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Moderna Congressional Hearing
Yesterday, CEO Stéphane Bancel testified before Congress concerning Moderna’s impending Covid vaccine price increases.
It was political theater, of course, so only a few Senators stuck to the actual topic. (not Rand Paul, who asked about Bancel’s kids' vaccination status and then laughed at Bancel’s response)
So, how did Bancel answer the main question: Why are vaccine prices going up?
- Lower economies of scale – there are no longer hundreds of millions of doses being bought at a time. Maybe only tens of millions.
- Waste – there is always waste in drug distribution, especially where cold-chain is involved. During the pandemic, it was paid for by the US government, but now will be entirely Moderna’s responsibility.
- Logistics - They previously delivered vaccines to three CDC locations. Now they must deliver to 60,000 locations. (absurdity alert - they will deliver to drug distributors just like every other drug company)
- Packaging - They will be packaging doses individually instead of 10 to a vial which was a pandemic-specific measure. This will also require transport of larger volumes of final packaged product.
- Contract Labor - The 10 vials to 1 vial issue will also lead to quite a bit more labor charges by the facilities Moderna hires to produce the vaccine.
In addition to these answers, Bancel trotted out the old “we will ensure anyone who wants the vaccine will get one”. That’s a classic line from drug companies. They never quite tell you who is going to pay, but rest assured someone is going to pay, and that someone is either taxpayers or people with health insurance.
Other amusing highlights:
-Mike Braun asked why Moderna couldn’t just distribute the Covid vaccine using their flu vaccine distribution network. Bancel gingerly pointed out they have no flu vaccine - Moderna’s only product is the Covid vaccine.
-Bernie Sanders said Jonas Salk invented Polio.
Memoirs of a Bank Run Survivor
After last week's bank run and worries about biotech companies making payroll, the CEO of Synlogic wrote an article about the timeline of events/worries for her company. A pretty interesting, first person vantage point of that wild weekend.
Aim High
Back in 2006, CancerVax was merged into Micromet and so that company name lay dormant until now.
It has been resurrected by a new company out of California to the great annoyance of people who track all biotech companies, living or dead.
Their lead product is being modestly hawked as a “universal cancer vaccine”.
Yeah, ok.
Just because we humans have lumped many of these diseases under the umbrella “cancer” doesn’t mean they're all that much alike. Universal cancer vaccine is about as logical as a universal infectious disease vaccine. Infections are all different, cancers are too.
But of course, last week we mentioned that ridiculous report about cancer costing $25 trillion over the next 10 years, thus the total addressable market for this super-duper awesome magical product is $2.5 trillion per year. That’ll sure get the VCs hearts fluttering!
Team Roast - Statera
How the CEO's picture compares to their underlings sometimes gives you insight into the real hierarchy at the company. Maybe their photo is bigger, maybe it's more prominent, maybe it's shown last.
But sometimes its mere presence tells you all you need to know.
Really, is it that difficult to get headshots in this era where everyone has a camera in their pocket? Savage.
Suffering E.Coli --> Suffraging E.Coli
Stoic Bio's stated goal is to “Democratize cell culture media”.
What the hell does that even mean? Is cell culture media currently a dictatorship?
They use other big words like sustainability, disruptive & centricity. Such words prove they have a bulletproof business plan...which would be packaging cell culture media in compostable pods.
Have these people ever worked at a biotech company? There are entire departments dedicated to dealing with waste streams and they're not too worried about recycling. Maybe they recycle clean paper products, but that’s about it.
Having employees package up compostable cell culture pods to mail them back to the manufacturer sounds like a huge waste of valuable company time.
Not to say reducing waste is not a good idea, but having businesses mail back garbage is a big ask.
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