Back Bay Life Science Report

After a summer away from podcasting, Back Bay Life Science Advisors’ Dr. Pete Bak and Christian Thienel are back on the mic to discuss current market dynamics in liver disease with a focus on one of the most closely watched space in hepatology, MASH. 

The big news includes a rebrand from NASH (non-alcohol related steatohepatitis) to MASH (metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis), the FDA approval of Madrigal Pharmaceutical’s Rezdiffra and real-time court rulings in Europe that may affect the rate of play for Ocaliva, a drug used to treat adults with primary biliary cholangitis here in the US. As Christian mentions in this episode, “The path to success is not always a straight line.”

Other topics in this podcast include: 

• Hepatology market dynamics over the past five years, including activity from Gilead, Novo Nordisk, Intercept and CymaBay 
• How treatment for primary biliary cholangitis, an autoimmune condition, went from a one to a three-product market 
• Payer monographs and what’s required for hepatology drugs
• The EMA recommendation earlier this month to revoke Ocaliva’s marketing authorization 
• Which companies are active in the rare liver disease space and how they differentiate themselves 

Thank you for listening. You can find previous episodes of the podcast here.

We’d love to hear from you. Ask questions and submit your feedback. 

In this DNB//Back Bay Healthcare Capital Markets podcast episode, learn about the key considerations, mechanics and timelines of going public on a US exchange.

 Topics in this podcast include: 

• An overview of the decision-making process through execution for US-based and ex-US healthcare companies thinking about listing in the US
• Core considerations after deciding to pursue a US listing and how to prepare most effectively
• Building the “IPO advisory team”: types of advisors (legal, accounting, banking, IR firms, IP, etc.) and when to bring them in
• Key documents and associated timelines related to the SEC documentation as well as investor outreach
• What are the “don’ts” or mistakes companies make and how to avoid them

You can listen to previous episodes here or submit your inquiries here.

About our guests:

DNB//Back Bay is a committed partner throughout the healthcare development journey, addressing positioning, partnering, financing, M&A strategies, and listing support and execution on US and Nordic exchanges. Our team of more than 100 healthcare strategy and financial specialists spans the globe. Learn more about the DNB//Back Bay Partnership and read our disclaimers at https://www.bblsa.com/dnb-back-bay-partnership.

Cooley is among the top law firms for healthcare, tech and life science IPOs on both the issuer-side and underwriter-side. Their team of 1,300 lawyers is spread across 19 offices worldwide.

Guests: Pete Bak and Christian Thienel

Length: 27 minutes

In this episode of The Life Science Report, Dr. Pete Bak and Back Bay Director, Christian Thienel catch up on the area attracting the most industry interest over the past couple of years: the anti-obesity space.

From big players looking to capitalize on the renewed interest in the obesity space to the staggering success of Novo Nordisk’s and Eli Lilly’s GLP-1 agonists (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound) for glycemic control and weight loss, there’s a lot to cover.

Topics in this podcast include:

• A brief introduction to glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonists
• Why GLP-1s’ popularity is skyrocketing as treatment for type 2 diabetes and obesity
• How amylin and petrelintide (a long-acting amylin analogue) are being newly re-imagined for the obesity space, as well as muscle-targeted approaches like myostatin and activins
• Where BD and investor interest lies as these drugs are expected to have north of $150B in sales annually within the next decade
• What’s happening in early to late-stage drug development
• What the future holds for this sector, possibly to include cannabinoid one receptor inverse agonists and mitochondrial targets for metabolic disease

As always, thank you for joining us. Did you know we welcome listener questions? If there any areas you’d like us to explore further in metabolic disease and obesity, please let us know. Submit your questions here. Our Nordic-American Healthcare Conference 2025 will feature metabolic track. Learn more: https://nordicamericanhealthcareconference.com/

You can find previous episodes of the podcast here.

Welcome to another episode with the DNB//Back Bay Partnership for Healthcare.

In this episode Jonathan Gertler, Back Bay CEO and Managing Partner, is once again joined by James Cirenza, Head of Fixed Income and Equities at DNB, Kristoffer Braaten, Director of US Equity Capital Markets at DNB, and Vasilios Kofitsas, Managing Director of Investment Banking at Back Bay Life Science Advisors, to talk about current market dynamics and the 2024 IPO outlook in the US and in Europe.

Topics in this podcast include:

• Trends, cycles and the current state of capital markets in Europe and the US
• IPO performance for Q1 2024 vs. previous years
• Top characteristics of companies well-suited to go public and be successful
• IPO market dynamics in Europe vs. the US
• Expectations and advice for companies contemplating going public

As always we welcome listener questions and/or topics you’d like to learn more about.

You can listen to previous episodes here or submit your inquiries to [email protected].

Learn more about the DNB//Back Bay Partnership and read our disclaimers at https://www.bblsa.com/dnb-back-bay-partnership.

Guests: Pete Bak and Christian Thienel

Length: 37 minutes

With the advent of COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021, we saw a tremendous amount of interest in not only COVID vaccines, but other companies riding the tailwind and developing vaccine therapies that span across viral illness, maternal infections and bacterial infections.

In this episode resident immunologist Dr. Pete Bak and Christian Thienel discuss vaccine technology, up-and-coming areas of interest, such as RSV, and the vaccines currently in late-stage clinical development.

Topics in this podcast include:

• Vaccine technology, vaccine types and their varying levels of durability
• The ongoing interest of vaccine development for RSV, including data from GSK’s Arexvy and Pfizer’s Abrysvo vaccines
• How recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) influence commercial dynamics
• The interesting chess game of scheduling vaccines as they relate to COVID, flu and RSV (seasonality versus strains and antigens) 
• Vaccine development and data as it applies to Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Epstein-Barr (EBV)
• News from the bacterial front: MinervaX leading the way with a maternal vaccine against Group B streptococcus infections with a very large series B round for $54M; Pfizer’s recent Prevnar 20 against pneumococcal pneumonia
• Pricing, reimbursement and the interplay with ACIP guidelines

As always, we welcome listener questions and/or topics you’d like to learn more about.

You can listen to previous episodes here or submit your inquiries here.

A Podcast Discussion on the Trends and Investment Activity in Radiopharmaceuticals and Psychedelics

Guests: Pete Bak and Christian Thienel
Length: 25 minutes

Here at Back Bay we’ve seen a number of notable trends in the radiopharmaceutical and psychedelic spaces playing out over the past couple of years. Increasingly, investors have been asking our opinions and perspectives on these topics.

Our team has written these whitepapers to address industry interest:

The Radiopharmaceutical Renaissance: Radiating Hope in Medicine
Vision of Commercial Success: Investment and Partnering Landscape for Psychedelics

In this episode, Dr. Pete Bak and Christian Thienel talk through the uptick of activity in these focus areas and discuss where the future of radiopharmaceuticals and psychedelics might be heading.

Topics in this podcast include:

• A brief introduction into the history of radiation and radiopharma
• Why the early promise of first-generation radiopharmaceuticals like Zevalin and Bexxar didn’t turn out to be as commercially successful
• Key advancements in manufacturing and production for second-generation products like Xofigo, Lutathera and Pluvicto
• The “theranostic” (therapeutic and diagnostic) potential of radiopharmaceuticals
• The growing investment and R&D support for psychedelics from private companies and academics, especially with the Otsuka and Mindset acquisition for $80M in 2023
• Realities within the new paradigm of novel treatments and patient/provider protocols adhering to the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy
• The evolving nature of the antibacterial space and some notable financing deals, three within two months (Antabio, Clarimedix and Revagenix)

Listen to the full episode here.

As we move into 2024, Back Bay’s strategic advisors summarize key product approvals from three classes and indications over this past year, including the December CRISPR and Vertex approval of Exa-cel, Biogen and Sage’s August approval of an oral treatment for women with postpartum depression and Genmab and Roche’s May approval in oncology.  

In this episode:  

• CRISPR and Vertex’s approval of Exa-cel, the first CRISPR-based genetic medicine approved by the FDA in the US 
• The major depressive disorder vs. postpartum depression for Biogen/Sage 
• GenMab and Roche approvals 
• AbbVie acquisition of Cerevel Therapeutics strengthen neuroscience pipeline 

In 2023, on The Life Science Report, Back Bay covered a wide range of topics featuring stories from the frontline of healthcare development to the rising trends in cardiology to the transactional landscape of antibody drug conjugates. We always welcome listener questions or topics you’d like to learn more about. You can listen to previous episodes or submit your inquiries here.  

Back Bay provides a snapshot of the healthcare markets every Monday. For IPO, Follow-On and M&A updates, subscribe to our healthcare updates. 

In our latest podcast, Back Bay Life Science Advisors focused on the chronic and rare disease development of kidney disease. Recently, there have been some changes in treatment, some recent commercial launches and certainly some interest from pharma consolidators, as M&A activity picks up in this area.

In this next installment of The Life Science Report, Dr. Pete Bak and Christian Thienel of Back Bay Life Science Advisors talk about kidney disease and the various aspects of the renal disease landscape.

Topics in this podcast include:

• The links between cardio and metabolic diseases and the therapeutic approaches and label expansions taking place in the renal disease landscape
• Historic evolutions beyond Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), from rare diseases to all types of indications of CKD
• Understanding potential treatment priorities when some therapies have benefits in multiple indications
• Recent deals, including Novartis’ acquisition of Chinook Therapeutics and Novo Nordisk’s acquisition of KBP Biosciences’ ocedurenone, etc. 
• The impact of Sodium-glucose cotransporter-2s (SGLT2s) in kidney disease over the last ~5 years, and how that has precipitated broader interest in renal indications across the industry

With the DNB//Back Bay Partnership for Healthcare

In the current markets, Healthcare continues to rally as the second-largest industry behind technology in the stock market, and in the US markets there’s been roughly $2.5B raised from an IPO standpoint YTD. In Europe, the markets have been more challenging, with IPOs for five companies going public this year, including Schott Pharma, Germany’s largest IPO earlier this year.

In the first podcast episode with the DNB//Back Bay Partnership for Healthcare, Jonathan Gertler, Back Bay CEO and Managing Partner is joined by Jim Cirenza, Head of Fixed Income and Equities at DNB, Kristoffer Braaten, Director and Head of Equity Capital Markets at DNB, and Vasilios Kofitsas, Partner and Managing Director of Investment Banking at Back Bay Life Science Advisors, to discuss the current landscape of IPO and capital markets, optimal preparation strategies for companies hoping to go public and why it ultimately matters who you spend your time with.

Topics in this episode include:

• Dynamics leading to the current IPO market and capital markets landscape
• The state of private and partnering markets and the renewed power of partnerships
• Crucial roles of private investments, VC and other “mezzanine investors” for public emergence licensing
• The importance of optimal prep and aftermarket support, and why spending good time in the preparation phase with both research and individual investor meetings is a key success factor, regardless of where companies are planning to list
• The ever-important lesson of starting early

A conversation on the rising trends in the cardiology space

Cardiology has historically been a cornerstone of large pharmaceutical portfolios. The late 2000s and 2010s saw many pharmaceutical companies and investors abandon or severely deprioritize cardiology research and development in favor of oncology, immunology, and neurology.

During this episode of The Life Science Report, Dr. Pete Bak and Christian Thienel of Back Bay Life Science Advisors discuss the major players in the industry and novel approaches to future cardiology applications.

Episode topics include: 

• Why pharma’s interest in specialty-like approaches has shifted towards cardiology
• The promise of “advanced modalities” and gene therapies, such as antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) and small interfering RNA (siRNA)
• How these newer treatments stack up against traditional small molecule orals, like statins
• Clinical stage pipeline analysis across cardiology and visible trends on the horizon

This is the 20th episode of Back Bay’s podcast, covering all facets of healthcare development and transactions. For questions, be in touch: www.bblsa.com