| | | |   | Hello, all. Up this Monday is a deep dive into the life and legacy of biotech’s one and only Godfather, we discuss the new vaccination litigation, and more.
- Meghana | | | 
A career-defining mission for biotech’s ‘Godfather’ Stelios Papadopoulos has long been dubbed the Godfather of biotech. The 74-year-old industry stalwart has seen the sector grow from near obsolescence into a top performer — and he's helped nurture it along the way. “I can’t think of any major CEO in the history of our industry who has not had a strategy discussion with Stelios,” another veteran exec told STAT. “It’s incredible that one individual has had such a profound impact across so many different companies.”
Now, as chairman of Biogen’s board, Papadopoulos has been charged with turning around the embattled company, which needs a new CEO, a new chief scientist, and a new way forward.
In a colorful profile that also serves as a history of biotech, STAT's Damian Garde explores how Papadopoulos came to be known as the Godfather and explains how this latest challenge could come to define his legacy. Read more. | Moderna suing Pfizer? Don't get too excited Moderna is suing Pfizer and BioNTech over vaccine technology, claiming that they infringed on its patents in two ways: in the chemical modifications the companies made to the mRNA in their Covid vaccine, and in the decision to deliver the vaccine with a lipid nanoparticle.
At first blush, it's a clash of pharmaceutical titans. But the clash may be less dramatic than it appears, STAT’s Matthew Herper explains. Patent litigation takes place at a snail’s pace, and rarely make much of a dent in a product’s profitability. And it certainly won’t prevent Pfizer from continuing to manufacture and sell its vaccines. The litigation likely has more to do with future products — such as mRNA flu vaccines being developed by both companies — than the Covid vaccines. Read more. | Modern collaboration, free for emerging biotechs Collaborating with distributed teams and CROs is mission critical for getting treatments to patients faster. Egnyte’s modern collaboration platform is purpose-built for today's life sciences companies — simple to deploy and easy to maintain data integrity, across any partner, anywhere. And now, early-stage biotechs will get a full year’s subscription -- free. Find out if you qualify. | AstraZeneca’s diabetes drug works for heart failure Farxiga, AstraZeneca’s blockbuster diabetes drug, significantly reduced the risk of hospitalization and death in people with heart failure by 18%, new data show. The drug is an SGLT2 inhibitor — a class that initially focused exclusively on type 2 diabetes, but has since been shown to help patients with chronic kidney and heart disease, Reuters writes. This is the first heart failure medicine to have benefits in mortality across all forms of heart failure. That said, Eli Lilly’s rival drug, Jardiance, performed similarly in a study last year. If regulators allows AstraZeneca to expand Farxiga’s label based on this data, it will increase the drug’s addressable patient population by 50%. Last year, the drug generated more than $4 billion in sales, and this year it has generated about $1 billion each quarter. | More reads - Bayer starts key trials for thrombosis drug in pipeline revival, Bloomberg
- BMS, J&J’s secondary stroke med doesn’t stick the Phase 2 landing, FierceBiotech
- Adderall shortages spread to four pharmaceutical companies, Bloomberg
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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