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The J. P. Morgan Healthcare conference, one of the industry’s flagship events, returns live and available to users this week after two years virtually. I was here the last few days to watch corporate presentations and talk to many healthcare executives and investors. The shiny aspect of the things I’ve seen: There’s a lot of compelling science and innovation going on, and I was happy to communicate that to other people at the conference. But temperament definitely combines as the industry faces a bear market and an economy that is lately flirting with recession in a bear market that has seen a decline in investment (I’ve noticed that many executives who came forward targeted their companies’ monetary positions, for example).
“There will be a lot of structure this year,” Vijay Pande, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, told me. “With the market down, it’s never a time to laugh, just when you’re there. But I think those are the kind of moments where, when you look back, I think that’s where genuine businesses are built.
In fact, some unexpected reorganizations have been announced this week. Gene-editing company Editas announced it would reduce its workforce by 20% and restructure its clinical priorities. His current CSO, Mark Shearman, will leave the company. The company says this prioritization will give it a financial advantage through 2025. Meanwhile, vaccine companies Novavax and CureVac have announced they will have new CEOs, John C. Jacobs and Alexander Zehnder.
Some acquisitions have also been announced: BioNTech is getting its AI partner InstaDeep for around $440 million, for example. Diagnostics company Qiagen has completed its acquisition of Veragen for $150 million. However, I have heard notes of surprise that there have been no further announcements of this kind. One of the notes came here from Pande, who added that he expects to see at least more acquisitions announcements later this year or perhaps early next year. “It essentially reflects more consolidation than is probably needed anyway,” he says. “There are so many corporations and so much skill everywhere. “
That said, there were still more than a few notes of optimism about the long-term prospects for fitness care. I’ve heard that sentiment in other conversations I’ve had (and reflected in classified ads like Element Biosciences saying their desktop sequencer can provide a $200 genome). Despite macroeconomic headwinds, executives are confident that their companies can succeed in the coming years, as long as their strategic plans.
I think Arnon Rosenthal, CEO of Alector Therapeutics, probably would have said it in the most productive way when I asked him what his company would like to do in the coming months to keep investors confident and increase the percentage price of his company. “We want to show smart efficacy data!” He replied. Ultimately, the backline is based on performance.
On Friday, the FDA granted accelerated approval to Alzeihmer’s drug, lecanemab (brand name called Leqembi), however, serious side effects and a death in a clinical trial likely similar to the drug have made many in the fitness industry wary of their optimism about the drug. , which treats a disease that has no known cure.
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Antibody pairs: AbbVie and biotech startup Immunome have reached an agreement to expand new antibody treatments for the treatment of counterfeit tumors. The deal includes a $30 million advance payment for Immunome, as well as milestone bills and additional royalties.
Metabolic diseases: HighTide Therapeutics, which develops remedies for metabolic and digestive diseases, announced that it has raised a $107 million Series C to advance the clinic of its drug candidates.
Arterial disease: Medical device company AVS announced that it has raised a $20 million Series B circular to advance the clinical progression of its device for the treatment of arterial disease and coronary cases.
Health Fintech: Paytient, which allows patients to create interest-free payment plans to pay their medical bills, announced that it has raised a $40. 5 million Series B round.
Walgreens reported a $3. 7 billion loss to cover its percentage of a large global settlement of claims that its pharmacies contributed to the opioid epidemic.
Trials of state-of-the-art cancer vaccines may begin in the UK in early September, German vaccine maker Covid BioNTech said on Friday, as part of a new partnership between the UK government and German biotech company.
VillageMD, a Walgreens-backed medical clinic operator, now has a network of more than 680 locations in the United States, adding two hundred adjacent to the pharmacy chain’s U. S. pharmacies.
Rite Aid said CEO Heyward Donigan was leaving the company, which has struggled to succeed in its reign of more than three years.
Participants at the J. P. Morgan Healthcare convention would likely return live rather than virtually, but Covid-19 remained a hot topic of conversation. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel discussed the long-term covid vaccines, either expressing their expectation. That the style that is expected is the flu: a standard booster every year, updated for variants in circulation. The two companies are also running on combined Covid/flu boosters, which they say will help absorption.
On the remedies side, Regeneron was one of the first companies to expand a covid antibody remedy, but when the virus mutated, the FDA rescinded its emergency use authorization for this and several other antibody therapies. The CSO, George Yancopoulos, said he knew of a covid antibody that targets a conserved component of the virus that doesn’t mutate very often, which will “reduce the risk of reducing activity versus variants in the long term. “Dijo. La company plans to enter the clinical progression of this antibody cure later this year.
Tennis players competing at the Australian Open this month will continue to participate if they test positive for covid-19, tournament director Craig Tiley said Monday, a major departure from the tournament’s strict pandemic policies over the past two years that have seen crowds. Nine-time champion Novak Djokovic will be expelled for refusing to get vaccinated.
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Senators Elizabeth Warren and Peter Welch sent a letter to Pfizer requesting more information about planned increases in the price of the company’s vaccines, but Forbes contributor John Lamattina says his letter illustrates a false impression of what vaccine prices look like in practice.
A news story has found that more than 96% of aircraft wastewater samples involve the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
Armed with ChatGPT, cybercriminals create malware and plot female bots
Binance bleeds assets, $12 billion disappeared in 60 days
Trump’s tax returns reveal beloved loans for Ivanka and her siblings
Human gene connected to larger brains born of probably dead DNA (Science)
Many aircraft are supplied for in-flight medical emergencies (Popular Science)
Mysterious syndrome can occur decades after polio (The Atlantic)