One of the most useful tools in a healthcare investor’s arsenal is medical conferences.
Why? Key opinion leaders (KOLs) meet to discuss the latest data coming out from company-sponsored trials and research. Their views give an unrivaled and direct insight not just into the probability of success but also the commercial potential of various medical interventions.
One way to get a quick overview is summary quotes captured by the Stream blog like this summary of ACC ’23.
NB If you want to have free two-week trial access to the full database of transcripts click here.
Did you know that one team of funders supported all but one of the 18 scientists who received the Nobel Prize in genetic molecular biology research, funding this revolution.
This was the Natural Science Division of the Rockefeller Foundation which operated during the 1930s – 1950s, under the leadership of Warren Weaver.
A must read history full of lessons for today’s science funders.
“Weaver saw himself, instead, as a “manager of science.” He led his small team of program officers in a highly opinionated grantmaking process that focused on the organizational and social environments of research institutions over the specifics of any individual project. And once his team selected a field to focus on, it funded people over specific ideas.“
Interesting dataset showing that, despite a fairly constant $ amount of upfront payments, its % of a total biotech licensing deal’s value has fallen to a low for pre-clinical assets.
Outsourcing in the biotech and pharma industry continues unabated, boosting contract research organisations (CRO) like IQIVIA, Labcorp etc.
Interestingly, consolidation has been a big feature of the industry, and this Stream expert call (sign up for free two weeks to access) suggests more is to come.
Fundamentals have been bad in biotech land, something that is reflecting in share prices and IPO performance (XBI has halved since peak).
Positive news flow among small and mid-cap biotechs, which hit 60% in 2020, has just fallen below 30%.
“But it’s not just small caps, it’s across the sector: Jefferies’ Michael Yee said of 45 major clinical readouts from large and small players, only 20% were positive.”
Clinical holds have also spiked – 2022 is off to a bad start (13 holds in 8 weeks) and could surpass the already bad 2021 (>50 vs. 30 average historically.
The full article offers some explanations of what is going on.
Excellent review by Bruce Booth, partner at Atlas Ventures, of 2021 Year in Biotech.
It covers the impact of the pandemic (both good and bad), current pipeline (5,000 compounds, $180bn of R&D spend), policy picture, the abundance of capital against constrained talent (here and 25:30) and so much more!
Yet according to this article, reality is very far away, if not unachievable.
First, you need a bioreactor facility – even one that is equivalent to 1/3 of all the volume of the entire biopharmaceutical industry today would only yield 22m pounds of lab-grown protein or 0.02% of US meat production.
To get to 10% of global meat consumption in 2030 you need 4,000 of these at a cost of $1.8 trillion.
The bigger problem is these are live animal cells and hence are very vulnerable to any contamination. Bacteria would crush these cells as they grow much faster, while viruses would infect as the culture has no immune system. These cascade shutting down entire production facilities.
The solution – clean rooms – are very expensive.
Full paper on the topic and h/t NZS Capital (which lists many other problems from the article).
We previously covered one brilliant tool to emerge from his lab – Project Alpha – which tracks in real time probability of success for clinical trials.
This is a good article about him and how his ideas about pooling biotech research into a mega-fund has come to life with BridgeBio (IPOed in 2019).
A really brilliant article on the state of Covid vaccine development.
It gives a great overview and introduction into vaccines in general.
There are 115 vaccines in development (78 currently active).
There is a vast range of vaccine types (as the diagram shows). The article explains what all these types are.
“We are only going to find out, in the end, by dosing people. Lots of people. With therapies targeting the immune system, there is in the end no other way to know, because of the complexities of the human immune response and its wide variation in the human population .. some of the steps are going to have to be done on a scale never before attempted … there are going to have to be some shortcuts.“
There is one thing that can’t be skipped – how long immunity lasts. This question can only be answered with time.
On safety – “Now you see the exact bind that vaccine development has always been in, because the whole point is to treat millions, even billions of people who are not currently sick, to protect them against disease while not doing more harm along the way by setting off the body’s fiercest and most alarming biological responses.“
On manufacturing – “My guess is that scale-up and manufacturing could well be the biggest chance for the timelines mentioned earlier to blow up“.
There is a willingness to pre-fund manufacturing, across all these varied types of technology, before efficacy is established by Bill Gates and others.
