BioCentury This Week

In this year’s series of Back to School essays, BioCentury’s editors ask whether the era of human first, causal biology and personalized medicine can reshape drug discovery to solve the weakest link in biotech — translation to the clinic. On a special edition of the BioCentury This Week podcast, the three authors of BioCentury’s 32nd Back to School edition, Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn, Executi...

A vote on the Biosecure Act in the U.S. House of Representatives early next week shines the spotlight back on legislation seeking to rein in Chinese CDMOs and genomics companies, as Congress returns to work. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors handicap the legislation’s chances of passage in the House and Senate and assess what’s at stake for the law authorizing rare p...

Shaking up an underwhelming year for fresh biotech paper, a trio of biotechs filed to go public on NASDAQ last week. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss the IPO filings by MBX and Massachusetts companies Zenas and Bicara. Washington Editor Steve Usdin returns to the podcast to provide updates on the Inflation Reduction and Biosecure acts, as well as the life sc...

Grand Rounds is an R&D meeting that represents BioCentury’s latest initiative to create new networks linking academic discoveries with translational skills and the investors who will finance them, BioCentury co-founder, President and CEO David Flores said on a special edition of the BioCentury This Week podcast previewing the new conference. The meeting, on Sept. 9-11 in Nashville, focuses on...

The Biden administration has disclosed what Medicare will pay for the first graduates of its drug price negotiation program but biopharma companies, biotech investors and patient advocates are still waiting for the government to reveal how those prices were determined — details that are critical to informing the decisions that will shape the future of medicine. On the latest BioCentury This Week p...

Pharmaceutical companies and some investors may have once again become wary of gene therapy, but the modality’s future is bright, according to Jim Wilson. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss takeaways from BioCentury’s exclusive interview with the AAV trailblazer, including Wilson’s prediction that the benefits of the therapies will extend beyond rare genetic d...

A substantial part of the biopharma ecosystem involves deals between biotechs and academics, with smaller companies accessing assets to add to their pipelines and technologies to help solve problems. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss the interplay of biotech and academia , including how deals between the groups often come outside the hubs of Boston and the Ba...

Europe’s CHMP has again ruled in contrast to FDA for a neurology product, this time on Biogen and Eisai’s Leqembi for Alzheimer’s disease. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury editors discuss the similarities and differences between Leqembi lecenamab and Aduhelm aducanumab, the first anti-amyloid mAb from Biogen and Eisai and what it means for the next in line from that class, Ki...

Alpha emitters are the latest trend in the hot radioligand space, but there’s debate about which isotope offers the best attributes for optimizing safety and efficacy. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss the benefits and challenges that come with developing radiopharmaceuticals using lead-212 versus its more well-known counterpart actinium-225. They also discus...

Buysiders are upbeat headed into the back half of the year, but uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s timing on interest rate cuts is keeping that sentiment in check. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors preview the public markets’ second half of 2024, discussing the appetite for biotech IPOs and M&A and what investors are looking for as they read the Fed tea leave...

The U.K.’s life sciences ecosystem boasts “palpable energy at the very innovation end of the spectrum in biotech, with a lot of really quality science,” BioCentury Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn says on the latest BioCentury This Week podcast. Fishburn assesses the maturation of the country’s biotech industry, including the need for an influx of capital to catalyze the sector’s growth. Washington...

The impact on FDA and the biopharma industry of the Supreme Court’s move to overturn the legal doctrine that courts defer to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous laws will take years to come into focus; for now, the clearest effects of the Chevron ruling will be on disputes over exclusivity and other non-science issues. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors ana...

A biomarker breakthrough could shave years off the development of therapies for a group of devastating, progressive ultrarare diseases. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss FDA’s agreement to allow biopharma companies to use a biomarker as the basis for accelerated approval of neuronal mucopolysaccharidoses therapies, which marks an important inflection point ,...

After whisking through Washington for the first half of the year, raising alarms, mutating and causing confusion, the Biosecure Act is now on pause. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss what the delay for the legislation, which seeks to drive Chinese contract development and manufacturing organizations out of the U.S., means, what will happen next, and how it wi...

The avian flu outbreak is a fire drill that is showing how poorly the U.S. is prepared for the next pandemic. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury's editors recap last week’s BioCentury Show conversation with Rick Bright, including the former BARDA director’s insights on the opportunities for biotechs to help fill voids in surveillance, point-of-care diagnostics, vaccines an...

BIO’s annual meeting took place amid heightened industry concerns regarding the Biosecure Act, which took yet another unexpected turn this week. On a special edition of the BioCentury This Week recapping the meeting, BioCentury's editors discuss the latest on the anti-China biopharma legislation, including misperceptions of what the bill seeks to accomplish. Special guest Chris Cargill, the C...

A snub by an FDA advisory committee for an MDMA-psychotherapy combination is unlikely to read through to other psychedelic therapies in the pipeline. On the BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss the shortcomings of the Lykos Therapeutics product’s clinical development program and why other psychedelics likely won’t face the same hurdles. The editors also assess FDA’s new platf...

Four takeouts with upfront payments north of $1 billion to close out May mark the latest run of VC exits from biotech M&A and help expand the pipelines of large biopharmas in renal, ophthalmic and immunologic indications. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss how two of the takeouts -- Asahi Kasei’s buy of Calliditas and Biogen’s acquisition of HI-Bio -- show...

A theme among late-breaker presentations at this year’s American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting is the push by companies to move targeted therapies into earlier lines of treatment. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors discuss what they’re watching for in ASCO’s headline presentations and deliver highlights from abstracts released late last week as the oncology mee...

New BIO CEO John Crowley is reorganizing BIO in a bid to reshape how the organization communicates and enhance its focus on patients. BioCentury’s editors also recap the 24th annual Bio€quity Europe conference that was held in San Sebastián, Spain last week, as well as highlights from last week’s American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy conference. The editors also discuss impressive early data f...

“I’m a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist” about the potential for AI to transform drug development, Derek Lowe, author of the In the Pipeline blog, told BioCentury Washington Editor Steve Usdin on the latest BioCentury Show . Lowe's skepticism about claims that AI will rapidly transform the field is driven by a belief that the “problems that we have in the drug industry that we wa...

Lawmakers’ changes to the Biosecure Act create breathing room for U.S. biopharma companies to move on from Chinese CDMOs, Washington Editor Steve Usdin said. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, Usdin and his BioCentury colleagues discuss what the revisions mean for biotechs and what’s next for the legislation, plus how WuXi AppTec is defending itself against the bill’s allegations. Directo...

It sounds obvious, but still needs saying, says Ysios Capital's Karen Wagner. “How do you rise above the noise? By having the most spectacular data.” In conversation with Editor in Chief Simone Fishburn on The BioCentury Show , Wagner discussed the theme of the upcoming Bio€quity Europe conference — rising above the noise: in a sea of competition where companies vie for attention among invest...

Next week's Bio€quity Europe conference in San Sebastián will focus on how European biotechs can rise above the noise to attract investors, partners and talent. McKinsey & Co.’s Alexandra Zemp and Paula Olazábal of Ysios Capital joined BioCentury to outline the opportunities and challenges faced by Spain’s biopharma ecosystem and preview some of the conference’s networking events, firesid...

One of the big themes of this week’s ASGCT meeting will be CAR T cells in cancer and beyond. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s editors preview the American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy’s annual meeting. Much of the CAR T field has reoriented from cancer to autoimmune diseases over the past year. Now, researchers are looking even farther afield. According to abstracts rel...