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Moderna
Headlines last week focused on Moderna taking almost half a billion charge for expired vaccines - they reportedly wrote down $499M worth, which is definitely a big number. By itself that sounds really bad, but the thing is, when you produce enormous quantities of product with a defined shelf-life, some of it expires without being used. And when you sell $19B worth of product, you can handle a 2.6% loss due to expired products. Basically this was a non-news story, where losing half a billion was presented as sensational. 2.6% loss is basically nothing.
Eli Lilly
After Indiana won the race to be the first state to pass an overly restrictive abortion ban, (our condolences to the future 10-year old rape victims whose parents wait 11 weeks to seek an abortion) Eli Lilly released a statement that they may have to possibly start moving some operations out of state. Eventually.
Wow, what a strong statement from a company who made nary a peep in the years leading up to this moment. Eli Lilly, like many (most?) corporations, tried to have it both ways by donating money to anti-abortion and pro-choice politicians in roughly equal numbers. It’s the height of hypocrisy to donate money to politicians and then act astonished when they implement parts of their agenda. Was also odd they did not see fit to publish this statement on their own website - we usually like to include first-party links to news like this, but couldn't find anything on the actual Lilly website.
Oh, and how extra brave of them to have made this announcement on Saturday morning.
Frontin'
In one of the more confusing press releases of the year, Frontage Laboratories acquired Frontage Clinical Services last week. At first we thought it was an acquisition to acquire the rights to use the Frontage name in the New Jersey region. But Frontage Clinical Services has been using the Frontage Laboratories logo since at least March 2021, according to their (only) Instagram post. So it was more like a company buying the rest of a company, which is usually a relevant detail that makes the press release.
The Town
There are about a million biotech incubators and accelerators out there these days, but none has as beautiful of a name as Biopharma Town. If we ever end up in Hangzhou, you know BioPharmGuy will have a night on the Biopharma Town.
Inotiv
In doing some standard data confirmation, we came across this company in our directory that had a lot of negative Google reviews. Occasionally you get a crazy person leaving a review for a drug company, generally making a wild claim about how the company’s products let aliens read their mind. But Inotiv had 243 one-star reviews, so there had to be something going on.
That something seems to have been a report a few months ago about breeding and abusing beagles for research purposes. The Google reviews thus flowed. In a subsequent May statement the Inotiv CEO stated “The required investments to improve the facility and the lead time to achieve these improvements have recently increased. As a result, we have decided we will not be investing further in this facility, and it will be closed. “
Oh sure, the public outcry wasn’t the real reason for its closure - it was about the investments the facility required. Maybe acquiring Envigo and its diabolical puppy mill in November 2021 was a slight mistake of yours, Mr. CEO?
One more FYI – when a company in life sciences speaks of offering “research models”, that’s often a euphemism for “animals on which to experiment”. Envigo pulls that trick on their page here. Animal testing is still required for many studies, though even those of us who understand this fact have a different reaction to hearing about beagles vs. rats.
Cytonics
There have been some shady investment practices around the biotech industry ever since stimulus funds ended up in the wallets of retail investors. Crypto and all that has been a good one, but further down the popularity food chain there's this one: Google Ads for a company’s stock.
We’ve all seen Google ads millions of times and they are typically trying to sell you a service or a product, not asking you to invest. This one is especially odd since you can only reserve shares, not actually trade them. As they themselves say – “A secondary market for these securities does not currently exist and may never develop.” So, sort of like you're giving them a loan that will likely never be paid back? Sign us up!
Expanscience
Greenwashing has become a great pastime in the biotech space. Normally it's the old ruse where companies pay someone to not pollute so they themselves can continue to spew emissions with reckless abandon. But here's a new spin. Expanscience is claiming they designed their website to be eco-friendly.
How does one go about such a task? Easy - no videos, no newsletters (hey!), no fancy programming. Huh. So Craigslist was just being Earth-friendly this whole time.
Strangely, Expanscience does not do the one thing that really does save energy (at least on an OLED screen) – dark color backgrounds. They stuck with the whitest of white.
Ok then, so they did everything to save energy except literally saving energy? Why does Expanscience hate the Earth so much?
Name Game
Little late to the game, but ImmunoPrecise Antibodies decided to rebrand as IpA therapeutics. They now plan to help their clients discover the most bitter and overrated antibodies know to science.
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