In 1976, the world’s first biotech was born when two guys walked into a bar and then out with an idea for recombinant DNA. 2026 marks five decades since that encounter — and with it, a milestone anniversary not only for that biotech, but the industry itself.
Still, Genentech is just getting started. With an innovation pipeline across oncology, immunology, neuroscience, and beyond, the company has plans for an even bigger R&D impact over the next 50 years. The question, though, is access: Will everyone who needs this future care get it?
“Just because [a drug] is available, doesn’t mean it’s accessible,” said Joy Russell, vice president of external affairs at Genentech, at the 2025 STAT Summit. “We have a crisis … we have to face it with smart and responsible solutions.”
Those solutions involve effective policy that meets the moment, she said, a critical factor in patient-centric innovation. If the biotech industry is to be as productive in its second half-century as the first, it’ll need to adapt its approach to modern policy challenges.
Local and state policy key to success
As important as it is to be on Capitol Hill, relationships are also built in state capitals, city halls, and other spaces where local and state policy takes shape. Emphasizing the reach of innovation at all these levels, Russell spoke of the importance of supporting access within a community — not just a national — context.
“The way advocacy has evolved over the years, you’re thinking of the whole patient and the community of support around that patient,” Russell said in an interview with STAT Brand Studio, noting also that this “whole patient” perspective was the impetus for Genentech’s patient assistance program. As one of the oldest of its kind, that program helps patients with financial or other access challenges and has been around for 40 years, nearly all of Genentech’s corporate history.
Health care leaders should embrace that sort of patient-centric purpose to drive local policy discussions, but they shouldn’t — and quite frankly can’t — do it alone, Russell added.
“You have to foster that through your academic institution relationships, private partnerships, and public partnerships,” she said. “These are decisions that are being made locally, but do we serve everyone in our locality? That’s something Genentech is very committed to.”
Seeing the “invisible” patients
For all the attention directed at those who are diagnosed and receiving care, many people get lost in the health care system — overlooked in practice and in policy. These are the undiagnosed patients, the uninsured patients, or the nonadherent patients whose hardships create barriers between themselves and their care.
Russell calls them the “invisible patients.” And when taking policy actions, we must not forget about them, she says.
“This is about [the] underserved, as well as those who may be going without,” she said. “This has been a turbulent year … it’s been a turbulent couple of years — not just for patients, but the communities that serve them, and their families going back and being needed in the home to [provide] care.”
That’s why, she added, policy for the invisible patient should be forward-looking. Leaders have to imagine not only what populations with known needs are experiencing today, but what shortfalls might exist tomorrow. Genentech’s effort around biomarker testing access is one example: Advocates are looking down the line of future personalized medicines and preemptively addressing the coverage barriers that could stand in the way.
“It’s a commitment to science in the future,” she said. “It’s building and looking at social determinants of health — thinking about the access barriers that we have now; what will that look like in three years? What will that look like in seven years? That’s where the intersection of policy has to come in.”
Navigating dynamic waters
For better or worse, policies and politics are inherently connected. And, coming off a year that Russell herself calls “dynamic,” biotechs need to start looking realistically at the landscape as they move forward, she advises.
“It has been an unprecedented time, and I think what we all have to do is sort of ride the wave of what is going to really serve us well to have a healthier America,” she said. “This is a critical time for us at Genentech as an innovator, as a science company, and as a company that wants decisions to be made more locally for patients.”
Navigating those waters is possible with determination, and Russell laid out the challenge succinctly: “We have to meet our moment.”
