Business Of Biotech

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. In many respects, bringing an established foreign biopharma company to the U.S. market is not unlike starting one up from scratch. In other respects, it's even harder; long-held cultural norms and management styles, region-specific market dynamics, payer system nuance, and political influence must all be re-navigated and re-negotiated wit...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Since we last spoke in the Spring of 2021, Nevan Charles Elam, JD has managed to advance both of small-but-mighty Rezolute Bio's candidates onto the next phases of their journey. This year, on the back of a $130 million investment, Rezolute Bio is prepping its RZ358 candidate, a monoclonal antibody for congenital hyperinsulinism, for a pi...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. The non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) therapeutics market has proven to be an 11/10 on the difficulty scale. Despite billions of big biopharma dollars invested in therapeutic development, and a few close calls, no therapeutics has yet reached the finish line. On this episode of the Business of Biotech, 89bio CEO Rohan Palekar gives us the i...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. It’s been said that clinical trials are where emerging biotechs go to die. If the science doesn't kill quickly, poor cash management will slowly. And, even when good data opens the cash floodgates, post-round cash management savvy isn't necessarily intuitive to academic and scientific founders. Cash runway preservation is, however, i...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. While Horizon Therapeutics has made plenty of waves in the biotech news cycle of late. While perhaps not as flashy as a perilous multibillion dollar acquisition deal or potential blockbuster readout, its formal establishment of a research team – comparatively pragmatic as that may be – could have long-term consequences that are just impactful....

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. The microbiome therapeutics market has been taking a beating, with several clinical-stage companies failing or flailing at the hands of tough financial markets and regulatory scrutiny. MaaT Pharma Founder & CEO Hervé Affagard knows these perils well. Affagard recently navigated his company through a protracted FDA clinical hold, emerging o...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Chief Operating Officer is arguably the toughest job in the emerging biopharma C-suite. HR, CMC, regulatory affairs, legal, PR, you name it, the COO touches it, and practically everything rolls up to her. This week's episode of the Business of Biotech brings us to a president and COO who's also a mom, a volunteer, and an advocate for...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Will machine learning revolutionize biopharma drug discovery? Has it already? This week on the Business of Biotech, we explore the intersection of tech and bio with Dr. James Field, founder and CEO of LabGenius. We'll get an insider's look at the formation of a company bridging the divide between computational and biological sciences...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Ahmed Hamdy, MD didn’t ask to be the subject of Nathan Vardi's new book For Blood and Money: Billionaires, Biotech, and the Quest for a Blockbuster Drug. In fact, that particular chapter of Dr. Hamdy’s career is one he’d rather not relive. But, in display of the resilience required of biotech leadership, Hamdy made a raging comeback. On t...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Last October, we dropped an episode dissecting the relationship between Ray Therapeutics and one of its lead funders, 4BIO, and it quickly rocketed to an all-time Business of Biotech fan favorite. This week, we’re doing it again with a candid, behind-the-scenes breakdown of how Vedanta Biosciences secured the support of K2 Health Ventures in i...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Vaxxinity’s John Krayacich likes taking big swings at big indications. He’s played key roles on the teams that launched Lipitor, Lyrica, and Neurontin, which have had measurable impacts on global populations of people suffering from cardiovascular disease, CNS disorders, and pain. He found those opportunities at companies like LEO, Novartis, P...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Dr. Adrienne Leussa is one of my favorite follows. If the booming biotech scene on an incredibly diverse continent of 1.2 billion people interests you, she should be one of your faves, too. Dr. Leussa's intellect, energy, and glowing spirit contribute to her ambassadorship of the African biotech scene. She's an entrepreneur, a vision...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Allan Shaw isn't the only insider who's preemptively critical of the impact the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) will have on the biopharma industry.  Allan's back this week with analysis of what he and others are tongue-in-cheek calling the "innovation reduction act." He posits that the act's removal of certain prot...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. The Business of Biotech took a road trip to Pittsburgh to visit with Peptilogics CEO and founder Dr. Jonathan Steckbeck, whose Ph. D. work was inspired by the loss of his father-in-law to a hospital-borne infection. That work subsequently led to the formation of a company committed to leveraging peptide therapeutics to address PJI (prosthetic...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Since Dan O'Connor stepped in as CEO at Ambrx late last year, the company's stock has rallied on the revival of a previously-shelved anti-HER2 ADC. It also raised $78 million and completed its ATM (at-the-market) offering. O'Connor is no stranger to overcoming adversity. A former marine captain, he was among the first deployed t...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Like many of us, Howard Berman, Ph. D. has personal experience with the tragedy of cognitive decline. Neurodegenerative disorders are on the rise, and when one afflicted his father — a triple board-certified physician — he saw firsthand that they don't discriminate. Berman has dedicated his career to addressing neuro, autoimmune, and meta...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. What are biopharma's greatest skilled manufacturing labor needs, and what's the industry doing to fill them? John Balchunas is on the front lines in his position as Workforce Director at NIIMBL, the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, and he says advanced degrees and pedigrees aren't the answer...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Flagship Pioneering is fertile ground for a bevy of blossoming biotechs, and one of its most prolific sowers is General Partner Avak Kahvejian, Ph. D. Dr. Kahvejian counts Seres Therapeutics, Rubius Therapeutics, Codiak BioSciences, Cygnal Therapeutics, Ring Therapeutics, Cellarity, Laronde, and Generate Biomedicines among the companies he&apo...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. We kick this conversation off with the writer Elizabeth Gilbert's take on moss, which she so eloquenlty dubs a "resurrection engine." Gilbert almost certianly didn't realize the potential of moss to play a resurrectional role in human health, but Eleva Biotech's Andreas Schaaf and Bjorn Cochlovius do. On this episode o...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. We often talk about biotechs taking "big swings." This week's guest is swinging for the fences with a lineup of gene therapies designed to address multiple forms of hearing loss, which affect multiple millions (if not, billions) of people worldwide. Adding to the challenge she's accepted, Sensorion CEO Nawal Ouzren is archi...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. LyGenesis is  developing a pipeline of allogeneic cell therapies using the lymph node as an in vivo bioreactor to grow functioning ectopic organs. What sounds like science fiction to some is starting to look like a life changing therapy for millions of liver, kidney, pancreas, and thymus disease sufferers. The science behind it is being develo...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Today's episode of the Business of Biotech covers a lot of ground with Enzyvant CEO Bill Symonds, Pharm. D. Among other things, we discuss the career moves Dr. Symonds has made within the "vant" environment since his involvement in the launch of the original Roivant,  the approval of Rethymic, the merger of Altavant and Enzyvant...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. The more we learn about inflammation and the complex cause/contributor/symptom roles it plays in various disease states, the more business activity we see in the inflammation therapeutics space. But to date, commercial pharmaceutical and biologic efforts have fallen short for patients, says Moonlake Immunotherapeutics CEO Jorge Santos Da Silva...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. On the surface, the merger of Medsenic (a developer of arsenic salt formulations for therapeutic application in inflammatory conditions) and Bone Therapeutics (which develops allogeneic cell therapies for complicated bone fractures) doesn't look obviously synergistic. But  Francois Rieger,  Ph. D. says that on the scientific level, it&apo...

We love to hear from our listeners. Send us a message. Among a growing cluster of Pittsburgh biotechs, you'll find BlueSphere Bio, an early-stage company discovering T-cell receptors to leverage against tumor-specific antigens in individual cancer patients. Its leader, CEO Keir Loiacono, Esq., works with a sense of urgency inspired by his own cancer journey. Business of Biotech host Matt Pill...