29
Oct
2020
J&J, AZ Back in the Saddle, Regeneron Moves the Ball Downfield, and a Flurry of Deals
America, my old conservative friend from a Mountain West state told me on the phone in April, can’t handle the pandemic. We’re soft, he said. Like the characters in the 2008 Pixar film “Wall-E,” he said, we’re sucking on our Slurpees and so drunk on cheap 24/7 entertainment that we can’t even stand on our own two feet anymore. ... Read More
29
Oct
2020
What Happened in Switzerland?
Back in March — during the first wave — I reflected on the COVID-19 situation in Switzerland. This small country, at that time, was managing its outbreak and quickly getting it under control. This was just as the federal government had begun coordinating a response, which had previously been left to local authorities. As I mentioned back then, while Switzerland... Read More
28
Oct
2020
The Battle for the Soul of Biopharma: Peter Kolchinsky on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Peter Kolchinsky. Peter is the managing partner at RA Capital Management. The Boston-based firm invests in public and private life sciences companies with a total of $6.8 billion under management. Peter is a virologist by training at Harvard University. It’s obviously a valuable set of skills to have in a year like this.... Read More
27
Oct
2020
How Many COVID-19 Deaths Could Have Been Avoided? More Than 150,000
For a numbers person like myself, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is supremely frustrating. Even after 8 months, there are so many numbers that we still do not know. Even though there are thousands of researchers trying to fill in the gaps in our knowledge, the gaps persist. As the officially recorded US death toll from SARS-CoV2 approached 200,000 last month (it’s... Read More
26
Oct
2020
Machine Learning for Drug Discovery: Daphne Koller on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Daphne Koller. Daphne is the CEO of South San Francisco-based insitro. The company is seeking to develop a new platform for drug discovery that leans on a combination of wet labs and machine learning algorithms to spot new biological targets for drug discovery. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been stirring imaginations in... Read More
22
Oct
2020
Remdesivir’s FDA Approval, Moderna Fully Enrolls & FDA Wrestles With Trust
Catch up on the main events of the week in biotech with Frontpoints. The FDA issued a surprising approval – not another watered-down Emergency Use Authorization – to Gilead Sciences for remdesivir (Veklury) its antiviral against COVID-19. The antiviral, designed to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus from copying itself, is now the first treatment fully approved by the FDA against this... Read More
19
Oct
2020
Getting Ready for the Next Pandemic With a Comprehensive Response
The progress in developing therapies and vaccines for COVID-19 has been extraordinary, and has received extraordinary attention. But there’s another good news story beginning to emerge, about our widening array of defenses against bacterial infectious disease. On the clinical front in the past month, developers have announced positive Phase III trials in difficult diseases that have been marked with prior... Read More
15
Oct
2020
J&J Vaccine Study Paused, Lilly Antibody Paused, and Regeneron’s Ebola FDA Approval
It’s hard to tell yet whether the J&J vaccine and Eli Lilly antibody trials are suffering from momentary blips, or something more serious on the safety front. The AstraZeneca vaccine trial has been stuck on pause in the US since September, which seems like a rather lengthy delay in pandemic terms. Let’s hope they all get back in the saddle... Read More
15
Oct
2020
Corporate Leaders Face Pressure from Investors, Regulators to Act on Diversity
Over the summer, when George Floyd’s horrific death and the disparities of the pandemic combined to spur a new national reckoning with systemic racial injustice, many CEOs issued statements. Many insisted they would do more than talk – they’d take action in day-to-day business against structural inequalities. Those loud pronouncements of action are fading fast. The reverberations of their disquietude... Read More
14
Oct
2020
RayzeBio Snags $45M to Reimagine Targeted Radiotherapies for Cancer
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13
Oct
2020
An Especially Inspiring Nobel Prize, and a Sign of More Work to Do
A historic moment for women in science Early in the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 7, we heard news that buffered the impact of the chaos and tragedy of this year. For the first time in history, women almost matched men for Nobel Prize awards across all categories. One in particular stood out. Two women shared the award in Chemistry: Dr.... Read More
12
Oct
2020
Looking at Cancer From a Different Angle: Pearl Huang on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Pearl Huang. Pearl is the CEO of Cambridge, Mass.-based Cygnal Therapeutics. Cygnal is a startup dedicated to developing cancer drugs based on some fairly new understanding of the Peripheral Nervous System. For years, scientists assumed that the PNS was merely a conduit of the central nervous system. But what if the PNS is... Read More
8
Oct
2020
A Historic Nobel for CRISPR, Pfizer Sticks Up for FDA, & a CDC Legend Speaks
What a time to be alive in biomedicine. Catch up on the main events in Frontpoints. The Babe Ruth of Public Health Speaks Out William Foege is in his mid-80s. There’s a genome sciences building at the University of Washington named after him because Bill Gates gave money to build it, and he wanted it named after a scientific hero.... Read More
7
Oct
2020
Learning From COVID-19: The Lessons For Real World Data
The COVID-19 crisis created an urgent need for healthcare data. For starters, it was necessary to characterize the spread of the pandemic. Quickly, reports were needed on the capacity of healthcare facilities responsible for care of the severely afflicted. Then there was the urgent need to assess the trajectory, and outcomes, of patients admitted to hospitals. The profound difficulty our... Read More
7
Oct
2020
Seeing COVID-19 in Context: Applying Spatial Biology to the Lungs
It’s worth looking back on what is known about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was first detected in the US in mid-January, when a man traveled from Wuhan, China to Seattle. Nearly 10 months later, a tremendous amount of knowledge has been gathered about the virus, how it is transmitted, and the disease symptoms it causes. We know, for instance, the... Read More
1
Oct
2020
FDA Commissioners Speak Out, An Antibiotic Incentive Proposal and a Drug Price Grilling
Rummaging around in the garage can be about more than just tossing out junk. Going through old files lately, I found a printout from the Carnegie-Knight Task Force in 1997. That was the year I graduated from college and went to work as a local newspaper reporter. The task force, convened by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, was wrestling... Read More
30
Sep
2020
COVID-19 Diagnostic Testing Needs To Be Open, Not Closed
The U.S. already has the real-time PCR infrastructure to run tens of millions of tests per day. Why don’t we use that capacity? Our consumer electronics companies are constantly marketing the newest one-touch, automatic machine. They make it sound so simple, so alluring, so irresistible. Think of our smartphones and watches. That might partly explain the administration’s instant embrace of... Read More
28
Sep
2020
Small Molecules Against RNA Targets: Jennifer Petter on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Jennifer Petter. She is the founder and chief scientific officer of Waltham, Massachusetts-based Arrakis Therapeutics. Jennifer is a medicinal chemist who has spent her career thinking about how to make small molecules with all the classic Lipinski “Rule of 5” characteristics against protein targets. Five years ago, when she was looking for a... Read More
24
Sep
2020
Illumina’s Bet on Early Cancer Detection & ESMO Highlights
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.
23
Sep
2020
How Lunch with Bill Gates, Sr. Changed My Life
“I’m gonna have the halibut and chips. And a medium vanilla milkshake. What about you, Thong?” I looked up at my towering companion as he peered down at me with a gentle smile. I’m about 5-foot-8, and he was about 6-foot-7. I quickly scanned the menu board, then made my choice. “You know, Mr. Gates, I think I’m going to... Read More