| | | |   | Good morning, all. Damian Garde here. Between layoffs at the erstwhile Samumed and another managerial shakeup at Editas Medicine, this newsletter brings bad tidings for biotech in 2016. | | | A biotech unicorn lays off nearly 25% of its staff Remember Samumed? As recently as 2018, it was a $13 billion company with plans to cure baldness and reverse arthritis, and it counted IKEA and Gary Cohn among its investors. The company has since changed its name to BioSplice, and now it’s laying off nearly a quarter of its staff.
As STAT’s Jonathan Wosen and Matthew Herper report, BioSplice is terminating 41 workers, after which it will have “right-sized our headcount,” in the words of the company’s chief financial officer. It has halted internal development on the hair-loss treatment and hopes to out-license the program, the company said. Phase 3 studies of its arthritis program are close to completion.
BioSplice’s cost cuts could be seen as a reality check on the recent boom in valuations for privately held biotech companies. In 2016, the company made headlines by raising $220 million at a $6 billion valuation. Two years later it raised another $438 million at a nearly $13 billion valuation, and its CEO told Endpoints the money would pay its way to a first FDA approval, “plus launch cost, plus some extra cushion.”
Instead, BioSplice raised $120 million more in 2021 on undisclosed terms, and now it’s laying off workers.
Read more. | Just how rich is Pfizer? We’ll find out later this morning, when the company presents its full-year 2021 results and, more intriguing to Wall Street, provides a forecast for the year to come.
Pfizer is expected to post revenue exceeding $80 billion for 2021, setting a company record that, if analysts are correct, it will promptly break with 2022 sales above $100 billion. Pfizer’s superlatively profitable vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 lined its pockets last year, and the question heading into 2022 is how much the company expects to make from Paxlovid, its oral treatment for Covid-19.
With every pharmaceutical earnings presentation comes another opportunity to parse a CEO's cryptic statements on future acquisitions, and Pfizer is no different. But investors are paying particular attention to the company’s words for three reasons: Its cash is piling up; its pandemic-related success is likely temporary; and unlike many of its peers, Pfizer has a track record of actually spending money, as with 2021’s multibillion-dollar acquisitions of Arena Pharmaceuticals and Trillium Therapeutics. | 5 ways to engage patients in their treatment journey As more pharmaceutical manufacturers see the value in patient adherence programs, it's crucial to understand which solutions will have the highest impact. Download our eBook for insights into optimizing resources to address patients’ unique needs and improve medication adherence. Better support the estimated 50 percent of patients who aren't adhering to their chronic medications and create an easier path for commercialization success. | Editas fired its top doctor Editas Medicine, the laggard among CRISPR companies, terminated its chief medical officer yesterday, and now the firm is looking for its third top doctor in as many years.
Editas fired Lisa Michaels, who joined the company in late 2020, and made no mention of a successor in the accompanying SEC filing. Michaels’ predecessor, Judith Abrams, resigned in 2020 after just six months on the job. Meanwhile, the company is on its third CEO since going public in 2016, and compared to contemporaries CRISPR Therapeutics and Intellia Therapeutics, Editas’ share price has hardly budged in the intervening years.
Editas has lost nearly 70% of its value since September, when the company presented the first clinical data on its lead CRISPR-based treatment. The therapy, targeting a genetic disease that leads to blindness, appeared to have only moderate effects, leading Editas to begin testing a higher dose. | It’s OK to say a drug is ‘clinically unimportant’ At least according to the federal judge who dismissed a libel lawsuit from Pacira BioSciences, which had claimed a medical journal had spread “misinformation” about its drug in the course of commenting on clinical data.
As STAT’s Ed Silverman reports, Pacira alleged that the papers, published early last year in the journal Anesthesiology, “disparaged” its drug, a painkiller called Exparel, and reflected a “bias” on the part of the publisher. One of the papers concluded Exparel had a “statistically significant but clinically unimportant” improvement over generic anesthetics, which, according to Pacira, led customers to cancel contracts and back out of purchases.
In dismissing the lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Madeline Cox Arleo chastised the company, which insisted the journal editor and authors used flawed methodologies, such as cherry-picking data, to discredit previously published studies favorable about Exparel.
Read more. | More reads - Eric Lander resigns — potentially imperiling the rest of Biden’s scientific agenda. STAT
- ‘Caught in the middle’: Some patients say they’ve lost out in unusual battle over a rare disease drug. STAT+
- Experts encourage better 'cyber hygiene' as pharma breaches skyrocket amid the pandemic. Endpoints
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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