| |   | Hello, all. Damian here with the latest in a genome-editing rebuild, more on the merits of being a payday lender, and shrinking confidence in a biotech megadeal. | | | The quest to turn biotech-informed nutrition into a business The startup Faeth has raised more than $80 million to prove that scientifically guided nutrition can make a meaningful difference to patients undergoing cancer treatment. Now it has to convince regulators, physicians, and patients to get on board with the idea.
As STAT’s Jonathan Wosen reports, Faeth’s approach is fairly simple. Tumors need energy to thrive, and that energy comes from food. By studying a given patient's cancer, Faeth will come up with specific diets that, in tandem with standard therapy, help starve tumors of the nutrients they need. In the next year or so, Faeth will have data from clinical trials meant to demonstrate the power of its interventions.
Whether Faeth can translate that science into a viable business remains unclear. But CEO Anand Parikh is convinced so-called precision nutrition will play a part in the future of cancer care, regardless of whether Faeth figures it out. “It’s not the case that there is no dietary precision nutrition intervention that is going to have an impact on tumors,” he said. “It’s just a question of finding the right one.”
Read more. | Editas finally has a full-time CMO Nearly six months after firing its chief medical officer, the CRISPR company Editas Medicine named a replacement yesterday, part of a lengthy rebuilding process for a firm that has slipped behind its rivals in genome editing.
Baisong Mei, formerly of Sanofi, becomes Editas’ fourth CMO since its IPO in 2016. In February, the company fired Lisa Michaels after just over a year. Her predecessor, Judith Abrams, resigned in 2020 after six months on the job. Mei’s boss, the recently appointed Gilmore O’Neill, is the company’s fourth CEO in its eight years of existence.
Editas has lost more than 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. | July 26 | A conversation with Admiral Rachel Levine Admiral Levine has used her position to prioritize the challenges that members of the LGBTQ+ community face when trying to access health care. Join her as she takes the virtual stage to share her story, and more about what she hopes to achieve, as part of our STATUS List Spotlight series. Register now. | Times are good for biotech's payday lender It’s still a rough market for biotech companies, whose declining stock prices make it difficult to raise the cash they need to advance their would-be blockbusters toward approval. That makes 2022 an ideal environment for Royalty Pharma, a company that exists to trade present-day cash for points on the back end of products that don’t yet exist.
Founded in 1996, Royalty Pharma has spent some $20 billion acquiring royalty streams, and, as Evaluate Vantage concluded after running the numbers, its hits more than compensate for its misses. Thanks to prescient transactions in cystic fibrosis, oncology, and spinal muscular atrophy, Royalty Pharma will be effectively printing money for years to come.
And in the current environment, with biotech down about 30% for the year, Royalty Pharma is up more than 10%. With more and more drug companies needing to get creative to fund their operations, Royalty Pharma should have no shortage of willing partners. | Investors are losing faith in a biotech megadeal  Yesterday, shares of the oncology-focused Seagen fell to their lowest point since the Wall Street Journal first reported Merck’s interest in buying the company, a sign that investors are growing less confident the potential deal will come to fruition.
Seagen closed at about $168, more than 15% below Merck’s reported $200-per-share offer price. The company had traded as high as $180 in July.
With a near-term merger less likely, investors are turning their attention to impending clinical trial data in bladder cancer, analysts at Cowen wrote in a note to clients yesterday. Before the end of the quarter, Seagen expects to have data on its treatment Padcev that, if positive, could expand its use into earlier stages of cancer, increasing its potential value. | More reads - The politics of passing a major FDA funding bill just got complicated. STAT
- Eisai shutters oncology unit, cuts around 80 jobs. Endpoints
- Contract research organization to transfer 4,000 beagles from facility cited for inhumane care. STAT
Correction: Yesterday's edition misspelled the name of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals CEO Leonard Schleifer. | Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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