Biotech Giveth
Back in March a Biogen investor conference in Boston resulted in a large outbreak of Covid cases. If this recent study in Science is to be believed, that conference ultimately led to 300,000 cases (so far) or 1.9% of all cases in America.
Biotech Taketh Away
The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine rolled out this week and people are being vaccinated in America as we speak. Moderna vaccine expected to be approved any day and should be shipped next week. Giddyup!
God-CEO
Here's a good 'Team' page for you - also known as the "God model". That motif requires the CEO's image to appear bigger than the rest of the so-called team. In this case He went a step further and actually put His name in the url. Baller.
If you're feeling adventurous, you can head over to the CEO's personal website which may or may not have been copied directly from Geocities. He talks about immortality among other things. Sure is all-in on the God complex.
Angel-CEO
In that same vein, Resolve Biosciences just launched and decided to put their CEO's floating head and hands on the homepage. Twice. Can't really blame them - cool looking dude. They're working on "Molecular Cartography" and all the cartography greats seem to have a similar look, so maybe he's trying to emulate his forebears.
Tyme Technologies
Richie Cunningham has been named their new CEO. Cunningham previously held leadership positions at Icagen, Boehringer-Ingelheim & Valeant Pharmaceuticals. Before that he was the 1997 All-Pro kicker for the Dallas Cowboys. His resume on LinkedIn casually mentions he was employed as "professional athlete" for a few organizations.
Novo Nordisk
Last week, the Danish Maritime and Commercial High Court ordered Novo Nordisk to withdraw a press release...from September 2019. About the speed you'd expect from a court that still has "Maritime" in its official name.
The 'Rectification' for the error in their ways is a press release from Novo Nordisk saying they were ordered to withdraw the other press release - they don't even mention what was wrong with the original. The public is now well informed, carry on with your admirable business, DMCHC.
Autonomous Therapeutics
This company launched a few years ago and at the time they had an outrageous plan - give people a weakened version of HIV that can evolve in order to protect against HIV. As we noted in our database at the time: "Totally crazy company, but sounds fun".
As it turns out, giving people HIV is not a feasible business model. So what are they doing these days? The same thing all failing biotech companies are doing - Covid-19, baby! Hopefully they drop the whole bred-to-mutate aspect, because at some point it becomes bioterrorism.
AvKARE
Endpoints reports generic middleman AvKARE has recalled two products because their contract manufacturer accidentally mixed them together in one batch. With all the safeguards in the industry this is almost unheard of - a nightmare scenario for a generic company. Companies have been punished greatly for almost doing this. The fact that they mixed treatments for depression and erectile dysfunction just adds to the salaciousness.
Sanofi/GSK
You may remember AstraZeneca's recent Covid-19 clinical trial in which they mistakenly gave some people the wrong dose. Well we have another dosing mistake among Covid vaccine clinical trials. Early trial participants in the Sanofi/GSK trial were given a lower dose "due to a miscalculation in the manufacturing process". (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - as a former FDA Investigator, BioPharmGuy cannot add enough exclamation points here) This is astonishing for such a large, established company to screw up like this. Shocking.
If you ever want to complain about the FDA's stringent regulatory regime in the future, maybe think back to this era in which multiple companies gave wrong doses. That's really, really, reaallllllllly bad. Times is tough, standards are lower and we will all just move on for now, but after this all passes, expect some changes.
