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Today's Guest: Lis Agosto, Healthcare Analyst @ GlobalX ETFs
https://www.globalxetfs.com/
Today's Guest: Lis Agosto, Healthcare Analyst @ GlobalX ETFs
https://www.globalxetfs.com/
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Hi, everyone. Good morning.
00:02 Good morning to you as well.
00:03 So before we get started, you want to just talk about Global X ETFs,
00:07 what you do there?
00:09 Yeah, absolutely. So I cover health care.
00:11 I'm the health care analyst here at Global X, a thematic ETF player.
00:14 In the health care space, we have biotechnology and genomics, ticker genome.
00:19 We have more so large cap in medical devices via our aging population fund,
00:25 ticker AGMG.
00:27 We also have, for example, digital health and telemedicine, ticker EDOC.
00:30 It's really sort of spanning the gamut of the health care innovation space,
00:34 as well as beyond some tickers that are obviously well-known, AIQ, bots, etc.
00:38 with the AI craze.
00:40 So happy to be here today and speak through a few of the
00:43 interesting innovations that are happening in the health care space,
00:46 particularly in light of the JP Morgan Health Care Conference.
00:48 I'm here in San Francisco, a lot of excitement in the city.
00:50 So happy to dive in.
00:52 Are you out at the conference in San Francisco?
00:55 And so you're joining us super early, so I appreciate that.
00:58 So what so far at the JP Morgan conference has been
01:02 kind of like the biggest headline takeaway?
01:04 Has there been a lot of talk about AI?
01:06 Absolutely. I just love it.
01:09 There's a couple of different ways that I've seen the excitement take form.
01:12 One of them is, of course, AI.
01:14 It's no surprise.
01:16 NVIDIA actually attends the conference.
01:18 It was well attended last year.
01:21 I will say this year was a little insane.
01:22 We had overflow into the hallways of the conference center.
01:25 Everyone was really just trying to take a look at what NVIDIA is doing
01:29 in the health care space.
01:30 They announced a couple of partnerships,
01:33 again, more so in the drug discovery space and the health care
01:36 sort of tilt to AI.
01:38 We've historically seen this by perhaps
01:41 analyzing imaging and sort of helping radiologists
01:46 perhaps interpret imaging.
01:48 Now we're seeing that move more towards either wearable technology,
01:52 drug discovery, aiding in surgical robots.
01:55 So really starting to see a lot of these newer categories accelerate.
01:59 And this is where they're putting a lot of focus on,
02:01 particularly when it comes to drug discovery.
02:03 A lot of partnerships with pharma and biotech
02:05 really seeing that sort of evolve, which is really exciting.
02:09 So definitely AI being one of the key topics of the conference this year.
02:12 Got it. And then another I mean, you mentioned genomics.
02:15 So we've seen some kind of bullish news in the last month or so
02:19 coming from CRISPR and some of those other stocks.
02:22 Do you expect this to be like a continuing storyline of 2024 going forward?
02:26 Is this gene editing thing really like on the precipice?
02:29 Are we close or is this still something still years and years away?
02:33 It's definitely here. Right.
02:35 We saw an approval in December, not only in the US, but in the UK as well.
02:38 Other approvals abroad also expected early in 2024.
02:42 The data is really encouraging. Right.
02:45 So it makes sense why we're starting to see approvals.
02:47 Obviously, this is a whole new category, but beyond just gene editing,
02:51 we're talking also gene therapy, cell therapy.
02:53 We're starting to see approvals here accelerate.
02:56 Last year, we saw six such approvals, a record breaking number, again,
03:00 and including the first approval for gene editing.
03:03 So it's really exciting.
03:04 We're also expecting significant approvals in 2024.
03:07 We're very excited about the potential for those approvals.
03:10 And again, in the conference, we're seeing a lot of buzz about that,
03:12 not only in terms of we're starting to see more approvals,
03:16 but what does that mean from a payer perspective, right?
03:19 From an economic standpoint, these treatments make sense.
03:21 They're one and done with the hope of curing the patient.
03:25 Longer term, it's significantly cheaper
03:28 than having continuous therapies for patients or care for patients.
03:33 So they make sense. Right.
03:34 But they obviously come with a hefty sort of one and done price. Right.
03:38 So we have to kind of change the way we frame these prices
03:41 and how the industry will work towards commercialization of these treatments.
03:44 So the data is there.
03:46 We're very encouraged and there's a lot of conversations.
03:49 The conference is here as to how do we make this a reality for patients
03:52 to actually have access to these lifesaving treatments?