the moves of a country that has closed the gap faster than most expected.
That said, our board was honest about where China is still catching up. Much of what has emerged so far has been second-in-class development, refining and improving on existing approaches rather than being truly innovative. The board noted that trajectory matters more than the current innovation position, and it is unmistakably upward.
90 plus percent of the Chinese political leadership were engineers, whereas 90 plus percent in the US were lawyers.
In a race defined by science and technology, that difference is strategic. For an industry that has long counted on American scientific leadership as a given, it is a signal worth taking seriously.
mRNA: The Most Powerful Platform Is Losing Its Home
The platform that produced the COVID vaccine in record time is the same platform that holds promise for cancer treatment, monoclonal antibody therapies, and drug design. While the public conversation has narrowed to mRNA specifically, the broader RNA category tells a more encouraging story. “I think the way I look at RNA is you got to define it broadly and there are actually a number of companies that are doing extremely well,” said one board member.
But the vaccine dimension of mRNA is a different story, and our board did not shy away from it. Public skepticism, political pressure, and eroding institutional trust have created an environment where companies are pulling back from mRNA vaccine development not because of the science, but because the environment around it has become untenable.
The setback is primarily going to hurt the US more than other countries and places because other countries, Europe and an organization like CEPI and the Gates Foundation and others are still moving forward with mRNA based vaccines.
When the next pandemic arrives, the manufacturing capacity and regulatory readiness may well reside outside the United States. The reframing our board called for is both urgent and achievable. Stop talking about mRNA as a product. Start talking about it as a strategic platform capability and a national health security resource.
The Inflection Point Is Now
Capital is concentrating. China is advancing. And one of America’s most powerful scientific platforms is losing ground here at home while others move to claim it. They are present realities that biotech leaders and investors are navigating right now.
But our board was equally clear that none of this is irreversible. The science is strong. The innovation is here. The platforms are maturing. What is needed is the will to act with the same long-term discipline that has made this industry great, and that our competitors are now deploying against us. It is not a setback but a strategic inflection point. Those who see it that way will be the ones who define biotech’s next era. The race is not over, but it is time to run it like we mean to win.
About the Author
Tony Russo, Ph.D., is Chairman and CEO of Russo Partners, a strategic communications firm serving biopharma, medtech, and digital health leaders for more than 35 years.
