JP Morgan Week 2025 – Rick Stewart

Despite all the public health strides that have been made to discourage smoking, nicotine addiction is still a major societal problem and a risk factor for many chronic conditions – as well as a growing concern for young people who are increasingly taking up vaping and tobacco pouches.

At JPM Week 2025 in San Francisco, pharmaphorum editor-in-chief Jonah Comstock met with Rick Stewart, CEO of Achieve Life Sciences, a biotech developing a new treatment for nicotine addiction with comparable efficacy and fewer side effects than the leading competitors.

Stewart discusses the need to move nicotine addiction “from a moral issue to a medical issue” to move past the stigma associated with the condition. He also talks about his company’s product, which has completed phase 3 trials and is filing an NDA this year, with an aim to launch in 2026.

Comstock and Stewart discuss the problem of nicotine addiction more broadly, the “whack-a-mole” aspect of addressing the wide and growing scope of this crisis.

Check out the video below for an insight into a disease state that may have fallen off your radar, but where the need is high and, hopefully, big things are happening.