Biotech Hangout’s Post

Cranmore Executive Search played a pivotal role in Horizon's rapid and successful expansion into the European market. "I highly recommend Cranmore," says Chris Serafino. "My contact, Chris Sannwald is a very effective partner and helps me not only find the right candidate and fit, but also is patient with me as my needs grow or change." Read the full case study below on how Cranmore's tailored approach to executive search empowered Horizon Therapeutics' European expansion and fuelled their remarkable success! 📈✨ #SuccessStories #ExecutiveSearch #EuropeanExpansion #HorizonTherapeutics

Thank you to Eugene Borukhovich, Anna Mangan, and Tessy Huss for an excellent panel on Open Source Digital Therapeutics!  Some takeaways: • Adoption of open source solutions in healthcare is already happening • Open source in healthcare requires an alignment of values • Generic DTx solutions have potential, but the market must mature before it can be realized Piotr Sokolowski Valentine Mayuran Emmanuel Sheena Dempsey Weronika Michaluk, DrPH, MBA Jamie Campbell Armin Furtwaengler Ethan Wergelis-Isaacson #DTx #DigitalTherapeutics #OpenSource

It’s no secret that the digital therapeutics market went a bit pear-shaped in 2023 - forcing key players to rethink what a successful DTx business model looks like. Take Freespira, for example. The developers of a software- and device-based treatment for panic and post-traumatic stress disorders are gradually working towards profitability, a few thousand users at a time - and it looks like the strategy is paying off. SomX’s Jessica Somauroo delved into the current investment landscape and highlighted that the high expectations placed on early-stage companies and investors are contributing to the existing friction in the market ⬇️ #digitalhealth #healthechpigeon #digitalcommunication

According to The Wall Street Journal, "the deep freeze in #biotech is beginning to thaw," with half a dozen biotechnology companies going public and biotechs attracting more than $6 billion in follow-on #financing since the start of 2024. We’re pleased to share that two Longitude portfolio companies were highlighted in the article: - CG Oncology, the first biotech company to go public in 2024, is developing a bladder cancer treatment in late-stage clinical trials and raised about $400 million in net proceeds during its January 2024 IPO - BioAge Labs, a clinical-stage biotech specializing in drugs for obesity and metabolic diseases, announced $170 million in new funding in February 2024 Read about what 2024 may hold for biotech from WSJ reporter, Jennifer Calfas: https://lnkd.in/gc3PiYkw 

PWC have released their UK 2023 Life Sciences Future50 It shows the Therapeutics market is strong with over 20 of the companies achieving at least pre-clinical status. Tools companies such as ONI, Synthace & Refeyn who have already generated huge buzz continue to show even more promise. Whilst the US gets most plaudits in the industry the UK is going nowhere anytime soon and I look forward to watching the progress of all 50 companies. Do you work for one of these companies listed? What are your 2024 plans?

Portfolio diversification is key to financial management; VIN maximizes the opportunity and mitigates the risk by investing in companies based on high-impact technologies licensed from top research institutions worldwide. This month we will be highlighting Neurexis Therapeutics and their promising drug candidate that addresses the total unmet need in preventing cognitive and behavioral impairment following ischemic events such as cardiac arrest and stroke. Register below to learn more. https://hubs.ly/Q01Xx8my0 #investing #venturecapital

The Robotics is on another level.

Illumina had a tremendous writedown since going forward with acquiring Grail. Was that a good idea, in retrospective? Illumina's shares have gone downhill since 2021, and Grail played its part. Actually a big part. Currently Illumina is at $108,25 per share, with a peak at $517,32 on 13th of August 2021. Even more mind boggling is that on August 2021 Illumina's marketcap was at $79.91bn, while today sits at $17.24bn. llumina had overseen “the worst deal in the history of the diagnostics space”, something that reminds me of Theranos. It's not an apples to apples comparison, but in this case I correlate Grail with Theranos, as Grail has been getting hardly critiqued for its multicancer early detection test (named Galleri). Galleri, claims to identify more than 50 forms of the disease. Distribution and application of the test is already happening in the US, but is yet to receive regulatory approval from the Food and Drug Administration. On the 24th of June (this coming Monday), Grail's divestiture will happen, and index-linked funds are expected to dump the stock furthermore, adding to downward pressure on the share price. How Grail, acquired for $8bn by Illumina, ended up due to Illumina's bad C-suite decision making, at a market value of $485mn is beyond my mind. And all this before securing the approval of antitrust regulators... but, why? Actually, it's important to mention that GRAIL's artificial net cash position (derived by subtracting a company's total liabilities from its total cash) is circa $900M so the implied firm value is -$500mn (yes, minus $500mn). The whole saga, brings Theranos vibes in my memory, which consequently can impact negatively the whole healthcare diagnostics industry, or at least the investment dealflow for those companies that follow the long sustainable growth game. Will Illumina learn from this disastrous mistake? Will Illumina pivot after the divestiture and show its true colours, as one of the leading companies in the genomic analysis?

Bonum Therapeutics' John Mulligan, Ph.D. drops a gold nugget of wisdom in today's #BusinessOfBiotech for anyone who has to make executive decisions. In other words, that's just about everybody. When prioritizing tasks, you generally have three types. Low complexity/high value — these are rare. High complexity/low value — these are abundant. High complexity/high value — these are the Goldilocks tasks. I don't know about you, but I can get confused by those abundant high-complexity/low-value tasks. They're easy to spot but sneaky about hiding their payout value. I bet discerning the difference saves a ton of time and boosts productivity.

LucidQuest Strategic Insights (lqventures.com) >>> Gene&Cell Therapy >> It takes GUTS to be BOLD: A look at the new biotech tickers: As the public markets heat up in biotech, industry insiders expect a small drumbeat of IPOs later this spring, and that means a new set of stock tickers to track. Next up is BOLD, the proposed name of Boundless Bio’s Nasdaq stock. Using that name would mark a return for the ticker, which freed up after Astellas bought Audentes Therapeutics for $3 billion in 2019. Boundless is expected to make its Wall Street debut in the coming weeks after unveiling plans to go public earlier this month. Biotech tickers have traditionally stuck to letters that encompass their name, like RayzeBio’s RYZB. Others rely on their chosen modality, like Moderna’s MRNA. And some go the route of the technology they’re deploying — like Editas Medicine’s EDIT for gene editing, while four-letter names often beget four-letter symbols, like JAZZ. Joshua Pinto “You want to make it unique to the company so it’s really like a branding event,” Neumora CFO Joshua Pinto said in an interview. “Second, you want to make it easy to remember.” Neumora, a Phase III neuroscience biotech, went public in September as NMRA. In its early days, the ARCH Venture Partners startup went by the nickname of “Really Big Neuroscience Company.” “I won’t say what choice No. 2 or 3 was, but as you could imagine, we had some fun with some of the prior acronyms behind the company,” Pinto said. One recent entrant also took a playful approach. In its January IPO, Fractyl Health, a Massachusetts biotech working on cardiometabolic medicines, went with GUTS — a play on both gut health and bravery. “We’ve been talking about intestinal fortitude from the perspective of the tenacity and commitment and conviction required to be successful,” Fractyl CEO Harith Rajagopalan said in an interview, “but then also intestinal fortitude, as something that is impaired in people with obesity and metabolic disease.” Harith Rajagopalan On the day of its IPO, Fractyl gave its employees T-shirts with the phrase, “No guts, no glory.” The biotech plans to start testing its GLP-1 gene therapy in humans as a potential type 2 diabetes treatment in the first half of next year. “The greatest ticker symbol of all time was Genentech’s use of DNA back in the day,” Rajagopalan said. “You think, ‘Well, what are we trying to convey with this ticker symbol about who we are, about what we do, about the way in which we do it?’ GUTS was just too good to pass up on.” DNA is now the ticker for Ginkgo Bioworks, a synthetic biology company that has seen its valuation crater since going public in 2021. As more biotechs go public, they’ll have to be creative with their ticker symbols to stand out in what may be an increasingly crowded field — and many obvious choices are… #lucidquest #genetherapy #celltherapy