25
Feb
2021
Pfizer/BioNTech Ace Real-World Test, J&J Faces FDA Scrutiny, & Merck Pays Up
Vaccine news keeps getting better by the day. The number of new people being diagnosed with COVID-19 has been plummeting for weeks. That’s the good news. Read on and synthesize the most important financings, deals, and scientific developments of the week in biotech. Vaccines Let’s start with the best news of the week. Researchers from Israel reported on the Pfizer... Read More
22
Feb
2021
Alta Reloads, AstraZeneca Loses Cancer Indication, & Sanofi/GSK Vaccine Reboots
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18
Feb
2021
Biotech as a Beacon for Youth
Biotech has always depended on the ideas and energy of young people. But it’s time to think more broadly about how biotech and young people relate. Let’s start with young people. Recall the column from two weeks ago, which cited a 2017 Pentagon study. That study found that a full 71 percent of Americans between the ages of 18-24 aren’t... Read More
16
Feb
2021
Centessa Rolls Up 10 Medicxi Startups, Gets $250M To Scale Up Virtual Model
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16
Feb
2021
Genentech’s New AMD Contender, Takeda’s Win Against CMV, and the IPOs Continue
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11
Feb
2021
Long COVID’s Insidious Toll, Novo’s Victory Against Obesity, & Gilead’s Stumble in IPF
Our culture tells us to fear death. Every day, we hear updates on the COVID-19 death toll. Deaths are broken down by age, race, ethnicity. By state and nationality. The US numbers – 473,000 and increasing by more than 3,000 a day – are tragic and numbing. But while we fixate on death, we are devoting scant attention to the... Read More
10
Feb
2021
No Longer an Afterthought: Day One Raises $130M for Childhood Cancer Therapies
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8
Feb
2021
A Single Shot for Heart Disease: Sekar Kathiresan on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Sek Kathiresan. Sek is the co-founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Verve Therapeutics. Verve is using genome editing technology in a bold fashion. Its idea is to develop a one-and-done shot that essentially would prevent cardiovascular disease in adults. Its plan is to start out with a group of patients at very high... Read More
8
Feb
2021
An IPO Bonanza, FDA Clears BMS CAR-T, and AVROBIO Gene Therapy Dazzles
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4
Feb
2021
The Insurrectionist and the Visionary
One photograph captured our contradictions on Jan. 6. There was the man carrying the Confederate flag where it had never flown before – inside the US Capitol. A violent mob, carrying symbols like that and worse, sought to assassinate elected officials and overthrow our democracy. They were sent there by other elected leaders who were telling lies. It was horrific.... Read More
28
Jan
2021
Ideas for an FDA Reboot
The FDA needs to get healthy, and fast. Its credibility as the world’s No. 1 science-based regulator of food and drugs has been tarnished. From the start, it had to play catch-up on RT-PCR diagnostic tests in the wake of CDC’s epic screwup. Partly to make up lost ground, it swung open the floodgates for antibody tests. A Wild West... Read More
21
Jan
2021
A Bold Idea for the NIH
Too many people don’t believe anymore in the American dream. But if you can’t dream big, you can’t accomplish big things. Today, I’d like to propose a bold idea for the future of biomedical research. Let’s triple the National Institutes of Health budget over the next decade. Impossible? Hear me out. We know the NIH, with a $41.7 billion a... Read More
19
Jan
2021
Gene Editing for Transplants and Cell Therapy: Luhan Yang on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Luhan Yang. Luhan is the founder and CEO of Hangzhou, China-based Qihan Biotech. Qihan is using genome editing technology to engineer pigs with organs that can be safely transplanted into humans. This is what scientists call xenotransplantation. The concept has been around a long time, but new CRISPR-based gene editing technologies make it... Read More
14
Jan
2021
Our Communities, and Biotech, Need Local Journalism
National traumas force us out of our comfort zones. They can force us to search, to ask new questions, to think deeper about our world. This week, my first real journalism job came to mind. One day, when I expressed surprise to my editor in Madison, Wisconsin that the tiny Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota had won the Pulitzer... Read More
11
Jan
2021
EQRx Gets $500M To Hit the Gas on High-Quality, Low-Cost Drug Model
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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... Read More
7
Jan
2021
Fungus-Based Startup, LifeMine, Fetches $50M; Arsenal Attracts BMS Cell Therapy
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6
Jan
2021
Startup Profiles: Senti and Myeloid Raise Cash to Push Cell Therapy Frontiers
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22
Dec
2020
Creative New Treatments for Mental Health: Steve Paul on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Steve Paul. Steve is the chairman, president and CEO of Boston-based Karuna Therapeutics. Karuna is developing new treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders. By the time you listen to this conversation, Karuna will either be very close to starting a Phase III clinical trial of its lead drug candidate, or it will already have begun.... Read More
21
Dec
2020
Celsius, Servier Forge Single-Cell Analysis Partnership in Colorectal Cancer
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