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R-Biopharm
Lifestyle video clips on biotech websites are relatively common. Not so common is filling your entire landing screen with one. Even less common than that? People bringing STALKS OF WHEAT to a picnic.
What, are they planning to thresh it? Afterwards will they leave the chaff lying on the beach for the next baby to happen upon, while mom and dad get sauced on Rosé?
“Babe, I’m gonna grab a banana for each of us”
“Great babe, can you also throw in four pears, two apples, two bunches of grapes, some mint and a couple lemons?”
Lemons at a picnic…because who among us doesn’t enjoy sinking their teeth into a good beach lemon?
Can’t stop watching.
BioTinder
Interested in getting in touch with Genoscience Pharma? Or perhaps you would like to date them for lunch? No problem – they’re down for either.
Cancer News
In-person conferences are back. This week was ASCO in Chicago. Some good breast cancer results for AstraZeneca/Daiichi's product, Enhertu, caused the crowd to go wild. Seriously - they gave a standing ovation when the results were presented. They showed an extra six months of survival on current standard of care. Six months may sound small, but it's huge in oncology
This could mark a deeper shift from treating HER2+ breast cancer, to a more universal approach of treating all cancers expressing HER2 in a similar way. Treating cancers by how they present as opposed to where they present has been slowly building for decades, but should pick up even more steam moving forward.
When you check out the Wikipedia page for Enhertu (Scientific name: Trastuzumab deruxtecan) it's strange that AstraZeneca is not mentioned anywhere. Are drug companies sending out Wikipedia-editing forces to scrub any mention of them?
In other cancer news, a colorectal cancer trial showed 100% remission after six months in the 12 patients who completed the study, which is pretty much unprecedented. The results were published in the NEJM. It was a highly specific subset of patients, so this isn't like a global cure for rectal cancer or anything, but for patients with this specific malady, news doesn't get much better.
Gotta love this business!
SinuSonic
Some medical devices are cursed by their method of use. One of the classics is the old transcranial stimulation device, which usually involves an unwieldy helmet or some device that looks like a beauty parlor hair dryer. But there are certainly others. For example, a sinus congestion relief device. We could all use something like it from time to time, but demonstrating it on a website is aesthetically difficult, as you can see here. Memories of the 80s cartoon, The Raccoons, came rushing back.
Team Roast
OchreBio took two pictures of each person - one unsmiling in black and white, the other smiling in full color. (No, they're not working on an antidepressant.) So we did what any mature adults would do in this scenario - we moused back and forth between two of these people, took a video and put it on YouTube.
About Time
Moderna has been working on a bivalent Covid booster. Bivalent means it will target two different versions of the virus. One of the targets is Omicron and, unsurprisingly, this new product shows a stronger antibody response to the Omicron variant. The goal is for this to be ready in the fall, which would be pretty nice, but without a signed government order, don't expect Moderna to be in a hurry.
Eli Lilly
This week their weight loss drug, Mounjaro, met its trial endpoints meaning its next stop is submission for FDA approval. The trial showed that obese patients on low/high doses achieved weight loss of 16/22% respectively. That’s not pounds, that’s percent. Importantly, patients mostly lost fat, not lean mass.
To suggest this has blockbuster potential in America is a slight understatement. Side effects were mostly GI-related, but honestly, most people prefer vomiting and diarrhea to broccoli and exercise, so this looks like a golden goose.
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