How to Stop China From Leapfrogging the US in Biotech

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Carol Massar** (0:14)
All right, so we just want to mention something that Bloomberg reported out back in May on how China is restricting overseas travel for top AI professionals and private firms such as Alibaba and DeepSeek suggesting an escalation in measures intended to safeguard its technology and catch up to the US in a pivotal sphere. We should point out that Beijing for years has imposed travel restrictions on key personnel from prominent college researchers to nuclear scientists and executives at state firms.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:42)
Okay, at the same time, a few things catching our attention apart from that, a report about a Nobel-winning chemist leaving the US to direct an AI materials lab in China and then Carol, an op-ed piece about how to stop China from leapfrogging the US when it comes to biotech.

**Carol Massar** (0:57)
That was in the Washington Post. It actually caught the attention as well of our next guest. Robert Blum is with us. He's president and CEO of the nearly $11 billion market cap clinical stage biopharma and biotech company. It is Cytokinetics. He launched this company back in 1998 Stock, by the way, up about 27% year to date.
He joins us in studio. Welcome, welcome.

**Robert Blum** (1:18)
Thank you, thanks for having me.

**Carol Massar** (1:20)
You know, if I can share before we got going, when I said you've been there at the company long and you reminded us that you launched the company, but you don't necessarily, you like to credit the research team that founded your company. Research is at the heart of so much in your industry. Tell us about what concerns you right now.

**Robert Blum** (1:41)
Yeah, so one of our core values at the company is science is in our soul.
We have four scientific founders. We refer to them as our four amigos. And they came out of academia because they had good ideas, ingenuity leading to innovation. We joined them, several of us, with business backgrounds in launching this company. And what concerns me, and ours is a quintessential biopharmaceutical story, is that in today's day, it's harder to build these types of companies that could ultimately deliver sustainable enterprise and medicines for the longer arc of benefit to patients. And that's because, I think, and it shouldn't be as a surprise to anyone, there's an evolution that has reached an urgent call to action. I do believe that companies like Cytokinetics would be far more difficult to build today, in part because we don't have an industrial policy, a nationwide commitment to science, medicine, and the pursuit of the kinds of things that Cytokinetics does so well.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:50)
When did we lose that vision?

**Robert Blum** (2:53)
I'd say we've lost it over a period of years, but it's more acute care now over the last two to three years.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:01)
Because of the Trump administration's cuts?

**Robert Blum** (3:04)
I wouldn't say it's only because of that. I would say that there's a natural competitive advantage that is beginning to be ceded to China for the fact that they've made a deliberate strategic commitment to a policy industrialization that we could do well to mimic and demonstrate again how we can win.

**Carol Massar** (3:27)
You know, it's interesting, it comes at a time when you think about something like critical minerals or rare earths. We certainly, it seems increasingly have a national policy about that. When it comes to semiconductors, you even have a government that's taking, we all own pieces of an Intel or some other names.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:44)
Which by the way, not everybody thinks these are good industrial policies.

**Carol Massar** (3:47)
No, it's a really good point. And what's interesting is the US has often criticized China specifically for its role in their businesses. What's at risk? Because you say this has been happening for a while. So maybe it's not political because it sounds like it's happened under different administrations.
So what are we missing? What are we losing? Because I also feel like if you go back to COVID, we realized how exposed we were as a nation as well, not just supply chains, but for pharmaceuticals.

**Robert Blum** (4:16)
Absolutely. And you make a good point. It starts with commoditization of pharmaceutical ingredients, moves to supply chains, then to clinical trials, and ultimately to medicines for patients. Cytokinetics is a great example of a company where patients are at the heart of everything we do. And we believe very much that science and medicine should know no borders. But at the same time, there are things we can do to outcompete and to continue to capitalize on where there's ingenuity. For instance, where do early career scientists feel like they're going to have the best opportunity to make an impact, make a dent in the universe for medicine and patients?