Sebastian Gensior

In July 2023, the United Kingdom government launched the Mansion House Compact, a voluntary commitment by nine of the country’s largest defined contribution (DC) pension schemes to invest at least 5% of their default funds in unlisted equities by 2030. Its successor, the Mansion House Accord, announced in May

Ah, ESG! Not long ago, you could hardly sip your oat milk latte—or endure a quarterly earnings call—without stumbling over this earnest little trio of letters. Environmental, Social, Governance: a veritable holy trinity promising to keep greedy corporations virtuous, polar bears suitably chill, and boardroom consciences cleaner than

Health economics is to pharma what a crystal ball is to a fortune teller—draped in mystique, full of promise, and often wrong in hilarious and consequential ways. Ostensibly, health economics is the rigorous study of how resources are allocated in healthcare. In practice, it’s the art of making

The Incremental Cost-Effectiveness Ratio (ICER) is the darling of health economists and the bane of pharmaceutical companies. At its heart, ICER asks a seemingly simple question: how much are we willing to pay for one extra year of quality life? In practice, however, it has become a highly sophisticated—

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, nor yet a humble one. This was a suite at the Four Seasons, with a sea view, a minibar that would bankrupt a small health system, and the unmistakable aroma of compliance paperwork. Because this was the residence—however temporary—of a Key Opinion

Markov models have become a default tool in drug development, used for modeling disease progression, treatment outcomes, and cost-effectiveness. While mathematically elegant, these models are often inadequate for capturing the complexities of drug development, which involve non-linearity, fat-tailed risks, and extreme events. By relying on memorylessness, Gaussian

Artificial intelligence has had a profound decade in biotech, advancing from a promising academic endeavor to a critical driver of drug discovery, precision medicine, and genomics. Yet, as we stand in 2024, the potential of AI in biotech is both dazzling and frustratingly unrealized. The tools are smarter, datasets larger,

Optimism bias, the cognitive tendency to overestimate the likelihood of favorable outcomes and underestimate risks, is a pervasive issue in biotech projections. It distorts critical aspects of strategy, such as clinical success rates, revenue forecasts, and market penetration models. In an industry governed by uncertainty and fat-tailed risks, this

Biotech and academia are the original odd couple. One is driven by bold bets on untested science and the hope of life-changing therapies. The other thrives on meticulous peer review, incremental discoveries, and an aversion to anything resembling market forces. Together, they’ve produced some of the greatest innovations

Biotech is the land of promise—and peril. Every few years, a new scientific breakthrough takes center stage, drawing billions of dollars, breathless headlines, and a parade of eager investors. CAR-T, CRISPR, mRNA, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), GLP-1 agonists—the buzzwords keep coming. But for every success story,