| | | |   | Good morning. Today it’s Meghana, but also Allison DeAngelis and Matthew Herper, in a tag-team newsletter. We've got an unsuccessful trial from NGM Bio, a sequencing partnership to test for tuberculosis, and more. | | | Despite standoff, pharma still supporting Dems This summer, PhRMA pledged to hold Democrats “accountable” for their sweeping legislative efforts to lower drug prices. But the powerhouse lobby hasn’t exactly penalized the left as yet — it recently donated to several Democratic PACs and candidates. To be fair, it’s also been giving to plenty of Republicans, including Florida’s Marco Rubio; pharma advocacy groups tend to play both sides of the aisle. Still, giving any money to any Democrats seems notable. And it’s not just PhRMA — the political action committees for major pharmaceutical companies also donated to Democrats, despite the party voting in August to let the government negotiate drug prices. They are, of course, donating just as generously to Republicans as well. Read more. | Illumina sequencers will be used for tuberculosis The places most ravaged by tuberculosis do not tend to be in easy reach of DNA sequencers. This morning, Illumina, the largest maker of DNA sequencing machines, announced a partnership with GenoScreen, the maker of a TB test that runs on those machines, to make both equipment and test available to lower-income countries. That could mean faster turnaround times — a day or two for a sequence instead of up to two months for culture-based tests — to determine what antibiotics a given strain of TB is resistant to. In 2019, Illumina said, 465,000 people developed TB that was resistant to rifampamicin, one of the main antibiotic treatments. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020 deaths from TB increased for the first time in a decade. | Biotech investors and CEOs see two paths to growth, but are they equally viable? The biotech market is changing and the interplay of investors, private and public markets will be important going forward. Is optimism for the biotech market’s rebound warranted? Dr. Chen Yu, Founder and Managing Partner of TCG Crossover, discusses with RBC’s Noël Brown, Head of US Biotechnology Investment Banking. Get their perspectives on the biotech market’s road ahead and the two paths for company scale-up strategies. | Versant’s three new high-dollar funds Another of biotech’s long-standing venture capital firms, Versant Ventures, hopes to hit the $1 billion mark with three new funds its raising. The firm, which has offices in Switzerland, Toronto, New York, and San Francisco, hopes to raise $500 million for its primary fund. It’s also seeking $250 million for its third “voyageurs” fund, and another $250 million for a late-stage “vantage” fund, according to documents filed with the SEC. It’s a small increase from the $950 million Versant Ventures raised across three funds last year. The private equity biotech markets have gotten tougher since Versant closed that fundraising period, which has left some VCs nervous about raising new investment funds. But some of the more well-known firms have managed to raise record pools of capital, including Arch Venture Partners and Third Rock Ventures, which closed respective $3 billion and $1.1 billion fundraises in June. | NGM eye antibody drug flops, stock drops 70% A Phase 2 macular degeneration treatment from NGM Bio just failed a key trial — sending its shares plummeting 70%. The company’s monoclonal antibody for geographic atrophy, an advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration, didn’t meet its primary endpoint. NGM CEO David Woodhouse told Endpoints that the company’s still poring over the data, so it’s still unclear why the trial failed. But he did suggest measuring the ocular lesions characteristic of the disease becomes more difficult the larger they become. “And so not just in the sham arm, but in actually all of the arms, we seem to have had more than we would have liked to these patients that had sort of these tricky lesions to measure,” he said. “And so that’s what we’re digging into.” Merck has helped fund the development with this NGM therapy, and will soon make a decision over whether it wants to continue its partnership with NGM. “We’ll be really interested in hearing their insights,” Woodhouse said. | More reads - Biogen’s ALS ambitions on pause as FDA delays approval decision by 3 months, FierceBiotech
- Moderna signs deal on variant-adapted Covid shots for world’s poorest, Reuters
- ICER on MS drugs: TG's ublituximab not cost effective at the same price as Roche's ocrelizimab, Endpoints
| Thanks for reading! Until tomorrow,  | | | |
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