26
May
2020
Finding a Path in Biotech Venture Capital: Nina Kjellson on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Nina Kjellson. Nina is a general partner with Canaan Partners on the West Coast. Her investing style leans toward high science, which you can see in portfolio companies like PACT Pharma, a company developing neoantigen targeted T cell therapies for cancer, Tizona Therapeutics, a targeted antibody developer for cancer, and Vineti, a software... Read More
21
May
2020
A Glimmer of Hope, and a Premature Celebration
We all woke up Monday morning and saw an encouraging headline. Then things started to go downhill. To recap, Moderna, the Cambridge, Mass.-based messenger RNA therapeutics and vaccines company, provided a snapshot of preliminary data from its Phase I trial of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine candidate, being tested in collaboration with Tony Fauci’s crew at the National Institute of Allergy and... Read More
21
May
2020
Day One, Taking a Page from Rare Disease Playbook, Raises $60M for Kids With Cancer
Please subscribe and tell your friends why it’s worthwhile. Quality journalism costs money. When you subscribe to Timmerman Report at $169 per year, you reward quality independent biotech reporting, and encourage more. Subscribe Now Sign in to your account.
14
May
2020
Meet My Friend Who Supported Trump in 2016
[This week, I’m re-publishing this column written Nov. 9, 2016. It’s probably more important to read now.—Luke] I’ve been dreading this moment since June. That’s when I started telling people: Trump was going to win. I could feel it in my bones, because of where I’m from. We’ve heard enough by now that the elites have let us down. The... Read More
13
May
2020
Coronavirus Vaccine Strategy: Larry Corey on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Larry Corey. Larry is one of the nation’s best-known virologists and vaccine developers. Much of his research over the years has been on HIV, herpes simplex viruses, and viruses associated with cancer. He’s the founding director and principal investigator of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network – a collaborative group to study vaccine candidates... Read More
11
May
2020
Science in Plain English for the Pandemic
Please subscribe and tell your friends why it’s worthwhile. Quality journalism costs money. When you subscribe to Timmerman Report at $169 per year, you reward quality independent biotech reporting, and encourage more. Subscribe Now Sign in to your account.
7
May
2020
Keeping the Faith and Bracing for the Long Slog
We’re suffering from a social disease. It ranks up there with COVID-19. It’s boundless cynicism. We need to tamp this down. Just like we need to wrestle the new coronavirus to the ground. I’m not willing to accept “shit happens” as the national motto. This is a country of can-do problem-solvers. We can do so much better. You can see... Read More
1
May
2020
A Time for Empathy
This is a fragile moment. It’s May 1. Some of us have been in social isolation for two solid months. Everyone’s at some point on the continuum of stir crazy. More than 30 million people are out of work. Tempers are flaring. Protestors are carrying guns. It’s obvious we can’t sustain a maximalist social-distancing policy much longer. Today, we have... Read More
30
Apr
2020
Real-Time Tracking of Viral Outbreaks: Emma Hodcroft on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Emma Hodcroft. Emma is a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Basel, and the co-developer of Nextstrain. NextStrain is the open-source toolkit built for real-time tracking of viral outbreaks. In the early days, teams led by Trevor Bedford at Fred Hutch and Richard Neher in Basel used it to track viral evolution of... Read More
24
Apr
2020
A Sad Week of Reckless Leadership
The first US death from COVID-19 was reported on Feb. 29. Today, Apr. 24, the US death toll exceeds 50,000. That’s more than Italy and Spain combined. Even though we had early warning. It’s tragic. There’s also a reason why the death toll hasn’t been higher. It’s because of large-scale physical distancing in this expansive country of 330 million people.... Read More
17
Apr
2020
Hunting for Antibodies Against COVID19: George Scangos on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is George Scangos. George is the CEO of San Francisco-based VIR Biotechnology. VIR has been all over the news the past couple months. It’s at the forefront of companies racing to discover and develop broadly neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus that’s sparked a global pandemic. VIR was founded in early 2017 by some... Read More
9
Apr
2020
GSK Partners With Vir on Antibodies, Pfizer With BioNTech on Vaccines, & the Testing Fiasco Continues
Here we are heading into Easter Weekend. We’re the wealthiest country in the world, and the undisputed superpower of biomedicine. Yet we’re still playing a game of catch up against SARS-CoV-2, which apparently our intelligence community knew was emerging around Thanksgiving. Even after months to get our act together, we still don’t have a coordinated national strategy on exactly how... Read More
4
Apr
2020
Diagnostic Dysfunction for COVID19: Mike Pellini on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Mike Pellini. Mike is a managing partner with Section32, a venture firm that invests in biotech startups. Mike is an expert in diagnostics. He was previously the CEO of Foundation Medicine, a company that looks at a wide range of gene mutations in tumor samples to can act as molecular drivers of cancer.... Read More
2
Apr
2020
A Baffling Coronavirus Response, Arch & Flagship Reload, & Merck Passes 2 Phase IIIs
The world now has more than 1 million confirmed cases of infection with an insidious virus that spreads from person to person with exponential speed, is spread by people who don’t display symptoms, and kills an estimated 1 percent of people who get infected. As the US death toll now exceeds more than 1,000 a day from COVID-19, we are... Read More
26
Mar
2020
The Coronavirus Tsunami, Lyell’s $492M Megaround & Some Deals You Missed
When a story moves with exponential speed and deadly force, it’s hard for a human being to keep up. Hard for you, and hard for me. My approach these past few weeks has been to work with purpose and passion on this story that touches all of humanity. The plan has been to seek out diverse voices with fresh perspectives... Read More
23
Mar
2020
New Drugs at Low Prices: Alexis Borisy and Melanie Nallicheri of EQRx on The Long Run
Today’s guests on The Long Run are Alexis Borisy and Melanie Nallicheri. Alexis is the chairman and CEO of EQRx, and Melanie is the president and chief operating officer. EQRx is a startup in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It aspires to develop new medicines for serious diseases like cancer. That’s nothing unusual. What is unusual is that EQRx is seeking to create... Read More
17
Mar
2020
Dangerous Shortages of Equipment: A Nurse’s View from the Front Lines of Pandemic
Please subscribe and tell your friends why it’s worthwhile. Quality journalism costs money. When you subscribe to Timmerman Report at $169 per year, you reward quality independent biotech reporting, and encourage more. Subscribe Now Sign in to your account.
12
Mar
2020
COVID-19: Collective Problem-Solving Time
The alarm bells have been ringing for weeks. Stunningly, millions of people in the US weren’t listening, or didn’t want to listen. We have wasted precious time in defending ourselves against the coronavirus pandemic. The horrible news from Italy is slowly starting to sink in for us in the US, and other parts of the world. Sports cancellations, a prime-time... Read More
9
Mar
2020
Living Life Fully with Stage 4 Lung Cancer: Isabella de le Houssaye on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Isabella de la Houssaye. Isabella is a former attorney on Wall Street, a mother of five kids, and a terrific endurance athlete. She’s run marathons around the country, ultramarathons, and even completed an Ironman triathlon. She’s also a Stage 4 lung cancer patient. She owes her life, and her vitality, to some extraordinary... Read More
5
Mar
2020
COVID-19 Spreads in Seattle, Gilead’s $4.9B Cancer Bet, & Thermo Grabs Qiagen
Everywhere I look — to the North, South, East and West of my home office in Seattle — there are confirmed cases of Covid-19. It’s one thing to read about a distant outbreak and intellectually understand the pandemic math, the morbidity and mortality rates, and responsible steps for containment and mitigation. It’s another thing to live in the middle of... Read More