Charting the course for medicine’s next frontier at the 2025 STAT Summit

STAT SUMMIT | BOSTON & VIRTUAL

Medicine: The real final frontier

Dear STAT Reader,

There is a lot going on in the world — perhaps you've noticed — and so, naturally, I've been watching "Star Trek." I've been thinking about Captain Kirk's speech, soaked with '60s utopianism, about the dangers and benefits of first contact with an advanced alien race. The dangers were real, he said, but the potential for knowledge and advancement was equally great.

"Risk," he said. "Risk is our business." Well, it's just as true for research and medicine, and though these are dangerous times in medicine in some respects, the potential for knowledge and advancement is, like on Kirk's starship, immense.

Here are a few ways attending the STAT Summit, either virtually or in person in Boston, will help you understand how to make sure, as we all always say, that the benefits outweigh the risks.

We'll have a panel focused on what's next for the pharmaceutical industry with three of the industry's most battle-tested leaders: Emma Walmsley, the chief executive of GSK; John Maraganore, the founding CEO of Alnylam; and Christopher Viehbacher, the current CEO of Biogen and the former CEO of Sanofi.

STAT will welcome Mikhail Varshavski, widely known as Doctor Mike, to the Summit stage. Followed by 25 million people across social media, he has emerged as a leading voice in health communication, interviewing everyone from Kamala Harris to Noah Wyle. At the STAT Summit, he will discuss his journey, connecting with empathy online, and addressing misinformation.

We'll also feature an interview with Bobby Mukkamala, president of the American Medical Association, that will draw on his own experience as a patient — he survived brain cancer — and his 25 years practicing medicine in Flint, Mich., to talk about health care's biggest challenges.

Those sessions join a jam-packed agenda that will include the family of "Baby KJ," the infant helped by gene editing this past summer; two CEOs whose companies have run into changes at the Food and Drug Administration; and big names including Flagship's Noubar Afeyan, Eli Lilly chief scientist Daniel Skovronsky, Akeso CEO Michelle Xia, and Medicare director Chris Klomp. Join us for two days of amazing discussions with an incredible audience.

We all know: Medicine is the real final frontier.