The following is an excerpt from an article in the Boston Business Journal first published on October 28, 2024:
Brad Loncar is a longtime biotech investor who’s on a mission to take the types of conversations that regularly happen in coffee shops around Cambridge’s Kendall Square and “broadcast it to the world.”
In recent years, Loncar headed up Loncar Investments, a Kansas-based biotech investing firm that specialized in developers of immunotherapies. But in June 2023, he pivoted to founding BiotechTV, a new venture he hopes will “(bring) the biotech sector to life.”
BiotechTV’s videos feature interviews conducted by Loncar and other team members with biotech leaders around the world. More recently, he has been expanding BiotechTV to feature contributed conversations between interesting people involved in the life sciences industry.
“My goal for year two of BiotechTV is to make it a platform that more people can contribute to,” Loncar said.
To accomplish that goal, BiotechTV recently partnered with MassBio to set up a video podcast studio at the trade group’s Kendall Square headquarters.
The studio allows two local brain cancer experts, for example, to record and share a conversation on a timely topic.
“I think the role that the podcast studio plays is that we’ve made it easy for people to do that who might not ordinarily do that on their own,” Loncar said. “Not only do we take the technical side of it totally off the plate for you, and make it easy, we publish it on our network, so to speak, and put it in front of our audience.”
Jason Cordeiro, chief operating and innovation officer at MassBio, said BiotechTV’s mission — to share stories from the life sciences industry — meshed with the trade group’s goals.
Earlier this month, MassBio came out with a new plan called “Vision 2030” to drive new investments, job creation and infrastructure in the state’s life sciences industry. Part of the plan calls for improving the public perception of the industry.
Cordeiro says that while those within the life sciences industry may be familiar with patient stories and the work required to bring forward new medicines, the general public is often not.
“As part of our 2030 strategic vision, part of this is improving the industry sentiment. So we want to do some really public-facing type of work over the course of the next couple of years to put these stories out there,” Cordeiro said. “So BiotechTV is going to help us identify those stories that we’re going to then be able to implement into our community and get those things right in front of the public.”