When Big Pharma Abandoned the Heart | $750m Carduion CSO Dr. Howard Surks

Cardiovascular disease remains the world's leading killer, yet cardiovascular drug development has declined dramatically when compared to other therapeutic areas.Today, we sit down with Dr. Howard Surks, a cardiologist turned bench scientist turned big pharma leader who left Merck and Sanofi to help build Cardurion Pharmaceuticals from the ground up around a first-in-class heart failure drug. In the episode, Howard's discusses journey from studying blood vessel biology at Tufts to running translational medicine programs at two of the world's largest pharma companies: the real tradeoffs between big pharma and biotech, why cardiovascular trials have become so expensive that most companies walked away. We dig into what it actually takes to move a molecule from the lab into patients, and how decades of basic science research became the foundation for Cardurion's PDE9 inhibitor program.