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Hello, Goodbye
Moderna brought in a new CFO who proceeded to last a whole day on the job. He started May 9th and was dismissed May 10th after his former employer let it be known he was under investigation for financial irregularities or something like that. For his grueling day of HR videos, he received $700,000 plus 12 months of health coverage.
Of all the days you ever work at a job, imagine getting paid $700k for the easiest one. Hmmm, if anyone from Moderna is reading, BioPharmGuy has May 18th available - go ahead and pencil him in as CFO for the day. Plentiful experience managing dozens of dollars.
Nuns of the Above
Endpoints came out with a story about an order of Catholic nuns who, along with a Vancouver investment group, are calling for more transparency when it comes to the lobbying activities of large drug companies. Sure, because when you think of unfettered transparency and “third-party accountability” you think of the Catholic church and the ultra-wealthy.
Not clear what this whole PR stunt is about, but maybe in the future, drug companies will be encouraged to light a fire whose smoke will indicate how many millions they have spent on lobbyists. Would be a sort of opaque transparency.
In Spore
Nirvana Life Sciences just announced a new release: Psilocybin. Could be a big improvement over Lithium, what with its poor side effect profile.
Magnum Roastus
There may be times when you, as a founder, want to express your love of Steve Jobs while also flexing just how awesome and cool you and your team are. Please don’t - it will only betray your painful desperation to be perceived as funny.
Hold on to your seats, people, because someone really did THIS.
The Thought Leader-in-chief strikes a decidedly thought leader pose, complete with a Glamour Shot-style secondary photo underlay. The rest of the boys (because, of course they’re all dudes) strike ironically cool poses behind uniform black sunglasses and gold chains. The poo de grâce is the moustache that appears on the last guy’s pic as you cursor over it.
With the Team Roast we’ve seen some things. Shoot, we’ve seen a lot of things. But even we weren’t prepared for this page, which a subscriber shared with us (and for which he will be compensated with the finest of t-shirts).
It's really hard to properly communicate what the initial moment of viewing was like, so we thought we'd make an attempt in spoken word. Here's a one minute audio clip of BioPharmGuy doing his best sports talk radio host imitation, explaining what that moment felt like: BioPharmGuy Riff
You have to wonder – was this all an attempt to get roasted? Because otherwise, someone really thought this was a funny idea, and that's pretty concerning.
Worst. Team Page. Ever. -1/10
Rebrand Alert
CanSino Biologics
They announced a rebranding which is good because that name really makes you want to say Casino and when you think of a casino you think of gambling and no one wants to break the veil that investing is simply gambling. Oh, wait, they’re keeping the name, just changing the logo. According to the company, this rebrand:
“…is intended to represent the Company's continuous dedication to life sciences research and its commitment to protecting the global population with innovative, high-quality and accessible vaccines and empowering people to lead a healthy and better life.”
That’s a hell of a lot of words to describe a small art tweak and a minor font change. Someone’s starved for attention.
Heat Biologics
They have officially transitioned to NightHawk Biosciences. What makes it extra cool is the CEO is named Wolf. Quite the predatory company.
Corrona
Just caught wind of this one from last year. For some reason, Corrona decided they needed a new name and switched to CorEvitas. Brings back memories of the ISIS Pharmaceuticals to Ionis switcheroo back in 2015.
Sanofi Ad Wizards
Sanofi hired themselves quite the marketing consultancy. First they chopped off the bottom of the S in their logo, now they’re playing with racecars. Ok, ok, working with racecar teams to “accelerate industrial excellence”. (See what they did there?)
If you’re looking to optimize the speed of a single operation – say screwing bolts on and off a bioreactor really quickly, no doubt the McLaren F1 racing team is who you want. But highly regulated pharmaceutical manufacturing with elaborate supply chains and various regulatory regimes? Probably not so much.
At least they picked the coolest possible carmaker – gotta love those scissor doors. Hey, did you know you can get your car modified to have those cool doors? Not all cars are candidates, but if you have a 2003 Chevy Impala you’re in luck!
Nektar Running Dry
The layoffs keep coming, mostly at smaller startups who need to extend their cash runway. Nektar Therapeutics does not fall in that bucket – they had 740 employees before announcing that more than 500 of those folks better start working on their resumes.
Anyone at their San Francisco location has plenty of options, but judging by the utilities on the roof of their Huntsville, AL site, there are a bunch of scientific employees there who may be in for some extended time off. Huntsville has a few biotech companies, but likely not enough to satisfy the sudden surge of unemployed biotech peeps. Good luck down there.
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