Crossing the Valley of Death: How the Manning Institute Will Transform Science into Medicines

About this episode

Dr. Mark Esser discusses the challenges of turning scientific discoveries into real medicines and how the Manning Institute aims to bridge this gap.

Why do so many promising scientific discoveries never become real medicines? In this episode of Biomedical Frontiers Dr. Mark Esser, Chief Scientific Officer of the Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology at the University of Virginia, describes one of the biggest challenges in healthcare innovation: the translational valley of death . Dr. Esser explains how the Manning Institute is being built to bridge the gap between academic discovery and patient-ready therapies. Drawing on decades of experience in industry, he shares how infrastructure, cross-disciplinary teams, regulatory expertise, and new funding models are essential to turning science into medicine. The conversation explores: Why promising biomedical research often stalls before reaching patients How the Manning Institute’s Accelerate, Create, Educate (ACE) model is designed to overcome these barriers A real-world case study of a novel sepsis therapy entering clinical trials What this effort means for the future of drug discovery and Virginia’s growing biotech ecosystem Follow Dr. Mark Esser on Social Media LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-esser-0b152b2/ Email: mark.esser@virginia.edu Paul and Diane…

People in this episode

Host: Dasha Tyshlek

Guest: Dr. Mark Esser

Topics covered

• healthcare innovation
• translational research
• biotechnology
• drug discovery
• clinical trials
• sepsis therapy

Keywords

• biomedical research
• Manning Institute
• patient-ready therapies
• Accelerate Create Educate model
• biotech ecosystem
• regulatory expertise

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Paul and Diane Manning Institute of Biotechnology, University of Virginia, UVA Licensing & Ventures

Products: A Practical Guide to Drug Development in Academia