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De-Stealthed
Ultima Genomics emerged from stealth with a new "high-throughput, low-cost sequencing platform that delivers the $100 genome”. Sure, guess you can charge as little as you want when you’ve got $600M in funding from a who’s who of Bay Area VCs . According to Nava Whiteford, who knows a thing or two about sequencing, each genome probably costs Ultima $300+ to sequence and deliver. Make it up on volume!
Nava goes on to point out how Ultima is using some machine learning to fill in gaps, which seems a little suspect when your legacy competitor is only reading what the DNA actually says. Check out Nava's whole take here. Pretty informative.
Ubiquitous Blue Helix
What is it with the Blue Helix? People absolutely love putting it on websites. (We came close many years ago). If you’ve never seen it, you just don't remember seeing it, but we got you - here’s a little Blue Helix highlight reel to jog your memory:
Belief BioMed
Linkster Therapeutics
Aavogen
Self Screen
Bioreactor Sciences
Mingsight
Curtana Pharma
Optigenex (wait for it...)
Saje Pharma (scroll slightly)
Very rarely do you see a red, orange, yellow, green or purple helix. Mostly it's an avalanche of blue. And this would all make sense if DNA were blue, but if you've ever extracted it into those nice little pellets, you know it's clear or white-ish. What's makes it even more vexing is blue is the rarest color in the natural world, while DNA is literally in every living thing. The oddest of couples.
The Latch Laugh
One day your team page is being lampooned as the worst ever by BioPharmGuy, next thing you know, you pull in a $28M Series A. That's the inside news from our LatchBio friends. Let's hope at least some of that loot is pushed towards an updated team page.
Classica
Businessman Stephane Bancel, who absolutely did not discover, invent or otherwise play a key role in the science behind mRNA vaccines, was knighted in France, presumably because he happened to be running Moderna when it struck gold. He’s an alright guy - in fact, he just announced a $355M charitable donation. And furthermore, by all accounts he's done a fine job of moving Moderna's products along the development pipeline even before the pandemic. But shouldn’t the billions of dollars be the start and end of the remuneration that a CEO gets? Knighting a guy for being in the right lucrative job at the right time seems a bit much.
Let Him Go
CytoDyn and their former CMO got into a legal kerfuffle and eventually reached a settlement whereby his company shares were released back to him. He was also given more shares, as well as some assets the company had written off. On the whole, sounds like he made out in the divorce.
But in the release detailing this 'settlement', CytoDyn said they hoped he would come back to the company. We were half surprised they didn't send him roses and a diamond ring. CytoDyn, he's just not that into you...
The Alliance is Gonna Frown on This
The news of a biotech executive’s arrest in a murder-for-hire plot has been going around, which is normally enough of a story in itself. But man, did Hindenburg Research do some digging on this guy. The saga reads like a screenplay.
One big detail was how he appears to have lied about having PhD/MD degrees and was actually working as a magician during his alleged educational years. The reporter even caught up with his magic mentor who showed old DVD footage of the executive on stage. Dude shoulda stuck to pretending to saw people in half.
Epyc Name
Epigenix wasn’t a cool enough name, so back in 2016 this startup globbed onto the baby-name motif of swapping in a Y for an I and ended up with Epygenix Therapeutics.
Greek lesson: EPI is an actual prefix. EPY is meaningless. Their logo shows a (blue) DNA helix emerging from a capsule, giving the impression the product is some sort of orally administered gene therapy. Of course, such a thing does not exist - the product is a classic small molecule called clemizole hydrochloride.
Furthermore, you’d think if they were gonna force a Y-shaped image into their logo like that, they would have swapped it in for the letter Y. But then again, what do we know – just some fools who (probably) hold the world record for looking at the most biotech company websites.
Vibrant Gastro
When they’re not pretending they’re based in America, Israeli companies are doing a lot of interesting work, especially in the medical device space. Here’s a quirky one – a disposable, vibrating pill to relieve constipation.
They had us at “progress can also be tracked via a companion smartphone app”. Hey Siri...
BioMed Realty
This life science real estate holding company just bought a Hilton Garden Inn in San Francisco. Fans of the brand will be excited to see how lab space and comfy beds mesh together. Live-work-play, anyone?
BioMed hasn’t announced any plans, but more than likely they will eventually convert it into life science space. The thought of fewer hotel rooms will surely elate all you JP Morgan life science conference-goers who only had to pay $100/hr to sit at a table in a hotel lobby in 2020.
Indiana Biotech
BioPharmGuy is based in Indiana, so when we see any local bionews, it’s always fun to include it here. INCOG Biopharma Services recently opened their new manufacturing facility down near Indianapolis. INCOG does contract formulation & filling and they also have some other services. We’ve been in touch with them in the past and they seem like good people - best of luck to them!
Also, the big kid on the Indiana block, Eli Lilly, is spending $2.1B expanding their Indiana operations. All in all, a big week here in the South of the North©™®.
(To you non-Hoosiers – “Indy” is a city, not a state, regardless of what Raiders of the Lost Ark taught you).
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