Send us Fan Mail In biotech, discovering a drug is only half the battle. You have to understand the science, raise the capital, design the right clinical trials and convince the world that your hypothesis is worth pursuing. Today I'm joined by someone who has spent more than three decades at the intersection of science, medicine, business, and capital markets. Dr. David Crean, Ph.D. is the Chief Business Officer of MediciNova ( https://medicinova.com/ ), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing small-molecule therapies for neurodegenerative, inflammatory, fibrotic and other difficult-to-treat diseases. At MediciNova, Dr. Crean leads corporate development, partnering, investor relations and capital-markets strategy, and he has played a central role in communicating the company's scientific and strategic vision to investors and the broader life-sciences community. And Dr. Crean brings a pretty unusual perspective to that job. He's not simply a business executive who entered biotech from the financial world. He holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics, began his career doing biomedical research, spent years involved in drug development and portfolio management, and then moved into corporate development and strategic transactions. At Allergan, Dr. Crean spent more than a decade working across neurology, medical aesthetics, dermatology, ophthalmology and other therapeutic areas, ultimately negotiating and closing more than 30 strategic transactions involving acquisitions, licensing, partnerships and equity investments. Since then, Dr. Crean has advised more than 250 life-science and healthcare companies and been involved in more than 50 transactions representing more than a billion dollars in aggregate value. But what is particularly fascinating about Dr. Crean's career is that he's repeatedly occupied the space between science and capital - helping scientists and entrepreneurs translate great science into something that can actually be financed, developed, partnered, commercialized and delivered to patients. And that brings us to MediciNova. The company's lead program is MN-166, or ibudilast, an orally available small molecule with anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective properties that is being developed across several neurological diseases, including ALS, progressive multiple sclerosis and degenerative cervical myelopathy, with additional investigations in areas including glioblastoma, Long COVID and chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. The ALS program is especially interesting because MediciNova has now completed enrollment in its Phase 2b/3 COMBAT-ALS study, while a separate NIH-supported expanded-access study, SEANOBI-ALS, reached its target enrollment of 200 patients this summer. And Dr. Crean has another fascinating project underway: his forthcoming book, Dual Fluency: How Life Sciences Leaders Master the Language of Science and Capital ( https://dual-fluency.com/ ), which explores the idea that leaders in biotech need to be fluent in both the language of scientific discovery and the language of investors, partners and business. So today we're going to talk about ALS and the science behind MediciNova - but also about something much bigger: What does it actually take to turn scientific potential into a successful medicine and a successful company? #ALS #AmyotrophicLateralSclerosis #Ibudilast #MediciNova #NeurodegenerativeDisease #Neuroscience #Neuroinflammation #Microglia #DrugRepurposing #Biotechnology #Biotech #Pharmaceuticals #DrugDevelopment #ClinicalTrials #Neurology #MotorNeurons #BrainHealth #MedicalResearch #Science #Innovation #LifeSciences #Healthcare #Pharma #ProgressPotentialAndPossibilities Support the show
