| | | |   | Good morning! Damian here with a programming note: We're covering all the news from next week's J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, which means that starting Monday, this newsletter will hit your inbox in the late afternoon instead of early morning. | | | Are the vibes off in biotech? How worrisome is Omicron? And does the Theranos verdict really matter?
We cover all that and more this week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT’s biotech podcast. First, emergency room physician Craig Spencer joins us to talk about how the Omicron variant is impacting New York City and what the coming months have in store. Then, we look ahead to the New Year in biotech with a preview of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. We start with a look at the latest news in the life sciences, including Elizabeth Holmes’ guilty verdict and the ongoing Aduhelm saga.
Listen here. | Pharma is taking fliers on AI-powered drug discovery Among major pharmaceutical firms, the emerging trend in 2022 is placing bets that artificial intelligence, machine learning, and other technological buzzwords might one day live up to the hype when it comes to identifying new drugs.
Today’s examples come from Merck and Sanofi. Merck signed a deal with Absci, a company that uses AI to find drug targets, in which it will pay as much as $610 million to collaborate on as many as three potential therapies. Sanofi is partnering with a company called Exscientia, also invested in AI for drug discovery, in a $100 million deal covering up to 15 potential treatments. The deals follow yesterday’s news that Amgen is paying $50 million to do similar work with a machine learning startup called Generate Biomedicines.
Whether any of these agreements will lead to an approved medicine — or even one that makes it to pivotal trials — remains to be seen. But pharma’s increasing willingness to make small bets on such technology suggests the drug industry is increasingly curious about what powerful computing can do for their drug research. | Expanding and Scaling Parkinson’s Research Faster with Digital Health Tools A landmark Parkinson’s research initiative from The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) recently announced an expansion with partner Evidation to collect data online. The Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) is on a mission to accelerate better treatments and even prevention of the disease. Through Evidation’s accessible, privacy-protected research platform, PPMI aims to complement its in-clinic study structure to collect data online and over time from 100,000 people with and without Parkinson’s. Read more. | What do you say to shareholders when your shares cannot be traded? At next week’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, eyes and ears will understandably train on the likes of Biogen, Moderna, and Pfizer. But consider tuning in for Sinovac, a Chinese drug company presenting at an investor conference despite being entirely uninvestable.
Sinovac has shipped more than 2 billion doses of its Covid-19 vaccine, and its 2021 revenue is expected to exceed $20 billion. But thanks to a colorful, acrimonious dispute over just who runs the company, shares of Sinovac haven’t traded since early 2019, back when the company was worth less than $500 million.
That makes Sinovac’s J.P. Morgan presentation, scheduled for Monday at 10:30 ET, a curious proposition. By every financial measure, the company’s performance is the stuff of which shareholders dream. But because of the messy, international legal battle still in progress, Sinovac will be speaking to investors who can neither buy nor sell its shares. | 23andMe is a clinical biotech company now 23andMe, the consumer genetic testing firm with pharmaceutical aspirations, hit a milestone on its path to biotech respectability, taking its first in-house drug into a clinical trial, the company said yesterday.
The treatment is an antibody targeting a protein, CD200R1, involved in the inflammatory process. Poring over the reams of DNA collected from consumer spit kits, 23andMe believes blocking that protein might treat cancer, and the company is enrolling patients with solid tumors that have progressed despite standard treatment.
23andMe has lost about 40% of its value since going public in a SPAC transaction last year, and the company expects annual revenue growth of just 1% in 2022. The future depends on 23andMe’s ability to turn all that DNA into a stable of approved medicines that turn a profit. | More reads - Institutional investors urge pharma boards to tie executive compensation to global Covid vaccine equity. STAT+
- Doctors have an arsenal of Covid-19 treatments, but setbacks and shortages are undercutting options. STAT
- Scientists try to pinpoint why rapid Covid tests are missing some cases. STAT
| Thanks for reading! Until next week,  | | | |
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