Sylvia Pagán Westphal

Sylvia Pagán Westphal

Sylvia is Xconomy’s life sciences columnist. She has a Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard Medical School and studied journalism at the Boston University Center for Science and Medical Journalism. She has worked as a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times, New Scientist Magazine, and The Wall Street Journal. Her work has also appeared in The Boston Globe, CNN.com, The New York Times, and Smithsonian Magazine. Sylvia was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT in 2004-2005.

Sylvia’s disclosure: I am married to a certain biotechnology entrepreneur/pharmaceutical executive/venture capitalist named Christoph Westphal, whom most folks in Boston know. That exposes me to a lot of smart people in the industry who are willing to speak candidly, but it also means I could be conflicted if writing about some biotechnology and pharma companies. My aim with The Pulse is not to report on specific companies, but to discuss trends involving all players in life sciences (academics, companies, regulators). Nonetheless, I will disclose any potential conflicts of interests to my readers when my editors and I deem appropriate.

Recent posts

Big Fish Help Out the Smaller Fish in the Life Sciences Pond
In spite of the abundance of PhDs, MDs, JDs, and MBAs in biotech and pharma, we all know that on-the-job learning is really how this industry is built. Nobody goes to... Read more »
A One-Size-Fits-All License Agreement: The Holy Grail of Tech Transfer?
One common complaint I hear from biotech entrepreneurs is that negotiating a license agreement with a university can be a nightmare. There are universities—some of them within the very top echelons... Read more »
The Embargo System in Science News Needs Some Peer Review
Ever wonder how it is that the day a big scientific paper is published, or a groundbreaking presentation is given at a meeting, all major media outlets seem to have the... Read more »
A Newly Candid FDA on the Future Of Medical Device Regulation
We all know the Food and Drug Administration is one of the most important entities for those who develop drugs and medical devices, but for the public, and even many of... Read more »
Fixing the Broken Model: Look Inside Your Company
You know that ominous figure people always talk about, that one staggering number—$1.3 billion these days—that represents the cost to develop and market a drug? It is, to be sure, way... Read more »
The Genomics Comeback
One of the things that fascinates me most about the slow-paced business of biotech is how utterly mismatched it is against the demands of Wall Street.
Asking for quarterly earnings reports... Read more »
Is it Time for the FDA to Chime in on Drug Company Tweets?
These days, when I least expect it, an e-mail pops into my inbox that I can’t ignore. It announces that someone is following me on Twitter. I’m still figuring out how... Read more »
Can academia bridge the gap between bench and bedside?
A few weeks ago I heard a pharmaceutical executive say at an industry meeting that academia shouldn’t be trying to develop drugs. They don’t know how to do it, his message... Read more »
Tough Challenges for Clinical Trials
For those of you who, like me, wonder why the cost of getting a drug to market continues to grow each year, here’s what may be a piece of the puzzle:... Read more »
A Tangled Web of Self-Interest
Boy, it’s good to be here, invading a tiny corner of cyberspace as the new life sciences columnist for Xconomy.
It is a journalist’s dream to be given free rein, and... Read more »

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