24
Feb
2021
Comprehensive Policy for Infection: There Has Never Been a Better Time
The suffering from COVID-19 can be measured in multiple, sobering ways: Life expectancy in the US has fallen by a full year, according to the CDC. The economic cost – measured in reduced gross domestic product, premature death, and long-term disability – has been estimated at $16 trillion by economists David Cutler and Larry Summers at Harvard University. This week,... Read More
24
Feb
2021
No More Waiting For Central Lab Results: Truvian Raises $105M
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24
Feb
2021
Orna Therapeutics, a Circular RNA Bet, Raises $80M to Overcome Classic RNA Challenges
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22
Feb
2021
Alta Reloads, AstraZeneca Loses Cancer Indication, & Sanofi/GSK Vaccine Reboots
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22
Feb
2021
Big News for Obesity and Heart Failure That’s Been Underappreciated
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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
18
Feb
2021
Public Health-focused Adjuvant Capital, Backed by Merck & Gates, Raises $300m
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16
Feb
2021
Increasing Vaccine Confidence With the Tools That Got Us This Far
By Michele Andrasik, Sally Bock, Stephaun Wallace and Michael Ferguson This month, when the news was full of stories of vaccine scarcity and images of long lines of people hoping to get immunized, the COVID-19 Prevention Network and Fred Hutch ran TV ads during the Super Bowl for people still hesitant about the vaccine in Washington state. When given this... 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
11
Feb
2021
Backed by 5AM, Ensoma Gets $70m to Make More Accessible Cell Therapies
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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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7
Feb
2021
The Variants Ratchet Up the Pressure
The biggest questions at this moment in the pandemic concern emerging variants. Over the past two weeks in preprint publications, we have learned: Viral antigen tests remain effective in their ability to detect cases of COVID-19 driven by new variants. New objective comparisons of viral antigen tests: Clinitest; RAY Crispr; Panbio. Good news: Israel is the first real-world example of... Read More
5
Feb
2021
Scientists Love Data – And Data Reveal Most People Prefer Anecdotes
The unreasonable effectiveness of personal narrative – and what it means for persuasion and health The goal of “alternative facts,” is “to flood the zone with sh*t,” as former Trump advisor Steve Bannon notoriously explained to the author Michael Lewis. The idea is to persuade us it’s just too difficult to know what to believe about anything. This “manufactured nihilism,”... Read More
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
1
Feb
2021
2021: The Rise of the Variants
This column will have a “glass half full / glass half empty” feeling for many readers, I fear. Before diving deep into the troubling emergence of highly transmissible and virulent SARS-CoV-2 variants, a couple of brief reminders: Immunology is very complicated: for the uninitiated, please read this (always impeccably well written) piece by Ed Yong in The Atlantic. We still... Read More
31
Jan
2021
The Evolving Virus Against the Vaccines
For about a month, we were lulled into thinking we had turned the corner and were winning the battle against the virus. With 95% effectiveness in preventing COVID-19 illness and nearly 100% efficacy in preventing severe disease, we just needed to mass produce these wonderful mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer / BioNTech and Moderna. Then we could bring an end... Read More