Emerging biotechnologies are being developed to provide hope and healing for our neighbors who are vulnerable; we recognize that investors delight in the value new treatments can create for communities. But so often we hear stories about patients who are struggling with access and affordability.

Eventide believes that industry and investors are well-positioned to address these challenges. We have the opportunity to leverage the power of purposeful investing to remove impediments to treatment—so that the healthcare system can truly promote health and patients can turn their imaginations to holistic wellbeing. As an extension of our Business 360® framework, our team is launching a new industry-specific initiative to motivate biotech companies towards sustainable strategy. The positions that drive our activities are shared below:

• Transformational Medical Technologies

  We believe that treatments ought to meaningfully transform the patient’s life expectancy and/or quality of life. We embrace companies pursuing treatments that significantly improve upon current therapies: either by way of reducing side effects/adverse events, increasing expected life years, or bettering quality of life; additionally, we seek treatments that will impact systemic spending, driving down costs associated with a respective condition.

• Alignment with Bioethical Principles and Practices

  We affirm organizational values, culture, and leadership with a commitment to bioethical alignment, promoting fidelity, veracity, and the principles outlined by the Belmont Report¹ in animal studies, clinical trials, and service to the patient population.

• Ethical and Effective Corporate Governance

  In accordance with Eventide’s Business 360® diligence criteria, companies must promote ethical and effective corporate governance.

• Sensible and Sustainable Pricing

  We recognize that a treatment’s price ought to be sensible and sustainable, simultaneously respecting the healthcare ecosystem and allowing for innovative companies, their researchers, and their supporters to be remunerated fairly for their investment. We engage with companies to encourage responsible stewardship of capital to ensure that inappropriate costs will not be passed on to patients. We advocate for expanded cost effectiveness analyses to encourage ethical exploration within a range of prices.

• Principled Corporate Strategy

  We hold that once a treatment is available to patients, companies should engage in principled corporate strategy with attention to avoiding Pharmacy Benefit Manager kickbacks, low-value reformulations, pay-for-delay, etc. We believe the company ought to look to “genericize” their product after a specified period of time.

We believe that engaging with the healthcare ecosystem on this issue can help to further promote value creation for patients and those who will someday need care.

1. Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). “Read the Belmont Report.” HHS.gov, https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the-belmont-report/index.html.

As of February 2022.