The BioWorld Insider Podcast

Karen Carey, BioWorld managing editor and chief analyst, takes a look at the numbers from the first half of 2024. She finds the first six months to be healthy for the biopharma market while the rest of the year is populated with question marks that include the U.S. presidential election and potential interest rate cuts.

Two costs of developing drug candidates have been upended by new research from the Tufts University School of Medicine’s Center for the Study of Drug Development. New data have produced some very different numbers than you might expect in the cost of a single day of a clinical trial and of missing a day to generate prescription drugs sales. The center’s director, Ken Getz, spoke to the BioWorld Insider podcast about updating the outdated numbers and what it means for companies and investors.

Chris Barden, a co-managing partner at MPM Bioimpact who manages the firm’s Bioimpact Equities and Oncology Impact funds, shares her insights into the upcoming American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference in Chicago. She talks about the major trends in oncology, including development of antibody drug conjugates, which is currently the hottest area in cancer treatment. Another highlight she expects from ASCO will be development in radiotherapy treatments, particularly in prostate cancer. Bardon provides a guide for attendees to use in setting their schedules for the year’s biggest cancer conference and what to watch for in the future.

A non-traditional route for financing has been the path to success for Fibrobiologics Inc. In the newest BioWorld Insider podcast, CEO Pete O’Heeron offers insight into the company’s unusual path to a Nasdaq listing in January. SPACs, reverse mergers and traditional IPOs weren’t attractive enough for Fibrobiologics’ management or board, so they decided to go public through a direct listing with no banks as underwriters. It took about seven months to get the company ready for its listing, an around-the-clock effort that O’Heeron said was worth the effort. “We couldn’t be more happy with the outcome,” he said.

BioWorld Managing Editor Karen Carey joins the podcast to talk about the numbers from the first quarter of 2024, along with a look back at some 2023 deals and indicators that signal better times are on the way. Financings for the quarter were better than expected, sporting some of the best numbers of the past 13 years. It’s part of a larger trend, Carey says, of investors being a lot pickier about where they put their money and demanding better data. The result is a strengthened market and a better outlook.

In one of the biggest financings of the year so far, former Prometheus Biosciences Inc. CEO Mark McKenna helped raise $400 million to launch a new company, Mirador Therapeutics Inc. He didn’t sit on the sidelines for long after Merck & Co. Inc. bought Prometheus for $10.8 billion in 2023. He recruited key Prometheus executives to focus on Mirador’s genetic approach to drug discovery and precision medicine. McKenna said there was too much left undone to just hang back. In this BioWorld Insider episode, he talks about the new company and the multi-billion-dollar drugs that he believes provide sub-optimal efficacy compared to the tailor-made therapies he wants to develop. He also has deep insights into drug pricing and why the investment market is so tough on companies that don’t have A-plus science and teams.

Because artificial intelligence is such a new technology it comes with a mountain of unknowns. Integrating it into a pharmaceutical company presents a unique series of challenges, as a new survey from Verix shows. The report is based on responses from directors, vice presidents and C-suite executives in sales, marketing and brand management at pharmaceutical companies in the U.S. that have more than $100 million in annual revenue. Doron Aspitz, the CEO of Verix, talked about the new findings with the BioWorld Insider podcast and the profound shift that executives face as the new technology takes over an entire industry. 

One aspect of 2023 our group of executives completely agreed on: the past year was tough financially. And they all foresee a more vibrant year ahead for the market. Giving all of them hope were technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, game changing weight loss drugs, the surging fascination with ADCs and hope for lower interest rates. But uncertainty looms about the upcoming general election in the U.S. and ground-shifting gene therapies. In a preview of the annual Biotech Showcase conference, an investor conference for private and micro- to mid-cap biotech companies Jan. 8-10 in San Francisco, BioWorld spoke with Dave Bearss, CEO of Halia Therapeutics Inc., Vimal Mehta, CEO of Bioxcel Therapeutics Inc., Paul Lammers, CEO at Triumvira Immunologics Inc., Chris Pirie, COO of HDT Bio Corp., Thijs Spoor, CEO of Perspective Therapeutics Inc. and Shelley Hartman, CEO of Aegle Therapeutics Corp. They offered insights brought about by years of hard-won experience.

Google’s Scott Penberthy joins the podcast for a visionary discussion that scans the horizon for startling changes artificial intelligence will bring to drug development in the relatively near future. Among the gems and eyebrow raisers is talk of dramatic reductions in the time it takes to identify the right molecule for development and how digital clinical trials in the not-too-distant future will substantially shrink study times. This episode also provides a preview of the annual Biofuture conference. Each year, a group of trailblazers, disruptors and forward-thinking executives converge to evaluate and forecast the future of health care. This year, BioWorld is a gold sponsor of the Oct. 4-6 event in New York. If you attend, you'll have the chance to hear panels and join workshops and fireside chats with key opinion leaders like Penberthy.

Guests Karen Carey, BioWorld’s managing editor, and Mike Ward, Clarivate’s global head of Life Sciences and Healthcare Thought Leadership, discuss the deals, financing and M&A landscape for the first half of 2023 and how U.K. biopharmas are faring post Brexit.