27
Feb
2021
Digital Tools Helped Enable COVID-19 Vaccine Trials. What are the Lessons Learned?
Digital tools played a critical role in accelerating the development and evaluation of COVID-19 vaccines, according to leaders at the companies driving this effort. Speaking at a recent virtual panel discussion organized by the Galien Foundation (and available here), leaders from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Moderna, and the CRO IQVIA shared their experiences leveraging digital tools for vaccine development. Data Deluge... Read More
27
Feb
2021
AI in Healthcare: Harvard’s Zak Kohane on What Innovators Are Missing
Despite, or perhaps because, of the incessant hype, it can be difficult to assess the impact AI is actually having in medicine. Enter Harvard’s Zak Kohane, who in a remarkably astute recent seminar, available on YouTube, highlighted the opportunities for AI in healthcare while revealing some of the ways AI is falling short – generally by being deployed in a... Read More
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
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
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.
24
Feb
2021
Orna Therapeutics, a Circular RNA Bet, Raises $80M to Overcome Classic RNA Challenges
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.
22
Feb
2021
Alta Reloads, AstraZeneca Loses Cancer Indication, & Sanofi/GSK Vaccine Reboots
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.
22
Feb
2021
Big News for Obesity and Heart Failure That’s Been Underappreciated
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.
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
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.
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
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.
16
Feb
2021
Genentech’s New AMD Contender, Takeda’s Win Against CMV, and the IPOs Continue
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.
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
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.
10
Feb
2021
No Longer an Afterthought: Day One Raises $130M for Childhood Cancer Therapies
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.
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
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
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