BioPharmGuy News

January 19, 2023

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BioPharmGuy

And just like that, we enter year #4 of BioPharmGuy News. Jan 23, 2020 was a different time, to say the least.

We made it up as we went, and now, with almost 16,000 subscribers, we stick to our bread and butter of being informative and sarcastic in roughly equal parts.

Depending how long you've subscribed, you may not know we've never missed a week - streak is at 155. People (my wife) wonder why I don't just skip a week every so often. Easy - sponsors want to sponsor.

Since we cover a mix of news and non-news, it's relatively easy to occasionally pre-schedule a newsletter if we're going to be on a Disney cruise with TERRIBLE wi-fi. (Just absolutely atrocious. And don't get me started on those unbelievably tiny pools and unjustifiably vast adult-only areas...)

So, if we ever do miss a week it will likely be because we have no sponsor. But good news for you, dear reader - we've got them booked solid until mid-June.

-BPG

Book Review: For Blood and Money

Nathan Vardi's book on the ascent of Pharmacyclics came out January 10th, and I didn't want to wait for the library to stock it, so ponied up a big $10 to get the Kindle edition. It was an easy read that even the non-biotechnical person could follow with ease.

My problem is not so much with this book in particular, but in the massive success story subgenre in general. Companies like this are obviously uncommon, and for a biotech company with a CEO lacking any life science background to wildly succeed is an outlier even among outliers.

So I get why this story was worth telling. But when you've been on the inside, you know it gives a false impression of how the biotech industry works to readers who come from outside the field.

Regardless of that minor complaint, Vardi's storytelling was excellent, and the book stayed interesting throughout. Definitely a fun journey that is highly recommended.

-BPG

Unsuccessful Spam of the Week

Generally speaking, you should not open your marketing email with:

“F**k you from XXXXX pharmacy!”

And you definitely should not suggest the sexual proclivities of the recipient’s family are driven by a revenue-conscious mindset.

But judging by the doozy we got this week, not everyone is all that great at email marketing.

Pharmacy Supply Chain Books

We had a request from some weirdo subscriber for a book/textbook that describes how the US pharmacy supply chain works. If such a thing exists and you have one to recommend, please send us an email. The weirdo would appreciate it!

Companies Added & Removed

28 companies added, two removed.

Best New Name:

rAAVen Therapeutics

Worst New Name:

Bio4t2

You Will Be Missed:

Arch Oncology

Excel file of added/removed companies available on our downloads page.

Industry

Moderna

This week Moderna reported results on their RSV clinical trial in adults age 60+ which showed 83.7% efficacy. They expect to apply for approval later in the first half of 2023.

If this mRNA train keeps rolling, we really are staring at a great new era of infectious disease prevention.

AssayQuant

This was a new company to us so we added them to our directory. On their Contact page they list their location as “Marlboro, MA”.

Can’t even spell the city in which they reside? (it’s Marlborough) Not a great demo of their attention to detail.

Team Roast - CanVirex

Sometimes people get a little crazy with their titles. In this case we have a "Prof Dr Dr" which almost feels like he's just rubbing it in.

But what's even worse is his name is Guy. And being Prof Dr Dr probably means he knows more about biopharm than most people so...is he the real biopharm Guy???

Say it ain't so!

Viking Therapeutics

Drug companies like to come up with clever names for their clinical studies. Sometimes it will be an acronym, but other times it's just a word in all caps masquerading as an acronym.

Can't say for sure, but we're gonna take a wild guess that Viking Therapeutics' clinical study named VOYAGE is not an acronym. But it's a cool name, so thumbs up.

Team Roast - Lateral Pharma

There are power poses, and then there are POWER poses. This CEO went with the latter rendering the 'Lateral', literal.

But it doesn't end there. The CFO appears to have never posed for a photo before, while the CSO is rocking the trendy homeless-chic style he learned about on the TikTok.

Those three look like they could be in a 1980s movie comedy - 'Watch what happens when three random guys are forced to run a biotech startup together!'

Further down the page, the POWERful CEO thankfully opted to close up shop for his Board of Directors picture. That's a denouement we can appreciate.

ManRos Therapeutics

You could do worse than working at ManRos. They appear to work out of an old beachfront mansion in northern France facing the Atlantic. Talk about an unlikely place for a biotech company. Just scroll down and look at this place.

Sadly they don't appear to be taking job applications.

Smithers

If you can't work on a French seashore, then maybe your extensive experience 'testing' cannabis will come in handy for this job at Smithers. As an added bonus - a mere 5% of your job will involve 'reaching'. (Which they totally made up, because no way they monitored an employee and calculated precisely how much reaching was occurring)

Oh but waaaaaait. Duuuuude, it says you should have experience with laboratory testing of cannabis. Bummer, man.

Health & Science

Power in the People

A common issue with all sorts of new body-invading medical technologies is how to power them. Some implanted devices have long-lasting batteries, and some have leads connecting inside to out. But a new energy source is being looked at: Bacteria.

The technology consists of a pH-sensitive membrane that activates in the small intestine. The bacteria within the ingestible device then begin to grow and produce energy.

Considering how much bacteria is already within our guts, this is a clever idea and could prove to be a common technology years from now.

Chemicals in the Fish

Big fuss this week about PFAS & PFOS accumulating in freshwater fish.

These so-called forever chemicals have long been used in consumer products and have been shown to accumulate in the environment - not much out there degrades them.

They've been banned in various products for years, but that still leaves the problem of what will happen to what's already in the wild. Given the levels showing up in freshwater fish, if you're a risk averse person it may make sense to not eat too many of them.

But also, if there were strong deleterious effects, we would probably already be seeing that in American communities that eat a lot of freshwater fish.

More research will be needed to determine whether this PFAS thing is really as bad as some believe, but as sensitivity of scientific testing becomes better and better, we're going to face more times where the mere presence of bad stuff has to be ignored.

Swordle

One way to try to convince people to get their Covid booster is to get an old ex-con to play real-life Fruit Ninja.

In this particular case, Martha Stewart is the old ex-con and despite what the computer effects & plastic surgery might have us believe, Martha Stewart is 81 years old.

Not really sure this samurai sword concept will connect with the elderly. Martha trying to guess a five-letter word that starts with A and contains an R & L may have spoken to the older generation a little better.

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