All of us connected with the biopharma industries have a special interest in the larger issues of health care and health care reform. We are not only individual consumers of medical products and hospital and physician services, but also scientists and business people professionally responsible for advancing the quality of health care by discovering and bringing to market effective new medicines, devices, and therapies.

As such, we have at times been unfairly linked to the rising overall costs of health care in this country, even though we know that in fact the cost of prescription drugs is only a small (and stable) fraction of overall health costs.

I’m therefore delighted to report that at CURE’s Annual Meeting April 27, our guest speaker will be Professor Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton, one of the country’s foremost experts on the U.S. health care system and health care reform. In his talk, “Health Care Reform and Innovation,” Professor Reinhardt plans to examine how health care reform will play out over the next four years, and its impact on biopharma R&D and innovation.

Following Professor Reinhardt’s remarks, we will continue an Annual Meeting tradition by presenting this year’s CURE Award for Excellence and CURE Atlas Award for Venture Capital Achievement to winners selected from among Connecticut organizations and individuals. These are the people and organizations that are keeping Connecticut at the forefront of bioscience innovation and productivity, so I am delighted to have the opportunity to recognize them. 

Seats not taken by CURE members at this extraordinary event will be made available to the public. (See related article.) I hope you’ll be able to join us.

I also hope you'll be able to join us April 22 in Hartford for the launch of the new Boehringer Ingelheim ScienceQuest program. This program, aimed at bringing the very best in science education to students at the elementary school level, has been developed by Boehringer Ingelheim in conjunction with CURE BioScience Explorations.

At the launch in Hartford, besides having the opportunity to tour the new ScienceQuest mobile laboratory, you'll have the chance to meet Professor Thomas Steitz of Yale, the 2009 Nobel prize winner in chemistry, who will lead a science experiment aboard the mobile laboratory. (See related article.) 


Paul R. Pescatello is President and CEO of CURE.