Busting bottlenecks in translation: a Grand Rounds preview podcast

A preview of BioCentury’s U.S. Grand Rounds meeting in Chicago

The academia-industry interface is more important than ever for sustaining biomedical innovation’s forward momentum, even as the Trump administration injects turbulence into academic funding for universities. On a special edition of the BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s Simone Fishburn and Karen Tkach Tuzman preview Grand Rounds, BioCentury’s second annual R&D conference.

Kicking off June 4 in Chicago immediately after ASCO, the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting, Grand Rounds gets into the weeds of what’s happening at the juncture of translational science and early-stage R&D in a three-day event with a program focused on overcoming bottlenecks in emerging disease biology, therapeutic modalities and enabling technologies.

BioCentury’s editors are joined by Michelle Hoffmann, executive director of the Chicago Biomedical Consortium, and Meera Raja, SVP of Deep Tech at Chicago tech non-profit P33, who explain what differentiates Chicago’s life sciences ecosystem from other hubs. Chicago, they say, boasts an engineering-heavy landscape with a broad range of specialties, from predictive models and AI automation to micro-electronics, synthetic biology and quantum computing. Chicago also serves as the gateway to innovation in the greater Mid-West, Hoffmann said.

Daniel von Bornstädt, an associate partner from longtime BioCentury conferences Insights Partner McKinsey & Company, joins the podcast to preview the McKinsey report that will be presented at Grand Rounds. This year’s report focuses on executional excellence, and delves into the levers that innovators can pull to speed up drug development timelines.

Spots are filling up for the Grand Rounds U.S. Presenting Company Class of 2025. Find out how to apply here.