| | | |   | Hello, one and all. Damian here with a look at the effects of biotech's downturn, the potential of a second Covid-19 booster shot, and how Gilead Sciences found itself in an awkward situation. | | | Biotech’s cash crunch is costing jobs While biotech’s extended bear run has been painful for investors, to some cash-burning companies, it’s an existential threat, leading more and more firms to cut into their budgets in the name of prolonging survival.
The latest are Ovid Therapeutics and Passage Bio. Ovid, a developer of treatments for seizure-related disorders, said yesterday it would lay off about 20% of its staff to conserve enough cash to stay in business beyond 2024. Passage Bio, at work on gene therapies for neurological diseases, said it would cut 13% of its workforce and “prioritize” its pipeline to keep the doors open through the middle of 2024.
Ovid and Passage are among a growing number of biotech companies whose recent travails have led to steep declines in stock price. With the broader sector in a prolonged decline, raising money by selling shares becomes either inadvisable or impossible, leading to budget cuts and pivots. | 2021 was the best-worst year for biotech IPOs Last year, a record 129 biotech companies raised a record $17 billion in IPOs as the drug industry rode high on Wall Street’s pandemic-driven fascination with the life sciences. As of this week, about 90% of those companies are under water, and the sector is on pace for the fewest IPOs in nearly a decade.
The first statistic comes from analysts at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, who looked at biotech’s class of 2021 and drew some bleak conclusions. The median return for last year’s biotech IPOs is a 60% loss, and more than half of all debutantes have lost 50% or more of their value.
Meanwhile, according to Baird, there have been just eight biotech IPOs so far in 2022, raising about $600 million combined. If that pace holds up for the whole year, it would mark the fewest IPOs and smallest sum of money since 2012. | Digital health technology delivers precision recruitment at scale in research study Evidation researchers, along with researchers from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) were able to 1) directly recruit subjects for a Covid-19 study via a mobile application they were already using, and 2) create an AI risk model that allows targeted recruiting of persons most likely to become infected during the study, while also recruiting a representative cohort. Read more. | Gilead is an awkward situation of its own making Of the 22 Florida lawmakers who voted to pass the state’s widely criticized “Don’t Say Gay” bill, nine had received campaign contributions from Gilead Sciences.
As STAT’s Ed Silverman reports, Gilead has made its name selling treatments for HIV and is a frequent sponsor of LGBTQ events, including New York City’s pride parade. The Florida donations came between 2014 and 2020, before the debate over the bill, and Gilead donated to 11 of the 17 state legislators who eventually opposed it.
In a statement, Gilead said that its contributions are evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, adding that the company “strongly supports LGBTQ+ rights and will evaluate future contributions in alignment with our corporate values.”
To Kenyon Farrow, managing director of advocacy and organizing at PrEP4All, that’s a “disingenuous” explanation. “We’re in a moment in this country where there are forces — largely in the Republican Party — that are doing things to pull the safety net out from under communities that are most affected by HIV,” Farrow said.
Read more. | Fourth doses of Covid vaccines might be on the way Partners Pfizer and BioNTech are soon to seek authorization for a fourth dose of their Covid-19 vaccine for people over the age of 65, the Washington Post reported yesterday, reigniting the debate over whether such a thing is actually necessary.
Pfizer and BioNTech contend that a second booster would extend the vaccine’s protective benefits and could be vital for certain populations in a potential winter surge.
But experts are torn on the incremental value of yet another dose. Data from Israel, where fourth doses are already available,
have been mixed, including one study concluding that while a fourth dose of Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine increased virus-fighting antibodies, it had little effect on symptomatic disease. | More reads - White House begs Congress for Covid funding amid concern about Omicron sister variant. STAT
- Maker of Covid drug sotrovimab plots new course as BA.2 spreads. Bloomberg
- Kirin looks beyond beer with $870 million push into pharma. Financial Times
- Sanofi lures Blackstone backing in unusual deal for multiple myeloma drug. BioPharma Dive
Correction: Yesterday's edition misstated the target of Nektar Therapeutics and Bristol Myers Squibb's cancer trial. It was melanoma. | Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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