BioPharmGuy News

January 14, 2021

BioPharmGuy News

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BioPharmGuy

Hope January is proceeding nicely for you. Wanted to mention one thing this week - as you surely have seen, we sell biotech company data which many sales, marketing and business development people find useful. Contact info, general company info, drug pipeline info, etc.

We also offer a Monthly Update subscription to those that purchase our Everything option and that monthly update is pretty involved. It's a six-tab spreadsheet that includes the following:

1) Current version of our entire database.

2) Sheet detailing all data field changes made in the past month.

3) All companies added in the past month, with full details.

4) All companies/locations removed in the past month, with full details.

5) Explanations for removed companies/locations.

6) Company name adjustments

We are now offering one free Monthly Update to anyone who purchases our Everything option, so if you're on the fence, maybe this will send you over the top. Simply respond to this email with any questions.

Addition & Attrition

26 companies added, five removed this week. Summary of changes available on the good ol' downloads page.

Industry

Pfizer

For the first time in something like 70 years, Pfizer has redesigned its logo. They've abandoned their blue pill-shaped logo for a double helix sort of thing. Font remains the same.

They wanted to come across as more cutting-edge scientific. That's great, but their helix is left-handed while the overwhelming majority of DNA in the world is right-handed. Maybe the consultants who've been working on this for two years should have asked one of the thousands of Pfizer scientists what they thought?

DBV Technologies

While their rivals at Aimmune had a peanut allergy pill approved, DBV is having a hard time getting FDA on board with their peanut patch and is cutting staff while they decide how to proceed. Patches have their place for drugs with a wide therapeutic index, but one containing an allergen that is known to be a serious problem for the wearer doesn't seem to be an ideal patch use case. Fentanyl patches are the posterchild for the dangers possible in this drug delivery modality. In fact, FDA has a whole page mostly focusing on how to not die from fentanyl patches.

EQRx

Last January in our very first newsletter we mentioned EQRx and their world-changing idea to develop 10 new drugs in 10 years and charge far less for them than comparable therapies. It was a baloney business model in 2020 and it still is in 2021. They pocketed $200M last year and this week bagged another half a billion. (!)

All you're going to hear from them about what they're actually doing is buzzword garbage such as: "EQRx is confronting this issue head-on by employing a disruptive, market-based approach to create true, sustainable access to great medicines at fair prices and reestablish trust and transparency between drug developers and the people who need these medicines."

So they're just gonna change the entire drug and healthcare industry? They couldn't do that with half a trillion dollars. #NotMyMoney

Intarcia Therapeutics

After receiving $1.5B in total funding and achieving a valuation of over $4B in the process, Intarcia Therapeutics is now auctioning lab assets to stay afloat. If anyone needs a few -80C freezers to store your Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine they have a few for sale.

Saucy Funding

Abcuro announced $42M in A-1 funding and Elucida followed up with $44M of their own A-1 funding. $86M in A-1 funding seems excessive - are they testing it on Wagyu A5 ribeyes these days? #dadjoke

Generics. On the Internet.

Mark Cuban, your favorite genius investor who sold an audio-streaming website to Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in 1999, is the latest techie to take the leap into the highly-regulated healthcare field. His plan is to sell generics with an across-the-board markup of 15%. His first product is a treatment for hookworm and other parasites that currently sells for $200+, but which will now cost $20 if things go to plan.

There is a straightforward reason these high priced generics cost so much - there is only one manufacturer selling to the US market. And that's mostly because the market is so tiny. Hookworm isn't exactly public health concern #1 in America, though it does exist.

By entering the business, Cuban should be able to force the existing players to drop their prices, but due to the tiny markets for these niche generics, it's unlikely his company can really make much money given the miniscule profit margins in the generics business in the first place. Viewed as a public service from Mr. Three-Commas, this is a welcome idea, even if he did name the company after himself.

Health & Science

Covid Variant

Evidence keeps piling on that the new UK variant of Covid is passed on more effectively from person to person, though it does not yet appear to make people more (or less) sick. Pfizer/BioNTech released in vitro study results showing the antibodies produced from their vaccination binds this new variant. Phew.

Covid saves a life

We previously mentioned that people would be blaming unrelated illnesses on Covid vaccines, but this is an unexpected twist. In the UK, a group of doctors are reporting that infection by Covid-19 has sent a man's Hodgkin lymphoma into remission.

Thus it now appears the pandemic has been a godsend for more than just Moderna's Chief Medical Officer. ($75M in the bank and counting)

Immunity

Everyone wants to know how long Covid immunity lasts after infection. To date we have mostly only seen blood-derived proxy information and more of the same has just been published. Circulating antibodies to spike protein were relatively stable even beyond 6 months. Memory B cells (which create these antibodies) specific to spike were more prevalent at 6 months than at 1 month post-infection. This points to at least a half a year of some protection barring any viral mutations that change the calculus.

Shkreli Awards

The Lown Institute came out with their annual Shkreli awards, which names and shames the biggest jerks in healthcare for 2020. Browsing through their list it includes some fraudsters and profiteers, but also there seems to be some really off-the-wall arguments, such as the judge who claimed the US government paid for the Moderna vaccine to be developed, therefore it should be free.

Got news for that guy - it took TEN YEARS to develop. Just because it happened to be close to the finish line when we needed it doesn't mean Uncle Sam paid for its creation. The federal money was able to accelerate development, which is a valid reason for the US having rights to a lot of Moderna's supply, but to discount a decade of preliminary research is ignorant.

Snails & Mice

Experiments done to snails in recent years have involved erasing memories and also transplanting memories from one snail to another. Neeraj Agrawal put it best on Twitter: "they are really f**kin these snails up".

Now that snails have been totally owned, scientists are moving on to mice and have already made them smell things that don't exist. Watch your back, Mickey.

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