biotech
Startup launches with neuro candidates from Asia
Venture capitalists and biotechs have flocked to Asia to find obesity and cancer drugs. A new startup called Tortugas Neuroscience has now found neuroscience candidates.
Tortugas launched this morning, backed by $106 million. It plans to develop two schizophrenia and tinnitus drugs licensed from the Chinese drugmaker Jiangsu Hansoh. It also has two other medicines for focal epilepsy and encephalopathies that were originally created by Japanese pharmaceutical company Eisai.
Read more in the exclusive story from STAT's Allison DeAngelis.
politics
Boom times for psychedelic developers?
President Trump’s executive order aimed at loosening restrictions on psychedelics as mental health treatments was enough to rev up investors yesterday, with shares of companies including Compass Pathways and Atai Beckley spiking.
But some advocates told me they're quietly worried the White House’s involvement in boosting the field could undermine its credibility.
“This is great that this president has stepped out on this issue, but is it going to get attached to him?” one advocate said.“And is a president that comes in later on of the opposite political leaning — are they going to see this as not scientific enough, and be concerned that Americans rushed too quickly forward?”
Read more here.
And check out a new First Opinion piece from two experts about what they see as the contradiction at the heart of Republicans’ embrace of psychedelics.
Pharma
Albert Bourla's strategy man hits the road
In 2024, Andrew Baum left a job as a high-profile pharma analyst at the investment bank Citi to become Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla's chief strategist — a big thinker who could help the pharma giant figure out the post-Covid (and obesity drug-crazed) world.
The job didn't last long. Pfizer confirmed to STAT that Baum is leaving the company by the end of the year. His name and photo have already been removed from Pfizer's executive leadership web page.
Pfizer and sources familiar with the matter described the move as stemming from both a sense that Baum had accomplished what he set out to do and a streamlining of Pfizer’s operations.
But during Baum's run as Bourla's brain extension, Pfizer's internally developed obesity drugs stumbled in clinical trials. Then, the company got into a messy and expensive bidding war with Novo Nordisk for Metsera, a developer of obesity drugs.
Read more.
M&A
Lilly’s new acquisition target endured a rough journey
Eli Lilly’s announcement yesterday that it would spend $3 billion to acquire Kelonia Therapeutics — before potentially millions more in milestone payments — was a sign of confidence in a small biotech company developing cell therapies.
But not everyone was always so confident in the company.
Following yesterday’s news, Bryan Roberts, a partner at the venture capital that incubated the biotech, Venrock, shared the original investment memo and slide deck once used to get Kelonia — then called Elcano Therapeutics — off the ground.
The documents offer a rare look at the process of starting a biotech company, including how investors assessed the “kajillion gene therapy efforts” to contend with.
Read more from STAT's Allison DeAngelis.
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