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Getting it Twisted
Twist Bioscience led off their press release crowing about record quarterly revenues, which was probably somewhat off putting for the 25% of employees they later announced were to be laid off.
Of course, if you know anything about business, you know that revenue figures for a decade old company don’t mean much – it’s about profits at this point.
With quarterly expenses being $119M, yes, that means they lost almost exactly as much money as their entire revenue stream.
In biotech it’s often normal for companies to lose money for many years before hopefully becoming immensely profitable. But that model is based on drug discovery, not commodity DNA production. It takes a long time to get a drug approved. It does not take a long time to start shipping synthetic DNA.
There was a big short seller report out about this company not that long ago, and it’s looking like more and more of their accusations may have been accurate.
Error: Syllable Limit Reached
New company on our radar is called SIRPant Immunotherapeutics, which you may have noticed runs to nine syllables! Way too many. SIRPant Bio was the correct name.
At least their logo isn't a rip off of the American Cancer Society's or anything.
Hot Seat
FDA has approved a smart toilet seat which can detected the user's heart rate and oxygen saturation. Interesting commercialization prospect here. This product must be for people who are either unable or too lazy to use a $15 pulse oximeter and a $15 heart monitor.
There’s certainly something to be said for passively monitoring vital signs, but the most likely demographic here is old people. And there’s nothing old people like more than technology for the sake of it. Once those batteries run out, it's back to being nothing but a toilet seat, except without that beloved plastic cushion.
Anyways, are we really to believe the user’s doctors are going to be watching these vital signs? That’s not how American healthcare works - doctors get paid to see patients, not look at a stream of butt cheek data.
EQRx
In the most understated comment we’ve seen in a while, EQRx’s CEO said in the wake of laying off half their company and killing all products but one:
“We tried to change the system; maybe that was a stretch.”
The system in question, being the US healthcare system. Yeah, we would say that was always a stretch.
In fact, we said as much in the very first, (ancient) issue of this newsletter back in Jan 2020. As we did then, may as well bookend this whole saga with Derek Lowe's insight.
Lesson? Always be skeptical of executives wearing weird hats. Lookin' at you Goldstein & Veale.
Failed at Failing
If your drug fails its clinical study, sometimes there is corrective work to be done on your pipeline web page. For Acasti, it seems that work started and was never finished. You can see a web designer tagged the page and a couple things on it with “Delete?” but that was the end of their efforts.
You can’t just remove a link to a page on your website and call it good. Some weird BPGuy may be tracking links to your products and still have access to these hidden pages. Then he may put it in a newsletter sharing it with untold millions (thousands) of people. Be forewarned...
Biotech Rebrand
We see a lot of biotech companies changing their names hoping for a fresh start. Sometimes they do a good job, sometimes, not. But never before have we seen a person undergo a rebrand.
Well, who might this person be? Do you really have to ask? It's Elizabeth Holmes who will now be known as Liz. So please forget about all those crimes, ok?
We really weren’t going to mention her again until she actually went to jail, but then the NY Times wrote this long humanoid-interest piece and Biotwitter lost its s**t, so we had to say something.
Best part of the article was how she finally admitted to faking her voice the whole time. People who knew her pre-fame said as much, but even if you knew it was phony, it's something else to hear a person admit they faked a voice. For a decade.
“Maybe people picked up on that not being authentic, since it wasn’t.”
Maybe?
Team Toast
Standing on kayaks is generally frowned upon for those who don’t like getting soaked. But don’t tell that to Bliss Biopharmaceutical. 34 people standing on kayaks simultaneously! Put this in the biotech Team Picture Hall of Fame already. 10/10
Not only that, this crew goes on vacations together, does Talent Night (whatever that may be), and violates all kinds of fire codes to celebrate anniversaries.
Next time we move to China for work, it’s gonna be 100% Bliss.
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