Still figuring things out as we go, but hey, at least the background isn't white this week. Thank you all for subscribing. We have been on Twitter for many years, and it took a whole 10 days after opening sign-ups for this newsletter to eclipse our Twitter follower count.
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New Data Field in Action
As mentioned last week, our LinkedIn pages data field is now complete and available for purchase. If you previously purchased data covering the entire US, you can add the LinkedIn pages for $99.
History of Biotech
We not only have information on current biotech companies, we also track defunct companies. If you've never taken a look, we have a huge list (warning, giant page, may be annoying on mobile):
Defunct Companies
.
We hope to one day present some sort of 'history of biotech' graphic/search tool to see who acquired who for how much and kind of see the pedigree of existing companies. Still trying to figure out a simple, elegant way to do that. If you have ideas, by all means, let us know.
Inane Email of the Week
"Your BioPharmGuy is very good your product also. I feel like to visit your company."
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Aimmune
Aimmune
has been doing clinical studies on a treatment for peanut allergy. The treatment is an escalating dose of peanut protein followed by a maintenance dose. In some cases this can allow a person to consume a peanut accidentally and not react too strongly (ie no anaphylaxis) This week the FDA
approved
the product, which was great, but the price tag was a bit of a shocker.
$11,000/yr
.
We understand that drug companies who undertake clinical studies do take financial risk, so it has to be profitable. But this is a pill containing peanuts. There isn't extensive R&D to defray here. They grow in the ground. Sure, the dosage has to be carefully monitored, and following cGMPs is not cheap, but pricing this like an entirely innovated product is wild especially when you consider it is not a cure. This is intended to be a long term prophylactic. So people will take it over and over possibly for their whole lives. Pricing it in this way is just another example of how messed up the U.S. healthcare system is.
Passage Bio
Passage Bio is attempting to go
public
. They've already received $225M in private funding and have only
spent $59M
. So why do they need another $125M? For a company that seems to outsource as much as possible and has 20 total employees, you might think the $166M in the bank would be sufficient. If it matters, they have compensated their CEO, CSO & CTO over $2M/yr each, mostly in equity. Maybe someone needs a new house.
#NotMyMoney
Harmony Biosciences
Apparently this company is living up to its name. It has been "
certified
as a great workplace for the second year in a row by independent analysts at Great Place to Work"
Don't even know what to say about that "news" release. This is based on an anonymous survey of their employees, which the company itself paid for. Seems like HR is looking for ways to spend money - if you have a good culture isn't that good enough? Do you have to create evidence and advertise it if your employee turnover is already low? HR is a mysterious place sometimes.
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2019-nCoV (Wuhan Coronavirus)
News that the virus was transmitted by an asymptomatic patient in Germany have been
refuted by German scientists.
As expected, the death rate has dropped from 3% to ~2% after more mild-to-moderate cases have been found/diagnosed. China's National Health and Health Commission is keeping the world
updated on the number of cases, deaths, recoveries. (Twitter user @
AndyBiotech is summarizing the report daily in a visual format. If you translate the Chinese pages with Chrome, it's still a little hard to follow). LiveScience has a good summary of the
situation.
The U.S. Department of State is
advising against US citizens traveling to China. Additionally, the Trump administration chose to ignore the WHO's guidelines and institute a Chinese-traveler ban. Dozens of nations have followed suit. Travel bans are a solution that works in the short term, but ultimately can lead people to travel in the shadows or to be untruthful about where they've been. That's the sort of thing that could lead to a follow-on outbreak, which would be especially problematic in a country with a weak health-care system.
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Premium Listings Always Available
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If you weren't aware, we offer several ways to promote your company's listing in our database. This could be swapping in a logo, expanded your text, bumping your company to the top of the list or a combination of these elements. You can try it for as short as one month. Read about these options here:
Promoted Listings. Email if you have any questions.
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