Innovative medical IoT devices and healthcare applications can improve patient care and maximize efficiencies, but cybercriminals target their vulnerabilities.
Verimatrix offers innovative solutions to secure patient data, healthcare apps, and medical devices —protecting your revenue and reputation. Verimatrix’ security solutions are used by leaders in the toughest markets and have been deployed in hundreds of millions of mobile devices.
|
|
BioPharmGuy
Just like that, this week marks the 2nd anniversary of the launch of BioPharmGuy News. We are at almost 13,000 subscribers and would like to thank you all. We hear mostly praise, but now and again we get some wild meandering screed from armchair ‘scientists’ who disagree with anything mainstream. What can you do?
The launch of this newsletter happened to coincide with the initial spread of Covid beyond China’s borders. Covering it surely helped us get on our feet a lot more quickly than we expected, but like all of you we will be happy to see the back of it.
On that, the outlook is positive for America. It seems the majority of people are ready to accept the current risk profile of Omicron and transition back to life as we knew it. Inevitably, some who have molded their identity around being overly restrictive and exceedingly careful will resist. In some pockets of the country, they will hold sway for some time. But the rest of us can hopefully look forward to imminent normalcy. The future is bright!
Addition & Attrition
Last week we forgot to update our downloads page. Typically, over 30 people download our weekly update and none of y'all said anything. If something is messed up, please let us know!
Added 20 companies, removed six this week.
Best new name:
Worst new name:
Summary file available on our downloads page.
|
|
PP PPP
ProPublica made a great tool to easily allow you to see how much in PPP loans any company in America received and paid back/had forgiven. So that gave us an idea. We downloaded the PPP file for loans of $150k+, cleaned it up a bit, then quickly matched all the companies we could with what we list in our directory. We came up with 1301 companies that had taken PPP loans for a grand total of $1.04 billion with $906 million being forgiven. Check out our list here.
Not so sure about the data set though…most companies that had their loans forgiven got back more than the value of the loans requested. Maybe there are strange rules and accounting tricks in play?
Pfizer/BioNTech
They’ve announced the start of a clinical trial for a new mRNA vaccine targeting the Omicron variant. The study has three arms: (1) People who’ve had two doses of prior Pfizer vaccine (2) People who’ve had three doses of prior Pfizer vaccine (3) People who’ve had no vaccine.
Who knows how they’re planning to fill that third trial group considering free protection against a life threatening disease wasn't enough to convince that group to get vaccinated the first two times around. Pfizer has a few truckloads of cash ready to roll, so maybe that will be part of the proposition. Then again, bribery didn’t help all that much during the height of the pandemic. Not to mention donuts, weed, lotto tickets, etc.
Considering only 25% of American adults have bothered with the first booster, this new vaccine is likely going to be mostly beneficial for developing nations who still have not received full vaccine coverage.
NeuralInk
Elon Musk’s futuristic brain implants are progressing towards clinical trials, as evidenced by Neuralink posting an opening for a clinical trial director. Let's hope these brain implants work out as well as his hair implants. Speaking of, a group at the hair loss startup, dNovo, has reported to have successfully transplanted human hair stem cells onto a mouse. Resulting critter sure is a cutie. Sign us up!
Man of Science
Look at this guy. Blurry photo, lab coat, strange symbol, science equipment…the Dharma Initiative is back, baby! Kind of odd for a company to include the price for a medical device that is not even close to being for sale. The product seems reasonable, potentially even groundbreaking. Let’s hope it yields results that make you want to use it again, rather than forget it ever existed.
Mark Cuban Drug Company
The best eponymous company name since the Michael Scott Paper Company has announced their first slate of available generics, generating some news in the process. The company is touting savings of up to 99.5% on retail prices. That’s kind of silly since retail price in the drug business is a totally invented, meaningless number. It’s like that dude who’s selling his NFT for $300 million but will settle for fifty bucks. Not based in reality.
Even after the convoluted health insurance/drug voucher two-step, a few of these Cuban drugs are being sold for 60% less than the currently available best price. And at monthly rates of $120, this could generate annual savings of close to $1000, which is a meaningful amount for a lot of Americans.
This is welcome news, but consumer behavior will have to change greatly for it to make much of an impact. Most people get an Rx from the doctor then head to their local pharmacy, who has their health insurance info on file. The Cuban company will not deal with any health insurance, and so will only be available for people who are willing to pay directly. It will take a lot of consumer education to get people to change their ways, but you have to start somewhere.
MindMed
A bunch of people are about to suddenly claim to have generalized anxiety disorder - MindMed just had their LSD clinical trial cleared by the FDA. 100 lucky subjects will enroll (and 100 unlucky placebo recipients will also enroll) in the first aboveboard clinical trial of LSD in 40 years. The trial will involve a single dose followed by 12 weeks of patient monitoring.
Very cool, but as ever, how is anyone going to make money selling an old recreational drug? Oh yeah, they went public so the founders and executives have already profited regardless of whether the company ever sells anything. Capitalism!
|
|
Asymchem is a global CDMO that has consistently innovated and invested in new technologies to stay on the forefront of trends in both R&D and production since its inception more than 20 years ago. As a result, Asymchem is well-positioned and structured to be a true global partner in drug development and manufacturing for pharmaceutical and biotech companies by offering integrated solutions across all stages of drug development and into commercialization. Find out more.
|
|
Antibody Unapproved
The FDA has revoked the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for two monoclonal antibody treatments that are showing virtually no effect on the Omicron variant. Since all healthcare is base-fueling politics these days, Florida’s Deputy Secretary for Health responded to the FDA’s revocation with a demand for more “clinical evidence”. Florida’s governor then piled in with a statement claiming the FDA’s decision was haphazard and specifically bemoaned the fact that this decision wasn't based on multiple peer-reviewed clinical trials (conveniently ignoring the fact that the approval itself wasn't based on peer reviewed clinical trials.)
These particular monoclonals have shown little to no clinical efficacy against Omicron. In fact, one of them showed up to 3000x less effect. But a lack of clinical evidence wasn’t enough and these clowns have now decided they require MORE of a lack of clinical evidence. Sure, but somehow when it comes to vaccines, hundreds of millions of data points aren’t quite enough.
What more evidence do you need than the manufacturers agreeing that the monoclonal doesn’t really work? What a circus.
Florida Again
When talking about healthcare incompetence, sometimes it’s hard to get away from Florida. Last week, a clinical study manager down there was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for faking clinical trial results.
It was as brazen as it gets – ineligible patients were included, they did not receive the drugs, medical records were falsified, and fake lab results were passed along to sponsors. Numerous people at Tellus Medical have now been charged and convicted in this conspiracy.
Mandate Cont’d
Anti-vaxx politicians and commentators were trying to whip up a boycott of Carhartt over its employee vaccine mandate. They accused the company of being too ‘woke’, among other things.
Consumers certainly have the right to buy whatever they want from whomever they choose. But since these boycotters surely aren’t total hypocrites, we know that when they do get the Covid, they definitely will not visit any hospital that has a vaccine mandate for its employees. That would totally go against their rock-solid, unimpeachable freedom-beliefs!
Influenza B “Extinction”
Influenza B is the scrawny little brother version of the flu - most of what is seen around the world is Influenza A. In recent sampling, there has been no Influenza B cases showing up at all, leading some to jump to the wild conclusion that it might be extinct.
While it may be tamped down to very low numbers, there’s no reason to believe it’s gone simply because monitors haven’t seen it. Not like they sample everyone. It will likely be back soon enough, maybe even next year. Diseases don’t just disappear like that.
|
|
Featured Job
Account Executive reporting to the VP of Sales - Elucidata
Elucidata is a start-up experiencing high-growth and they're looking for someone with sales experience in the life sciences industry to promote their bioinformatics solutions to R&D organizations.
What they do:
They're using machine learning to structure data which enables easier analysis by R&D groups. They're also offering access to a curated database of over 1 million datasets.
What you'll do:
You would be selling into biotech, pharma, life science, academia & non-profit research settings. Since this is 2022, you know work from home is an option (but it's also sales, so you know you're gonna have to hit the road too).
|
|
BioPharmGuy is a registered trademark of Wilsonian LLC, Content © 2022 Wilsonian LLC.
|
|
Check your website's analytics - we are likely one of your top referrers. You may be able to boost those referrals with a Premium Listing. Read more here: Promoted Listings.
Send us a message if you have questions or are interested.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
