| | | |   | It’s Meghana today. A Swiss drug giant jumps on the “America first” bandwagon, the BRAIN gets a huge lump of cash, and GSK casts a life line for a capsizing penny stock. | | | Another $600 million to the BRAIN initiative The NIH is pouring $600 million more into a wide-spanning initiative to plumb the depths of the human brain. The aim is to build a map of the entire brain, and catalyze the development of new therapeutics for neurologic disease. The agency has already invested $2.4 billion into the BRAIN initiative, short for Brain Research Through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies, and aims to funnel $5 billion into the effort by 2026.
“I really do view this as like the Human Genome Project. We have the ability now to define cells like we were able to define genes,” one neuroscientist told STAT’s Jonathan Wosen. “This is the foundation to start to understand a lot of other aspects of biology and disease.” Read more. | Novartis’s aim: America first Despite stateside efforts to curtail drug price hikes, Switzerland-based Novartis plans to prioritize the U.S. market over all others — with a five-year plan to become a top five drugmaker in the U.S., it said during an investor event yesterday. The company is already the fifth largest in the world when ranked by revenue, but only 10th in the U.S., FiercePharma writes. It also plans to be a top three drugmaker in China, since the company deems it to be “a key growth market for the next decade.”
The company is in the midst of major restructuring — cutting 8,000 jobs around the world, and plans to spin off its Sandoz generics unit. Now, Novartis plans to focus keenly on innovation. Its strategy will include growing the number of U.S. patients in clinical trials, and launching a marketing strategy geared toward Americans that will “really address a lot of the non-clinical barriers,” one exec said. | mRNA became mainstream with Covid vaccines. But the technology’s therapeutic potential is huge. mRNA has proven itself in Covid-19 vaccines. But that’s just the beginning. How can we use mRNA to take health care to the next level — to potentially cure neurological disorders and the deadliest of cancers? While scientists explore those questions, biopharma must make some adjustments to pave the road to success. Read the article here. | Biden’s Covid declaration, twilight of the SPAC, & genome editing 2.0 When is a pandemic “over?” Did biotech over-SPAC? And what can’t be CRISPR’d?
We cover all that and more this week on “The Readout LOUD,” STAT’s biotech podcast. Heidi Tworek, a professor at the University of British Columbia and expert on public health communication, joins us to discuss President Biden’s declaration that “the pandemic is over” and how leaders around the world are talking about Covid-19 as it enters its third year. We’ll also discuss the latest news in the life sciences, including the twilight of the SPAC boom, the coming evolution of genome editing, and the next big trial in Alzheimer’s disease. Listen here. | The balancing act of biosimilar value The very existence of biosimilars has forced drugmakers to lower the prices of their original, branded drugs — just to defend their own market share. This means that biosimilars are ultimately helping patients, even if those patients choose to use the name-brand drugs, opines Jeff Baldetti, director of biosimilars at drug distribution giant Cardinal Health. That said, a potential drop in average sales prices could have implications for reimbursement, he writes. Sometimes providers buy their own biologic drugs and administer them to patients — but if they pay more for a medicine than the amount they’re ultimately reimbursed, this could actually deter providers from prescribing biosimilars. “This dangerous cat-and-mouse game may ultimately require new policy or economic models to change the dynamic, and is worth further analysis to ensure a robust and competitive biosimilars market that is sustainable in the long run,” he writes.
Read more. | GSK throws Spero Therapeutics a life vest Hope, perhaps, for small-cap biotechs in dire need of rescue: Spero Therapeutics is getting a $66 million up-front payment from GSK for near-global rights to its experimental antibiotic, despite a recent rejection from the FDA. The FDA told Spero that a single Phase 3 trial of its drug, tebipenem HBr, wasn’t sufficient to win approval, and tasked the company with gathering more late-stage data. Spero had to scramble to find a partner to back its drug, which is being tested as a treatment for advanced urinary tract infections.
Spero’s market cap is just $29 million, so the cash infusion is dramatic — and raises the question of why GSK didn’t just buy the company outright, FierceBiotech writes. Spero’s stock jumped about 90% on the news — from a wee $0.82 to a slightly-less-wee $1.56. | More reads -
Rivus raises $132 million Series B as obesity, NASH prospects for metabolic drug heat up, FierceBiotech -
Pfizer to supply up to 6 million Covid pill courses for lower income countries, Reuters | Thanks for reading! Until next week,  | | | |
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