Prof. Howard Lee argued that the current dichotomy between 'orphan drugs' and 'treatments for orphan disease' has severely aggravated the lower reimbursement rate by the National Health Insurance Service for orphan drugs, particularly for children. This argument came out from a forum Prof. Lee was invited to at the National Assembly on July 13, 2022. Prof. Lee continued the reimbursement decision for orphan drugs cannot solely be dependent upon cost-effective analysis because the society has to pay ethical and humanitarian attention to children with orphan diseases and their families, not to mention their pains and frustrations. Prof. Lee's plenary talk was well received by the press too, and his full presentation can be watched by clicking the YouTube link below.  

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. 

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to the 2022 Spring Conference of the Korean Society of Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Regulatory Sciences, June 24, 2022, where he proposed the most critical and urgent action items to advance regulatory science in Korea. Prof. Lee emphasized that four areas of uncertainty needed to be clarified first before the level of regulatory science in Korea could be improved. According to Prof. Lee, there are four uncertainties in the regulatory science community in Korea, i.e., the focus, driver(s), human resource development, and making regulatory science academically vigorous and independent. Prof. Lee's talk was featured in an article by KPA News. 

Prof. Lee's full  presentation can be watched at the following YouTube link. 

Prof. Howard Lee emphasized the role of regulatory science in the development and fast introduction of advanced medical products including therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, and vaccines to patients in need. He was invited to the fourth series of the Regulatory Science Innovation Forum on May 3, 2022, where Prof. Lee proposed several strategies to facilitate the principles of regulatory science to be implemented in every decision the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) makes. Prof. Lee also stressed MFDS to self-evolve to become a visionary leadership organization through regulatory science, starting from regulatory agency to scientific agency to public health agency. Several newspaper reported what Prof. Lee presented at the forum: 1, 2, and 3. 

A full video clip of Prof. Lee's presentation can be watched by clicking the following YouTube link. 

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to a seminar organized by the Pohang Innovation Salon on March 24, 2022 at the NeoImmuneTech Lounge located in the Bio Open Innovation Center, POSTECH. PIS is an interdisciplinary forum consisting of people with different expertise in drug and device developments. 

Prof. Lee's seminar was entitled 'How to design early clinical development studies', where Prof. Lee introduced the audience to various design issues pertaining to early phase clinical trials with a strong emphasis on the first-in-human study. Prof. Lee also shared his experience in planning, designing, and executing early clinical development studies.

Prof. Lee's professional relationship was dated back to the early start-up days of Genexine, the mother company of NIT. Prof. Lee performed the FIH study of GX-I7 for Genexine, a hybrid Fc-fused human IL-7, the results of which were published a couple of years ago. Furthermore, Prof. Lee conducted a microtracing study with GX-I7, which was sponsored by the Korea Clinical Trials Global Initiative or KCGI.   

The seminar was well-attended by both offline and online participants. 

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

Prof. Howard Lee was featured at the first episode of FOCUS, a YouTube-based lecture program by Seoul National University Hospital, where Prof. Lee introduced each stage of new drug development. Two additional episodes will be aired through FOCUS soon, i.e., How Covid-19 vaccines were developed and how the Korean biopharmaceutical industry can be a global leader.  

Prof. Lee's first episode can be watched by clicking the following thumbnail; 

Prof. Howard Lee met approximately a total of 1,700 viewers live at the After the Rain, a YouTube channel focusing on various healthcare issues. This live stream was arranged to promote a book Prof. Lee has just published as the lead author, entitled “There was no such thing as K-Qurantine”. YeSol Hong and Jung-Hyun Won are also the coauthors of the book.

A full video clip can be watched by clicking the following link: