By

Luke Timmerman

8
Jan
2021

Biotech Is Radiant In a Dark Moment

The virus, at the start of a New Year, has arrived on all seven continents. Even Antarctica. An estimated 2 million people have died worldwide from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and that’s surely an undercount. About 4,000 people are dying per day in the US. About 255,000 new people are being diagnosed with this dangerous and mysterious invader every day in...
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3
Dec
2020

AZ’s Muddy Result, Regeneron Cocktail OK’d, and Biogen, Sage Bet Big on Depression

Take two weeks between Frontpoints columns, and a lot of stuff happens. On Monday Nov. 23, AstraZeneca presented a muddy picture from its Phase III clinical trial with a COVID-19 vaccine developed on adenovirus technology with Oxford University. It’s either delivering 90 percent efficacy or 62 percent efficacy, depending on the dose. So it’s either great or good, but we’re...
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12
Nov
2020

Pfizer, BioNTech’s Watershed Moment, Lilly Antibody Gets EUA, & The Rebuilding Begins

First thing Monday, we all woke up to the brightest ray of light in this dark year. Pfizer and Germany-based BioNTech reported that their vaccine candidate was found to be more than 90 percent effective at preventing COVID-19. The report was via press release, not peer-reviewed journal, but this was still a moment to celebrate. The interim analysis wasn’t based...
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11
Nov
2020

Creating the Future of Microbiome-Based Therapies: Simba Gill on The Long Run

Today’s guest on The Long Run is Simba Gill. Simba is the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Evelo Biosciences. Evelo is part of a new generation of biotech companies seeking to make medicines based on new understanding of the microbiome. The science here is fascinating. Evelo’s drug candidates are biologics designed to be taken orally, to act directly in the gut,...
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5
Nov
2020

Reflections from a Wisconsin Boy

My first real journalism job flashed to mind this week. It was 1998-1999. I was a kid reporter fresh out of the University of Wisconsin. My job was to cover Dane County government for The Capital Times, the progressive newspaper in Madison. Dane County had about 400,000 people. Half lived in the beating liberal heart of the City of Madison...
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