Even though many biopharma leaders have come together in recent years to address its gender gap, the consensus is clear: We still have a long way to go.
Companies this year were 2.5 times more likely than last year to have a diversity and inclusion program in place, according to a recent BIO survey, but women are still largely absent from executive roles. Getting women to enter the industry isn’t the problem — studies show that they represent just under half of all biotech employees around the world. But climbing through the ranks can be challenging, as women still report facing stereotypes, and, unfortunately, harassment.
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KEY POINTS
Patients prefer oral dosing, but swallowing tablets can be a challenge for many patients. The Zydis® orally disintegrating tablet (ODT) platform addresses challenges associated with oral dosing, expanding benefits for patients and options for healthcare providers. A strong growth trajectory is expected for ODTs given therapeutic innovation and continued technology development.
Many patients prefer conventional tablets for the administration of medications, but some geriatric and pediatric patients and those with altered mental status and physical impairments find swallowing tablets to be difficult. Orally disintegrating tablets (ODTs), which dissolve completely without chewing or sucking, offer a patient-friendly dosage form for the administration of small-molecule drugs, peptides and proteins. With the potential for multiple sites of drug absorption, often faster onset action for the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), and potentially greater bioavailability, ODTs are an attractive option for drug developers considering first-to-market formulations or product line extensions of existing drugs with compatible API. In this report, we look at how innovation in the industry-leading Zydis ODT platform is expanding oral formulation options and bringing benefits to patients.
Please signup to continue — it’s fast and free. This article is sponsored by Catalent and produced by Endpoints Studio. Gary Glick, Odyssey Therapeutics founder
Gary Glick is back at it again, founding yet another biotech company. And by the sheer size of its first raise, this may be the biggest one yet.
Glick has assembled what he calls an all-star roster and recruited one of the biggest healthcare investors in OrbiMed to put together a massive $218 million Series A for his newest venture, Odyssey Therapeutics. The launch, announced Tuesday morning and co-led by SR One Capital Management, comes not three months after Glick sold First Wave Bio to AzurRx for $229 million.
Over the past couple of years, the top execs at Roche and Genentech have inked a flurry of deals aligning the global pair with several of the new players that have emerged in the booming AI and machine learning world. That strategy was supercharged in the spring of 2020 by their decision to recruit Aviv Regev out of the computational world she occupied at the Broad. And today they’re taking that computational approach in R&D to a whole new level.
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Geoffrey Porges (SVB Leerink)
All through this year you could practically feel the frustration of the biotech investor class as M&A activity continued to drag behind expectations — or desires. Buyouts of public companies provide the essential juice for keeping stocks lively, and there’s been a notable lack of juice in 2021.
So is all that about to change, big time?
SVB Leerink’s Geoffrey Porges, a longtime student of biotech M&A, thinks so. In a lengthy analysis he put out last week, Porges totted up the cash flow of the major pharmas and determined that there was a good long list of industry buyers who would have around a half trillion dollars of cash to play with in 2022. Leverage that up with added debt and you could get that deal cache to $1.6 trillion.
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Róbert Wessman, Alvotech chairman and founder
As Icelandic billionaire Róbert Wessman tries to take down AbbVie’s megablockbuster Humira in court, he’s also taking his biosimilar upstart to the big time with a $2.25 billion SPAC merger, Nasdaq launch and $450 million raise announced early Tuesday.
While Wessman’s Alvotech has not won FDA approval for any of its biosimilar candidates yet, the company was the first to file with the FDA for approval of its high-concentration Humira biosimilar and to have successfully conducted a switching study in support of a highly-coveted interchangeability designation. But other companies like Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim and Pfizer have since caught up ahead of the launches of their own Humira biosimilar competitors in 2023.
AstraZeneca is plucking another antisense drug out of Ionis’ prolific pipeline.
Paying $200 million in cash, AstraZeneca has inked a development and commercialization deal around eplontersen — the Phase III TTR amyloidosis drug formerly known as IONIS-TTR-LRX. On top of the upfront and $485 million worth of conditional payments to follow regulatory approvals, the pharma giant is promising $2.9 billion in sales-related milestones should the drug reach megablockbuster status, plus royalties.
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Chris Lai, founder and CEO of METiS Therapeutics
With the rush of AI permeating the biotech industry, another AI player is coming out well-organized and flush with cash. METiS Therapeutics announced this morning that it successfully put $86 million in the bank, thanks to a Series A.
Two investment firms connected to the Chinese government (People’s Insurance Company of China and China Life Insurance Company) led the financing round — and were joined by Sequoia Capital China, 5Y Capital and several other investors.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (Denis Balibouse/Pool Photo via AP Images)
The World Health Organization said late today that it’s not recommending the use of convalescent plasma as a treatment for Covid-19 for mild or severe cases, but some U.S. experts disagree with the recommendations and say there are patients who can benefit from the plasma of those who’ve recovered from Covid-19.
The recommendation is informed by a review of 16 RCTs and a ‘meta-analysis on antibodies and cellular therapies for covid-19,’ the WHO said, adding in a statement:
Klick Health agency employees appear in its annual holiday greeting video with this year’s theme to #SpreadJoy (via Klick Health)
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What would you do with $100 and the simple instruction to ‘spread joy?’ That’s what pharma and healthcare agency Klick Health asked its employees as part of its annual holiday greeting for clients, friends and future recruits.
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