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BioPharmGuy
We Built a Zoo
Here at BioPharmGuy we mostly spend our time on improving our directory, but every now and then we get some weird ideas. In that vein, we are happy to present to you the BioPharmZoo.
Going forward, whenever you feel the need to do some research on biotech companies named after animals, we've got you covered. You’ll see a lot of fierce creatures – big cats, wolves and bears, but also a ton of birds, a couple scorpions, a few extinct animals and an axolotl.
It’s a fun list - share it with everyone on the Twitter!
December Sponsor
We have a couple weeks available at the end of the year for a newsletter sponsor. Clearly Dec 23rd & Dec 30th will not be our most widely read mailings, so if you would like to spring for Dec 23rd we will give you Dec 30th free. Just send us a message or reply to this email.
October Funding
Last month we logged 14 IPOs for $1.49B and also tracked $2.95B in private funding rounds at 43 companies - Neumora Therapeutics was the big winner with $500M.
The money geysers keep on gushing. Summary file available on our downloads page.
Companies Added & Removed
This week in directory edits, 17 companies were added, 10 removed.
Best name added:
Parthenon Therapeutics
Worst name added:
HAVN
Sad to see go:
Birdie Biopharmaceuticals
Summary file available on our downloads page.
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Pills!
If a world-changing vaccine wasn’t enough for you, Pfizer has brought another big gun to the Covid fight. Their new Covid therapy cut hospitalization & death by 89% among high-risk people. This on the heels of Merck/Ridgeback’s molnupiravir having been granted emergency approval by the UK after showing 50% reduction in hospitalizations and deaths. (The molnupiravir regimen consists of 40 pills over five days - better set some phone alarms.)
Americans love popping pills, so this is great news in the fight to get back to normal. Just watch the whole "but we don't know the side effects even though 200 million people have taken it!" crap fade away now that a needle isn't involved.
Youth vaccines plus oral treatments for high-risk people has the potential to make the March 2020 fool’s dream of Covid being “like the flu” a reality. Hurrah for scientists, government support of basic research and the US biopharma industry - without any of which we would not have these treatments.
Sugar Daddies
Insulin is the latest poster child for drug companies ripping people off by raking in record profits - except it’s a false narrative. It's true that insulin costs a lot more to the consumer, but drug makers are actually taking a smaller cut than they used to.
The middlemen are the ones ripping people off, plain and simple. According to a report this week out of USC, the share of profits going to pharmacy benefit managers, pharmacies & wholesalers has been going up, while the share of profits to drug companies and health plans has been going down.
Drug companies are the guilty parties when it comes to the crazy pricing of gene therapies and some other drugs with small markets. But if you’re angry about insulin prices going up, that anger should be directed at the middlemen who thrive due to the comically inefficient healthcare system we have.
Really Bright
Bright Minds Biosciences was already traded over the counter, but moved to a stock exchange this week and needed a new ticker symbol. They’re working on psychedelics as neuro therapies. Neat, so what’s they’re cool new ticker symbol gonna be? MDMA? LSD? SHRM?
Nope - they went with DRUG. Stupid. 2/10
Team Roast
Avenzoar Pharmaceuticals will not win any awards for attention to detail. We say that because they spelled their CFO’s name two different ways on their team page. They were able to correctly spell Bruggeman, Pandol, Edderkaoui, Strause and Reavy twice, but Cramer/Kramer was too much to handle.
Theranos
As the trial presses on, testimony making Elizabeth Holmes look clueless keeps bubbling up. The latest is one of the (numerous) former Lab Directors who was concerned with the fact that Theranos' devices were detecting Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) in samples from women, who, of course, lack a prostate entirely. Holmes theorized that perhaps these women had a rare kind of breast cancer.
Think about it - her device yielded poor results and her explanation was a theoretical rare breast cancer as opposed to the more obvious "machine sucks". Of course, Holmes has no college degree at all let alone a PhD or any medical training, so this is just another example of her making s**t up as she went along, which is really all you can do when you don't know what you're talking about.
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Psychedelics
Scientifically, this is good news and could be a boon for a number of mental health issues. How anyone will make money off it is another story - it literally grows out of the ground. Investors love a good story, though, so enjoy the psychedelic boom while it lasts.
Michael Pollan has a pretty good book about psychedelics in which he tries several of them. It gets repetitive, but he's done a lot of research on the history of psychedelics and the current state of underground treatment. Worth a look.
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ETC.
SQUID
Lots of people are getting in on the gambling craze known as cryptocoins/NFT/whatever you wanna call it. For the most part these will end up at $0, but as with all financial crazes it comes down to who ends up holding the bag. Some will win big, most will lose.
But let's hope most people don’t bet their $28k life savings on a single coin and lose it all like this guy. What makes that one especially amazing is he bet it all on a coin named after the Squid Game TV show. You know – the show about a game where hundreds of people lose for every winner.
You could name one of these coins SCAM and people would be dumb enough to buy it. Hmmm...anyone know a good crypto developer?
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