14
Dec
2020
Seeking Impact: Servier’s David Lee on The Long Run Podcast
Today’s guest on The Long Run is David Lee. David is the CEO of Boston-based Servier Pharmaceuticals. It’s the US subsidiary of France-based Servier Group. Servier, for those unfamiliar, is a rare bird in the pharmaceutical world. It markets both branded drugs and generic drugs. It is a truly global company with 21,000 employees in 148 countries, but it has... Read More
13
Dec
2020
The US is Teeming With SPACs, Why is the UK at Zero?
Biotech startups from the UK traditionally have a financing strategy that leads to one of two places – the NASDAQ or the NYSE. This means learning how to follow a US-centric playbook. About 10 percent of the biotech IPOs on the US markets this year come from companies based outside the US. This is consistent with trends of the past... Read More
11
Dec
2020
The Vaccine Is Coming, and Scientists Need to Keep the Focus on Equity
As we navigate this pandemic, the discourse has often created a fog. Science has been doing what it does – forming hypotheses, testing them, gathering vast amounts of data, and pressure-testing conclusions with unprecedented urgency. The ideas that pass scrutiny are being elevated into recommendations, while others are being discarded. Science isn’t perfect. It is practiced by people, and people... Read More
10
Dec
2020
Pfizer, BioNTech Vaccine Gets FDA Advisory OK. Now Comes More Hard Work
The good news this week was really one of those good news / bad news stories. An expert panel of FDA vaccine advisors looked at Pfizer’s presentation for the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine candidate, and saw the outstanding results for what they were. The vote was 17-4 (with one abstention) to recommend that the FDA give the go-ahead for an Emergency... Read More
10
Dec
2020
Vaccine Communication: Another Opportunity for Biopharma to Lead
We’ve all seen this movie, right? It feels like we’re in the fake final scene before the jump-scare and the bad guy makes one final push. It’s that point in the 1986 sci-fi film “Aliens” where Bishop gets ripped in half and Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) realizes in horror that the Alien Queen snuck aboard her ship. Normal, whatever that means... Read More
9
Dec
2020
Priority for Next Administration: Tech-Ready Health Leadership
From the moment Joe Biden takes the oath in January, his Administration will confront a brutal onslaught of urgent health challenges. The work starts with the complex distribution of a multi-dose vaccine to a remarkably skeptical public. To do this job, and countless others, there is a desperate need to upgrade the nation’s health data capabilities, which were pressure-tested by COVID-19... Read More
8
Dec
2020
VC Roundup: Microglia Targeting, RNA Processing, and Radiopharmaceutical Startups Raise Cash
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7
Dec
2020
Vaccine Trials: A Band of Brothers and Sisters
On Dec. 2, the New England Journal of Medicine published an article coauthored by many prominent medical scientists, including physicians, who advocated for extending the time in which volunteers in the placebo group enrolled in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 clinical trials should be followed. Essentially, they are arguing that the study volunteers – people who sacrificed for the... Read More
7
Dec
2020
This COVID-19 Long Hauler is Still Trying to Recover
Our daughter celebrated her 14th birthday on Mar. 14. It’s an event none of us will forget. Our family invited a few of her friends to join us for dinner in New York City to celebrate. Scary headlines about the COVID-19 outbreak in New York were everywhere in the days leading up to her birthday. We had to stop and... Read More
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... Read More
2
Dec
2020
Genesis Therapeutics, AI Drug Discovery Startup, Captures $52M Series A
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1
Dec
2020
Vaccine Scarcity: Buckle Up for Debate
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are likely to secure Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) from the FDA by Christmas. These are amazing gifts of science. They also arrive with high expectations from a weary public, especially since the clinical trials of these mRNA vaccines indicate near-complete protection from severe disease. These first two vaccines arrive at the most tumultuous time yet... Read More
1
Dec
2020
COVID-19 Drives New Push for CRISPR-Based Home Diagnostics
Though polymerase chain reaction, PCR, is regarded as the gold standard in molecular diagnostics, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken off some of the shine. Under normal circumstances, samples processed in commercial diagnostic labs that run standard PCR machines can take hours to yield results. In a pandemic, with a surge in demand for tests, turnaround times are creeping upward and... Read More
30
Nov
2020
The Weather Outside is Frightful and That’s Just the Half of It
I really miss waiters. I was recently talking, via the mixed blessing of Zoom, with the very awesome members of a women’s group to which I belong. Our full group of about 35 meets once a year. Normally, we do so in person, at a spa, where food is brought to us by actual waiters. Remember waiters? Man, I miss... Read More
30
Nov
2020
5AM, Atlas Join $40M Bet on Kinaset, a Pan-JAK Inhibitor for Severe Asthma
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.
25
Nov
2020
I Used to Report on Clinical Trials, Now I’m In One; Here’s Why I Volunteered
I am not brave. Once, I passed out after a routine blood draw for a diagnostic test. Ever since that first scary and embarrassing episode at a LabCorp location in Manhattan several years ago, the act of giving a blood sample, no matter how small, has been a source of anxiety. Will I break out in a cold sweat? Feel... Read More
24
Nov
2020
Getting Married in 2020. One of Many Difficult Family Decisions
So there it was, hanging in the closet. My carefully chosen bridal gown, with its lace in a delicate shade of ivory. Beside it was my bridal veil, featherlight, translucent, and freshly purchased just the day before the wedding. When Anna, my girlfriend, gingerly pinned it on my head, I heard the words of my mother sounding in my head.... Read More
23
Nov
2020
Medicines Based on Unusual Genetic Traits: Andrew Farnum on The Long Run
Today’s guest on The Long Run is Andrew Farnum. Andrew is the CEO of Seattle-based Variant Bio. Variant Bio is a startup seeking to discover new drugs, by finding gene variants in rare ethnic groups. It’s especially interested in what can be learned by sequencing exceptional groups of people in countries where there hasn’t been much sequencing. This is a... Read More
23
Nov
2020
A New Model for Vaccine Communications Grounded in Science and Empathy
With COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths surging, the impressive vaccine results from Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and now AstraZeneca arrive just in time to provide some needed hope. But for these vaccines to bring the pandemic to an end, enough people need to be willing to take them. That’s not a given. Various polls have told a story this year about a rising tide... Read More
20
Nov
2020
Why the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Studies Aren’t Limited to Severe Disease
[Editor’s Note: a version of this article was first published on Nov. 13 on the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. —LT ] The COVID-19 Operation Warp Speed (OWS) trials have taken some criticism in the medical press, and lay press, for evaluating what some consider to be “trivial” characteristics of mild COVID-19 disease. Some are arguing that it would... Read More