September 19, 2023

The need-to-know this morning

Kinnate Biopharma is the latest biotech to shrink its pipeline and workforce in order to preserve cash. The company laid off 70% of its employees and halted work on some of its experimental cancer drugs.
Astellas announced the outcome of a two-year efficacy analysis of Izervay, its approved treatment for a common type of age-related vision loss. The results, however, may not be competitive against a similar medicine marketed by Apellis Pharmaceuticals.

Chart of the day

Biotech's comeback was short-lived

D3 vis exported to PNG (70)

A closely watched biotech index slipped deeper into the red yesterday, erasing its summertime surge after falling 4% in September alone.

The XBI has dropped more than 15% from its June peak and is now trading down about 7% in 2023. That's after losing roughly 30% of its value in 2022 amid a sharp correction for biotech stocks and a complete collapse of the market for IPOs.

Things were supposed to be different this year, as cash-carrying pharmaceutical giants looked to smaller companies to fill out their pipelines and new scientific advances minted promising startups from academia. Instead, high-dollar deals have been rare, and the few successful IPOs have largely traded downward since their debuts.

Vaccines

Pfizer is optimistic about Covid boosters

Pfizer expects about a quarter of the U.S. population to get updated Covid-19 booster shots this winter, forecasting a broader uptake compared to last year.

Speaking at a J.P. Morgan conference, Pfizer CFO David Denton said the company figures 24% of Americans will seek out booster doses of any available Covid vaccine. Last year, only about 17% of eligible people got the previous generation of vaccines, according to Bloomberg.

Booster uptake has only a marginal impact on Pfizer's overall business, but it's key to the future of Moderna, which is counting on a surge in demand to meet its revenue forecast of between $6 billion and $8 billion for 2023. And it could be existentially decisive for Novavax, a company at risk of insolvency if its booster, which is not yet FDA approved, doesn't catch on commercially.

Cardiovascular disease

Alnylam's uphill commercial battle

After last week's recommendation from a panel of FDA advisers, an intravenous medicine Alnylam Pharmaceuticals looks likely to win approval for an increasingly prevalent heart disease. But convincing physicians to prescribe the medicine could be more difficult than Wall Street expects.

Analysts at Leerink Partners surveyed about 60 doctors who treat ATTR-CM, a progressive heart disease that affects about 400,000 people worldwide, and found that the majority expected to use Alnylam's drug only after patients had tried Pfizer's already-approved oral medicine. Further complicating matters is a not-yet-approved oral treatment from BridgeBio, which physicians expect to eventually cut into Pfizer's market share as a first-line treatment ATTR-CM.

Until recently, ATTR-CM was considered a rare disease and had no available medicines. Next year, there could be three drugs vying for a share of what has become a sizable market, and that number could grow to five as Alnylam studies a subcutaneous version of its intravenous treatment and partners AstraZeneca and Ionis Pharmaceuticals advance a competing injection.

Pharma

Pharma's suppliers are struggling

For years, pharmaceutical outsourcers like Lonza were selling picks and shovels in a gold rush, cashing in on a biotech boom by providing services to an ever-expanding number of startups trying to develop new drugs. But in 2023, with biotech deep into a contraction, those businesses are suffering.

Yesterday, Lonza replaced its CEO without explanation, news that sent the company's share price down 10% and stirred speculation that it would struggle to make its revenue targets. Earlier this year, Thermo Fisher, which sells lab equipment and research services, cut its growth projections in half. And competitor Danaher, a company that slashed its outlook three times in 2023 alone, agreed to pay $5.7 billion for the reagents firm Abcam to bolster its flagging business.

The squeeze on pharmaceutical suppliers could lead to yet more consolidation in a space that has routinely seen firms get bought, smashed together, and relaunched as conglomerates. And while that process tends to improve shareholder returns, it decreases the number of companies competing for the drug industry's business, which could bring even more pressure on biotech's bottom lines.

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