In response to their book published in 2019, later revised in 2024, entitled 'The Age of Biopharmaceuticals Is Coming', Drs. Howard Lee and Siun Kim were interviewed by Korea Job World early this year, which has been posted on YouTube. This interview was primarily focused on biopharmaceuticals in terms of their differences in comparison with small molecule drugs and as to why they have become important recently. Drs. Lee and Kim also discussed what kinds of disciplines and technologies are critical to successfully develop a biopharmaceutical. A full video clip can be watched by clicking the link below. 

Prof. Lee stressed the co-vaccination with both COVID19 and Flu since we are entering into a season where flu can become epidemic while the antibody level against COVID19 might not be sufficiently high enough for protecting us from becoming seriously ill once infected. This statement was made in an interview with Arirang TV on October 6, 2023. Prof. Lee continued saying "the pandemic is over, but we are still living with the virus", which leads us to getting some protection against a new sub-variant of COVID19, which is XBB1.5. The two mRNA vaccines by Pfizer or Moderna, respectively, got cleared by the regulatory agencies, Prof. Lee added. A full interview can be watched at the following YouTube link.   

Money Today Broadcasting or MTN interviews Prof. Howard Lee, where he explained why it is indispensable to have a government-wide control tower for new drug development. Prof. Lee stressed the importance of a control tower, preferably set up as an independent, standing government-wide institute that has discretional power over its budget and Human Resources management to maximize its efficiency, which can lead to increased output of new drug development activities in South Korea. His interview can be watched at the following YouTube clip. Additionally, this news article summarizes what Prof. Lee talked in his interview. 

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to Arirang TV New Show in the morning of April 7, 2023, which is World Health Day set by WHO or the World Health Organization. Prof. Lee talked about the implication of the day, coupled with the accomplishments by WHO, particularly for the last couple of years such as the global management of infectious diseases including the COVID-19 pandemic. Full details of Prof. Lee's interview can be watched at the following YouTube link. 

In an interview with Arirang TV, Prof. Howard Lee stressed the new BA.5 sub-variant of the Omicron Covid-19 could bring a new resurgence to Korea as early as in August. "The BA.5 sub-variant has started dominating the Covid-19 sub-variants in South Korea quite recently, which rose to 25% last week, almost tripled from 10% a week before." Prof. Lee also pointed out the super infectivity of BA.5 by saying "The BA.5 sub-variant is by far the most infectious variant we have seen." Prof. Lee continued, "Scientists call BA.5 immune-evasive, which means vaccination or previous infection doesn't help from getting it." Although BA.5 may pose a bigger health problem to the society as a whole, Prof. Lee did not agree to go back to strict measure in the past resurgences. The full video interview of Prof. Lee can be watched at the following YouTube clip. 

Three other MDs were also interviewed and the detailed report of Prof. Lee's interview can be found here. 

DailyPharm, an online journalism company, interviewed Prof. Howard Lee as to how new drug accessibility can be increased by easing the current strict criteria for health insurance reimbursement in Korea. More specifically, Prof. Lee argued the ICER cutoff should be lifted much higher to adequately reflect the economic developments over the past decades. Prof. Lee also discussed time has already come to decide if the nation sticks to an old paradigm of ‘reimbursing everything’ in healthcare, which is absolutely unsustainable financially. Prof. Lee urged the Korean government to show leadership developing a society-wide consensus to build a new fund to support patients with life-threatening diseases, who are likely to die soon unless treated with new, innovative drugs, almost all of which are prohibitively expensive.

The details of Prof. Lee’s interview can be found by clicking this link.

In the upheaval caused by COVID-19 or the coronavirus, Dr. Lee stressed the importance of drug repositioning technology to develop a new treatment. In an interview with a KBS news program, Dr. Lee introduced the listener to the core concept of drug repositioning and explained why it could be life-saving in the midst of the chaotic COVID-19 pandemic. "Instead of finding new molecules or compounds from scratch, drug repositioning looks for test articles under active development or those fully developed for other indications, or even for those abandoned due to various reasons", Dr. Lee commented. 

So far, no treatment has been shown to be effective in treating patients with COVID-19. But, several compounds have been suggested as a potential treatment such as remdesivir by Gilead Sciences, for which ~80 drug repositioning clinical trials have already been commenced worldwide. The full video clip of Dr. Lee's interview can be found down below.

The In Depth 60 Minutes, an investigative journalism program broadcast by KBS, featured an interview with Prof. Howard Lee on August 16, 2019 with respect the recent Invossa debacle. Invossa is a gene and cell therapy approved to treat patients with osteoarthritis of the knee. Invossa was claimed to contain genetically transformed chondrocytes, which turned out not to be the case. Instead, they were cells originated from the human embryonic kidney, which could cause cancer to develop in those who received Invossa. Invossa has been administered to more than 3,000 patients only in Korea. The Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) revoked the marketing approval of Invossa, and promised to initiate a nationwide pharmacovigilance program to investigate the safety impact of Invossa, which though has not been in effect yet. 

In the show, Prof. Lee emphasized why misbranding or mislabelling is a significant health harm, which can be legally penalized. Furthermore, he explained why MFDS was not able to detect what went wrong in the case of approval of Invossa. Prof. Lee added, "Although MFDS has been trying to renovate themselves over the past decade or so, it still lacks the expertise and manpower required to adequately review the safety and efficacy of the drug, particularly advanced therapies such as Invossa." Prof. Lee was featured in a total of four clips. 

The full program can be watched by clicking here.

The GSCST Blog interviewed Prof. Lee on a hot summer day early August, and the interview was featured in a GSCST Blog post. For more information, click here.