Biotech

After establishing her lab at Cornell in 2019 and achieving notable success with publications in top journals, Liz Kellogg, Ph.D., associate member in the department of Structural Biology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital received a unique opportunity. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital had embarked on a major expansion of its structural biology and genome…

 “Nearly all diseases stem from a molecular mechanism going wrong,” writes Sergei Yakneen, chief technology officer of Alphabet’s Isomorphic Labs in a recent blog post. “Whether it’s an infectious agent disrupting our cellular machinery or a breakdown in processes like DNA repair, identifying the right protein and finding molecules to interact with it is…

 The biotech industry continues to be in something of a “hangover period” where everyone realizes that there was “probably just a little bit too much enthusiasm” in circa 2020 and 2021, said Matthias Kleinz, DVM, Ph.D., executive vice president, translational sciences at UPMC Enterprises, the innovation and commercialization arm of University of Pittsburgh Medical…

[Last updated, July 13, 2024] The biotech industry is witnessing a stark paradox in 2024. On one hand, there’s a group of biotech startups that are thriving, attracting nearly $3 billion in funding in Q1 2024 alone. Job openings in the sector are also considerable in several parts of the U.S., especially in the Greater…

 Over the past year, North American biotech firms continued to lear the world in funding by a significant margin in an analysis that included a various equity fundraising types drawn from Crunchbase. Argenx, a publicly traded Dutch biotech, raised $1.1 billion from investors in July 2023 through a global offering. Next in line was…

The same week that BenevolentAI announced it was cutting 30% of its staff, AI-focused biotech Xaira Therapeutics debuted with a $1 billion funding round with little precedent in healthcare over the past year — or beyond that. A survey of the biggest fundraising rounds over the past year revealed that the absolute largest investments were…

Many smaller biotech companies continue to face a cash crunch as a result of a challenging funding climate and a difficult IPO market. In the past couple of years, many smaller biotechs are running out of cash and being forced to cut jobs or shut down entirely. Median deal sizes for seed, Series A and Series B rounds…

The top 20 healthcare-focused biotech companies collectively raised $2.9 billion in the first quarter of 2024, according to data sourced from Crunchbase. That represents a 161% increase compared to the $1.1 billion raised by the 20 largest funding rounds involving healthcare-focused biotech companies in Q1 2023, indicating more confident bets on the market viability of…

Companies across the industry have contributed to biotech layoffs in early 2024, driven by factors ranging from operational restructuring to strategic pivots and clinical trial failures, with major hubs like California and Massachusetts bearing the brunt of the impact. A recent analysis assembled with the help a machine learning technique known as clustering reveals a pattern of job…

The pharmaceutical industry is at a critical juncture: AI and other technological advances offer unprecedented potential, yet the cost of developing new drugs has ballooned for decades, surpassing $2 billion in recent years with the projected return on investment (ROI) falling to a mere 1.2% in 2022, according to Deloitte. Another dimension of the problem…

While San Francisco, Boston, and San Diego may reign as biotech royalty, a new contender is carving its niche in the desert. Las Vegas, a city synonymous with entertainment and extravagance, is proving it has the brains and the business acumen to compete on the global biopharmaceutical stage. This transformation is backed by hard numbers:…

In 2023, a year of accelerated regulatory success, a significant number of biotech labs sat empty in major hubs like San Francisco and Boston. The FDA approved 55 novel therapies in 2023, including Leqembi for early Alzheimer’s and Zurzuvae for postpartum depression. The approval number marked the second highest count in three decades (see graph…

Despite biopharma’s 2023 layoffs and challenges, innovation won your clicks last year with over 130,000 of them on our Pharma 50 report alone. But while giants dominated, your clicks showed disruptive tech wasn’t far behind. The next-most popular article was a roundup of 100 trailblazing cell and gene therapy companies with more than 80,000 views.…

Will the credit for future mega-blockbuster drugs, in some cases, go to a carefully-programmed AI discovery system connected to a “self-driving lab” that verified its potential? Certainly, AI is hyped, but so are potential profits of potentially AI-optimized drugs. The exploding volumes of scientific data highlight a shift often overlooked: what does “inventor” even mean when…

Biotech startup Lindus Health just made a big splash by adding MIT professor and Moderna co-founder Robert Langer,  Sc.D., to its advisory board. Lindus aims to shake up the world of clinical trials with its “anti-CRO” approach that promises faster and more reliable trials for life sciences companies. The addition of Langer, described as the…

Amgen has developed a machine learning platform to slash clinical trial times through smarter site selection. Known as ATOMIC, short for Analytical Trial Optimization Module, the system crunches disparate datasets to predict optimal trial locations, expedite enrollment and trial processes. Early results indicate more than a two times increase in enrollment speed at ATOMIC sites.…

In an AI hype-filled biopharma industry, one company is taking a back-to-basics yet supercomputer-powered approach — using Bayesian analysis on massive patient datasets to guide drug discovery. The company crunches trillions of data points per patient. “It’s massive, which is why we use a supercomputer,” said Niven R. Narain, Ph.D., BPGbio CEO. The company has…

For all of the talk about AI in drug discovery and development, few Big Pharmas are putting up big bucks in AI spending. A CRB survey from late 2023 painted a conservative picture: about half of drug developers planned on allocating between $1 and $10 million for data and AI projects over the next two…

The 2024 JPMorgan Healthcare Conference showcased the resilience and innovation driving the biotech sector, even as the sector has recently grappled with financial headwinds such as declining IPOs, layoffs, and tightening cash reserves. Companies are tightening operations while still pushing forward in developing novel technologies like machine learning for drug discovery, cell and gene therapies,…

Deepcell co-founder Maddison Masaeli took an unexpected path from academic research to launching an AI-powered cell analysis platform. The company has raised close to $100 million in funding to support its mission. This includes a $73 million Series B round and an earlier $20 million Series A round. The company has entered into a research…

At the dawn of 2024, there’s a sense of renewed optimism in the biotech sector despite recent sector-specific challenges. This week, the JP Morgan Health Care Conference witnessed strong deal-making activity. For instance, Merck agreed to acquire cancer drug developer Harpoon Therapeutics for roughly $680 million, highlighting continued interest in oncology cancer therapies. Meanwhile, Novartis…

In 2023, the U.S. continued to demonstrate its position as the biotech funding leader, commanding over one-third, 35%, of the global investment in the sector. Overall, U.S. biotech firms attracted $56.79 billion in funding, according to a survey of Crunchbase data. Next in line was China, which contributed about 12.7% to the global funding pool,…

Oncology may continue be one of the hottest sectors across the pharma sector, but other therapeutic areas are catching up in terms of innovation and investment. While oncology and hematology jointly accounted for about one-third of the new FDA approvals in 2023, investors are increasingly betting on precision medicine, advanced drug delivery systems and the use of…

Despite challenging interest rates and regulatory environment, pharma M&A activity surged in 2023 with deal volume up more than 30% from the prior year based on a review of more than 200 acquisitions since 2018. The total disclosed deal value in 2023 also more than doubled the prior year’s tally to surpass $100 billion. While…

As the year draws to a close, it is clear that molecular science and diagnostics is the hottest funding area in the biotech industry. In an analysis of 50 of the best-funded biotechs of 2023 focused on human health, molecular and science and diagnostics startups collectively attracting roughly $945 million, dwarfing the figures in other…