| |   | Good morning, all. Damian here with a look at how biotech's glass is at once half full and half empty, plus an update on the confusing booster situation and the waning demand for Covid-19 vaccines. | | | The latest biotech buyout has ominous implications On the surface, it’s just what biotech needed: A massive firm is buying a tiny, distressed one for four times its stock price, giving hope to the many firms treading water and the many investors firmly under it.
But as STAT’s Adam Feuerstein explains, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals' acquisition of Checkmate Pharmaceuticals has complicated implications for biotech. On the one hand, with stocks at a nadir, any deal is good for sentiment. But Regeneron’s offer is about 30% below the price at which Checkmate went public just two years ago, meaning that for investors who bought into the IPO, the takeout is less a windfall than a reprieve.
Through that lens, the Checkmate merger could be a reality check for small biotech companies struggling to stay afloat in a protracted bear market. As cash reserves dwindle, such a reprieve might be the only alternative to going out of business.
Read more. | The question of Covid boosters gets a little more complicated Yesterday, Moderna said a strain-specific version of its Covid-19 vaccine appeared to work better than the classic recipe when administered as a booster. And yet the company is setting the project aside in favor of a newer idea, and no one knows just how necessary such vaccines will be, let alone whether people actually want them.
As STAT’s Matthew Herper reports, the news is that Moderna’s bivalent vaccine, which encodes for the spike protein of the original SARS-CoV-2 as well as the Beta variant, generated more antibodies than the companies FDA-approved original vaccine, and those antibodies blocked the Beta, Delta, and Omicron strains of the virus. However, the study had significant limitations, and Moderna is now looking forward to a randomized study comparing an Omicron-specific vaccine against the old one.
The results underscore just how difficult it will be for global health authorities to pick a strain-specific booster against a virus that is mutating faster than new vaccines can be concocted. Then there’s the unanswered question of whether people around the world will line up for fourth and perhaps fifth shots, regardless of the supporting data.
Read more. | In-depth biopharma, business, and policy analysis at your fingertips Sign up for STAT Plus to receive in-depth analysis of the biotech and pharma industries, exclusive one-on-one interviews with industry pioneers, and inside intelligence from Capitol Hill. Don't be the last to know. Subscribe today to start reading. | And the market might be drying up Johnson & Johnson, by virtue of being the biggest health care company in the world, serves as something of a bellwether for the broader industry whenever it reports earnings. And the latest update on the company’s Covid-19 vaccine could signal a flagging market for the whole field.
J&J reported just $457 million in Covid vaccine sales in the first quarter, dramatically under-performing Wall Street’s consensus of about $1.3 billion. The company also suspended its earlier sales predictions for the full year, citing “global supply surplus and demand uncertainty.”
J&J’s vaccine has never approached the revenue heights reached by Moderna and partners Pfizer and BioNTech, but the company’s sizable revenue disappointment might be a sign of what’s to come for its rivals. Pfizer will report first-quarter earnings on May 3, and Moderna will do so May 4. | Meanwhile  Biotech’s most closely watched index is trading as though Covid-19 vaccines never happened.
After a brief uptick, the XBI is back below where it began in 2020, negating the volatile and lucrative run the sector had as hope and hype made household names out of previously obscure biotech companies in the first year of the pandemic.
Despite a few ostensibly encouraging developments, including yesterday’s Regeneron deal, the index remains down more than 25% in 2022. | More reads - Biogen’s head-scratching new lobbyist hire. STAT
- In nation’s biotech hub, layoffs, closures, and mergers expected as part of an industry ‘correction.’ Boston Globe
- Alzheimer’s trials exclude Black patients at ‘astonishing’ rate. Bloomberg
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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