Strand Tx CEO Jake Becraft weighs in on FDA's IND reform, China
For Jake Becraft, Ph.D., the future of America’s biomedical innovation isn’t just playing out in the lab—it's being shaped by industrial policy. In a recent interview with Fierce Biotech, the Strand Therapeutics CEO and co-founder warned that the U.S. faces a critical choice: either modernize its regulatory framework for early-stage clinical trials or risk losing the capabilities permanently. “We need to have a concerted industry-government effort [to] come together to actually understand, what are the risks of building the drugs in a certain way? What do we need to know about them? What is acceptable? What is necessary?” Becraft, who also sits on the board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, said. Becraft was referring to what he describes as cumbersome FDA requirements for Investigational New Drug (IND) filings and lagging industry support as prohibitive factors for small biotechs planning to start first-in-human clinical trials in the U.S. During March testimony before the