| | | |   | Hello, everyone. Damian here with news of the latest CRISPR startup, an IPO trial balloon, and Bluebird Bio's long road to sustainability. | | | Big-name backers fund a new CRISPR startup with sizable ambitions Tome Biosciences, an emerging CRISPR company, has recruited brand-name investors in its effort to expand the scope of genome editing.
As STAT’s Allison DeAngelis reports, Tome is developing treatments that can insert a genetic sequence of any length, at any location in the DNA strand. Existing CRISPR methods are effective at inserting a few hundred genetic letters at a time but falter with larger edits. A recent paper from Tome’s scientific founders described a spin on CRISPR that can drop 36,000 base pairs into the genome at a time, a clue to the company’s ambitions.
Tome, founded last year, is backed by Arch Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and the Longwood Fund. It closed a Series A round in 2021 and is now raising a Series B.
Read more. | Pfizer's next-gen vaccine comes through Before Covid hit, Pfizer's biggest selling vaccine — really, its biggest product, full stop — was the pneumococcal vaccine Prevnar. Now, there's a good old-fashioned marketing battle brewing with Merck over the two companies' next-generation pneumococcal vaccines, which target a bacteria that can cause ear infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and meningitis.
Yesterday Pfizer said its 20-valent pneumococcal vaccine (that means it targets 20 different strains of the bacterium, compared to Prevnar's 13) met its goals in a study in European infants. The results were better than those seen in a U.S. study of the same vaccine.
"We believe the post-dose 3 results in the EU trial are encouraging for EU and U.S. approval odds and help address concerns over the mixed post-dose 3 results reported for the U.S. study," SVB analyst David Risinger wrote in a note to clients. | Is collaboration the key to better quality care? Meet a pioneering initiative The Quality Care Collaborative (QCC) combines Nuance’s nationwide Precision Imaging Network and Covera’s Diagnostic Intelligence Platform to create a workflow-integrated infrastructure that enables more radiology providers to access quality analytics and support improved diagnostic precision through trusted, widely deployed technology. It provides a continuous quality improvement partnership between providers, payors, and employers as they work together in a trusted and secure setting on long-term, sustainable quality improvement programs, peer-learning initiatives, and value-based care efforts. Learn more. | Biotech’s IPO trial balloon is hanging in there  Third Harmonic Bio, the first biotech company to go public since May, just managed to defend its IPO valuation after a few volatile days of trading, preserving the hope that the industry’s many private firms might still find some fans on Wall Street.
The company, which priced its offering at $17 a share on Wednesday, rose 20% in its first trades on Thursday and then slipped to around $18 on Friday. That performance wavered yesterday, and Third Harmonic spent a few hours below its IPO price before rebounding to close the day at exactly $17 per share.
There’s likely more volatility ahead for Third Harmonic, whose lead drug, a treatment for chronic hives, is in Phase 1 of development and likely won’t have meaningful data until next year. In the meantime, its successful IPO and respectable early performance are likely to convince other biotech companies to press forward with long-delayed offerings. | Is Bluebird a good business? Bluebird Bio completed the first leg of its turnaround by winning FDA approval for two gene therapies in the span of a month. Now comes the task of building a business around them.
In a conference call with analysts yesterday, Bluebird outlined its strategy to become a sustainable going concern, which starts with rolling out its two products later this year and selling a pair of vouchers for a speedy FDA review that are likely to fetch about $100 million each.
Analysts expect Bluebird’s two therapies to bring in peak sales of about $500 million combined, but it will take years of build-up to get there. And the company had just $173 million in cash as of the last quarter, which, at its current burn rate, would run out in 2024. Meanwhile, the company is soon to part with its second chief financial officer in less than a year. | More reads - Minimal compliance, or meaningful change? Epic faces a crossroads as new rules put pressure on health data sharing, STAT
- Moderna gives WHO’s mRNA hub some help; Pfizer snubs request, Bloomberg
- Coors, Mondelez, and other big food companies want to sell CBD-filled food and drinks. The FDA is staunchly opposed, STAT
- Moderna v. Pfizer: What the patent infringement suit means for biotech, Harvard Business Review
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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