Campaign 2020 is already weighing on biotech

“It’s an election year," Johannes Fruehauf, the co-founder and president of Kendall Square incubator LabCentral, said yesterday during a panel at MassBio's annual conference. "And we are a big fat target for populists on all sides.”

While not technically accurate — the first presidential primary votes won't happen until February 2020 — the sentiment feels right. Primary candidates from the Republican and Democratic parties have already both made points about high drug prices and about the "big bad pharma people," he said.

“I think it’s important for everyone in this room to use the access you have to the general population to explain what kind of an impact you have,” he said. “What does the average voter know, what does the average taxpayer know about this world? I think we have to develop much better ways to talk about what we do on a daily basis.”

That means behaving well for the next few years and not extravagantly raising prices, he told STAT's Kate Sheridan after the panel. It may also mean taking the time to work out more value-based contracts — and then explaining what they actually are.