Biotech Business with Fexingo: Life Sciences Startups, Drug Discovery, and FDA Approvals

Lucas and Luna break down the biggest challenge in biotech right now: cell and gene therapies are producing miraculous results in rare diseases, but the economics of manufacturing and reimbursement are stalling the industry. Lucas walks through the example of bluebird bio’s Zynteglo—a one-time gene therapy for beta-thalassemia priced at $2.8 million in the U.S. After launching in 2022, bluebird ha...

Lucas and Luna explore the Orphan Drug Act's impact on biotech business models, using Vertex's cystic fibrosis franchise as the central case. They break down the numbers: how a patient population of just 30,000 in the US supports a multi-billion-dollar revenue stream, and why the strategy has attracted everyone from Novartis to tiny startups. Along the way they discuss the FDA's 'rare pediatric di...

Episode 2 of Biotech Business with Fexingo dives into how AI is transforming drug discovery, using Recursion Pharmaceuticals as the case study. Lucas and Luna break down the company's approach: combining high-throughput cellular imaging with machine learning to screen millions of compounds virtually. They discuss a concrete example from Recursion's pipeline—a potential treatment for cerebral caver...

In the debut episode of Biotech Business with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna drill into the most disruptive biotech story of 2026—the rise of Amgen's experimental obesity drug MariTide. They break down how this once-a-month injection could undercut Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Eli Lilly's Zepbound, why the early Phase 2 data caused a $35 billion swing in market cap across the sector, and what the mechanism...