ICYMI: WSJ Editors on “Biotech’s Breakthrough Year”

2017 was an amazing year for biomedical advances, with 46 novel drug approvals, a near record – more than double the number in 2016 and the highest since 1996.
Beyond the sheer number of novel new drugs approved, 2017 also stands out as a year of many firsts, with the approvals of the first CAR T-cell immunotherapies from Novartis and Kite Pharma as well as the first gene therapy that targets a disease caused by a specific genetic defect, Spark Therapeutics’ Luxurna. As the Wall Stre