3
Sep
2020
FDA and CDC Credibility Tarnished; Pfizer Sprints Ahead With COVID19 Vaccine
Credibility takes years to build. It can crumble in seconds. Repairs can take a lifetime. The FDA and the CDC are two of the American public health agencies that became global models of excellence after World War II. We should remember that, and perhaps the FDA and CDC should plaster it up on their walls as a reminder. Both agencies... Read More
20
Aug
2020
Spiritual Renewal in the North Cascades, and Facing Homelessness
All of us need some time and space for spiritual renewal. Especially in a year like 2020. Mountain climbing does it for me. Last weekend, I was fortunate to get out to Mt. Shuksan in the remote North Cascades of Washington. It was a gorgeous climb, led by my friends and partners at Alpine Ascents International. The climb was a... Read More
13
Aug
2020
A Microbiome Turnaround, Novavax Gears Up, & Moderna Commits to 100m Doses
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11
Aug
2020
From Rio to Rome: Rosana Kapeller on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Rosana Kapeller. She’s the president and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based ROME Therapeutics. ROME aims to discover and develop drugs based on emerging science in what is sometimes called the “repeatome.” These are long repeat stretches of DNA that scientists until recently knew very little about, and still have a lot to learn about... Read More
6
Aug
2020
GSK’s BCMA Antibody Gets OK, Biogen Teams With Denali & A Telemedicine Megadeal
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23
Jul
2020
Pfizer Secures $2B for COVID-19 Vaccine, BioNTech Raises $500M, & Our Test
When Donald Trump first considered a run for president in 2000, he never rose above 1 percent in the polls. America changed in the early years of the 21st century. Trump was always good at harnessing tabloid media weaknesses to his advantage. When our information commons shifted to a 24/7 advertising-based attention-grab economy on the Internet and TV, he was... Read More
21
Jul
2020
The Road Less Traveled in Biotech: Abe Ceesay on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Abe Ceesay. He’s the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Tiburio Therapeutics. The company is developing a couple of drug candidates for rare neuroendocrine tumors. It raised $31 million in a Series A financing in January 2019 from NEA, Lundbeckford Ventures, Longitude Capital, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities. Abe is in his early 40s, and... Read More
16
Jul
2020
Standing With Fauci, Positive Moderna Vaccine Data, and Blueprint’s Megadeal
Last week in these pages, I wrote a full-throated defense of Tony Fauci. A few days later, the White House sadly started doing what it so often does. It embarked on a dirty tricks smear campaign against someone who speaks inconvenient truth to the public. Peter Navarro, who doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to public health... Read More
9
Jul
2020
Novavax Nabs $1.6B, BD Secures Fast Antigen Test OK, & a Tribute to Tony Fauci
The United States, it pains me to say as a patriotic believer in our Constitutional system and institutions and generally decent and hardworking people, looks like a disaster zone. A tally of 3.1 million COVID-19 cases, 133,000 deaths, and record numbers of new infections adding up every day can shake one’s faith. Confidence in US institutions, and faith in government... Read More
6
Jul
2020
Writing in the Language of DNA: Kevin Ness on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Kevin Ness. He’s the CEO of Boulder, CO-based Inscripta. This is a startup that calls itself the “digital genome engineering company.” The aspiration, which Inscripta described in a statement last December, was to create: The world’s first fully automated benchtop instrument for genome-scale engineering. Consisting of an instrument, consumables, software, and assays, it... Read More
1
Jul
2020
Pfizer, BioNTech Vaccine Shows Life, but Cases Surge, Testing Falters & Prices Haunt
Catch up on the main happenings in biotech this week, and consolidate your knowledge heading into the holiday weekend. Stay healthy. The US recorded 50,000 new cases on July 1 – a worrisome indicator of things to come, indeed. This Week in Drug Pricing The pharmaceutical industry entered the COVID-19 pandemic as Public Enemy No. 1. Polls showed that... Read More
25
Jun
2020
The Exponential Curves Re-Emerge
The curves are telling the story. They were flat for a while. Now they’re heading up the exponential slope again. Texas, Arizona, Florida – and even California, which did so well for so long – are among the couple dozen states that are beginning to look up at those scary curves of new COVID-19 cases. We still have no idea... Read More
22
Jun
2020
Codiak Scales Up Exosome Capabilities, Snags $72.5M from Sarepta
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18
Jun
2020
Merck Wins 2 Big Approvals, a Surprise from Old ‘Dex,’ and a Digital Therapeutics First
For 40 days, the numbers on new COVID-19 cases have been traversing along a flat, steady ridgeline. Now it is back on the ascent. The President may wish to do less testing to make it appear as though case numbers are coming down. But that won’t make the SARS-CoV-2 virus go away. The 7-day moving average shows new cases are... Read More
16
Jun
2020
A Busy IPO Calendar: Forma, Repare, Progenity, Genetron
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13
Jun
2020
A Conversation About Race: Ted Love on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Ted Love. Ted is the president and CEO of Global Blood Therapeutics, or GBT for short. The company is based in South San Francisco. GBT is focused on sickle cell disease. Sickle cell disease affects about 100,000 people in the US, the vast majority of whom are black. About 20 million are thought... Read More
11
Jun
2020
Inconvenient Truths and Rays of Light
The information world that we built sometimes has a way of distracting us. It downplays and marginalizes what’s important. Not this week. Let’s start with a few timely, inconvenient truths. As of this writing on June 11: The US has 113,865 dead from COVID-19 and counting. 2 million+ confirmed cases. 20,000 new cases adding up every day. 21 states are... Read More
10
Jun
2020
Fighting COVID-19 & Racism: Andy Plump on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Andrew Plump. Andy is the president of research and development, and a member of the board of directors, at Takeda Pharmaceutical. Takeda doesn’t get a lot of attention in the US, but it’s one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies by revenue, ranking a little behind AbbVie and a little ahead of Bristol-Myers... Read More
4
Jun
2020
Anger, Pain, and Hope
The emotions this week were especially intense. Anger. Fear. Despair. But there was also hope. That gets me up in the morning. In this slice of America, the biotech industry, many people are mission-driven. People in this industry work every day to improve the human condition by making better medicines. Not everyone feels the full weight, but many in this... Read More
28
May
2020
The Infodemic Summer
The US death toll from COVID-19 exceeded 100,000 this week. Another 40 million people are unemployed. We’ve been on this terrible trajectory for what seems like forever, with 20,000 new cases a day and 1,500 or so deaths every day. The New York Times lists 18 states where new cases are increasing and 19 states where cases are decreasing. Memorial... Read More