Oncology

Redwood City, California–based Earli is, in many ways, a quintessential Silicon Valley startup. As is often the case, there’s not only a Stanford connection but a grand ambition. The company is developing a “synthetic biopsy” platform that aims to detect cancer at its earliest stages by programming cancer cells to reveal themselves and even self-destruct.…

Recursion Pharmaceuticals and Exscientia, two of the most prominent AI-driven drug discovery companies, are merging. The deal, which the firms expect to be official in early 2025, would create a portfolio of clinical and near-clinical programs with an expected 10 clinical readouts over the the next 18 months with “peak sales opportunities in excess of…

Immunotherapies, including cellular immunotherapies, have dramatically impacted the treatment of cancer. Recent advances in the field, such as autologous (patient-derived) chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapies, have yielded remarkable results in relatively rare blood-based cancers. These results have driven an explosion in the research and development of different cellular products, including both autologous and allogeneic…

Small-molecule drugs have been a mainstay of medicine for over a century, including many of the most impactful pharmaceuticals in human history, such as aspirin and penicillin. Recently, though, biologics—or large-molecule drugs—have become more popular. In fact, in 2016, eight out of 10 of the best-selling drugs globally were biologics. However, small-molecule drugs are experiencing…

By now, almost everyone has heard about the meteoric rise of GLP-1 drugs, like Wegovy and Mounjaro. But a perhaps under-appreciated reality is that the GLP-1 obesity drugs are poised to drive record overall prescription drug sales growth and catapult Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly into the upper echelon of Big Pharma companies by the…

The potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate medical discovery is immense, particularly within the dynamic and mutable area of biology. Unlike the more predictable fields of chemistry and physics, biology presents unique challenges due to its complexity and constant adaptation, areas where AI can play a transformative role but has been limited to date…

Imagine tripling or quadrupling the speed at which eligible patients are matched to potentially life-saving cancer trials. That’s the promise of ConcertAI’s AI-powered screening technology, which demonstrated a 3 to 4 times efficiency gain over traditional EMR-based methods in a recent study presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) conference. Focusing on relapsed…

In early 2022, secretive Altos Labs emerged with a sizable $3 billion launch to pursue anti-aging “cellular rejuvenation” amid rumors of Jeff Bezos’ backing. The company is the best-funded biotech in recent memory. But looking back to 2015 to present, the best funded company is Grail, which developed a multi-cancer early detection test but faced major…

[Updated May 21, 2024.] 2023 may not go down as the brightest year for the pharma sector, but the entry of Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic (semaglutide) into the ranks of top-selling drugs like Keytruda, Dupixent, and Eliquis signals a new era in the treatment of metabolic disease. Novo Nordisk’s sales jumped by more than one-third in…

Radionuclide Drug Conjugates (RDCs) hold the potential to transform cancer treatment by offering effective, precise treatment and diagnosis with minimal side effects. Regulators have already approved several RDCs around the world, and more are in the pipeline as researchers seek to further improve their efficacy, safety, and personalization. RDCs have evolved from other branches of…

[Updated with more comprehensive information on April 30, 2024] Which major pharmaceutical company leads the way in research and development? Data reveals that the top R&D spender in 2023 was Merck & Co., by a wide margin. While Pfizer had almost as much revenue as Merck ($60.1 billion vs. $58.5 billion), its R&D ratio was…

The FDA has signed off on two novel therapies targeting rare pediatric cancers. Novartis’ Lutathera targets aggressive gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NETs) in children 12 and up, while Day One Biopharma’s Ojemda (tovorafenib) tackles treatment-resistant BRAF-mutated relapsed or refractory pediatric low-grade glioma (pLGG) with a BRAF fusion or rearrangement, or BRAF V600 mutation These approvals offer…

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…

The first quarter of 2024 saw a flurry of funding activity in the biotech sector, with early-to-mid-stage companies attracting most of the investment dollars. Among the most notable late-stage deals was blood-based cancer diagnostics firm Freenome‘s $254 million Series E round. The South San Francisco-based company, which is developing a platform for early cancer detection…

Digital pathology is disrupting the drug development process, replacing traditional microscopy rooted in Victorian Era approaches with high-resolution images and AI-powered analysis tools. In a recent editorial webinar, industry experts Nathan Buchbinder (chief strategy officer at Proscia), Dr. John Cochran (chief medical officer and chief pathologist at Q² Solutions, an IQVIA subsidiary), and Dr. Monika…

The University of Pittsburgh’s recent, significant expansion of its high-performance computing capabilities, courtesy of a gift from Dell Technologies, indicates a strategic commitment to using large-scale data analysis for faster translational research. The additional 9.672 gigaFLOPS of computational power – translating to nearly 9.7 trillion additional computations per second – could help Pitt’s Innovation Hub…

We can design chips that power self-driving cars and create physically-realistic video footage based on text descriptions. Yet, as Genentech’s Aviv Regev pointed out in a session about the company’s lab in the loop at NVIDIA’s GTC conference, the humble cells within us operate with a complexity that still eludes our full understanding. It turns out that a cell is itself like a computational device…

NVIDIA is putting the power of generative AI for drug discovery into the hands of more pharmaceutical and biotech companies with an expanded collection of AI models and flexible deployment options. More than 100 firms are already using the company’s biomolecular BioNeMo platform to accelerate the development of therapeutics. “For the first time in history,…

Using generative AI in drug discovery, Iambic Therapeutics (formerly Entos) has advanced its IAM1363 drug candidate from program launch to clinical studies in fewer than 24 months — a process that often takes several years. Iambic Therapeutics’ AI drug development milestone relied on an alliance with NVIDIA researchers and engineers and through the use of…

Lantern Pharma’s AI-powered sprint  Lantern Pharma (NASDAQ: LTRN), a publicly traded clinical-stage biotech company with a market cap of around $79 million as of mid-March 2024, is shooting for developing $200 million drugs with a machine learning-based platform. The oncology-focused firm Lantern Pharma, profiled last year, has advanced its new drug (LP-284) to a Phase…

When reviewing R&D spending trends for 2023, Merck & Co. is a clear outlier given its decision to count its $10.3 billion Prometheus acquisition as an R&D charge. In all, the company committed more than half of its revenue to R&D. But Swiss giants Roche and Novartis remain frontrunners in terms of their pipeline of…

Tumor heterogeneity analysis is a challenging but critical step for the advancement of cancer therapy research. DNA mutation interrogation and gene expression pattern evaluation are crucial for predicting a tumor’s response or resistance to specific drug or hormone treatments. Liquid biopsy has emerged as a promising tool, offering a rapid, minimally invasive method for early…

In 2023, Merck & Co. made a considerable investment in research and development, spending more than $30 billion. This figure represents more than double the company’s R&D spending ($13.5 billion) in 2022. The closest competitor in terms of R&D investment was Roche Pharmaceuticals, with a 2023 R&D expenditure of roughly $14.7 billion. This sum is…

Debiopharm, an independent Swiss biopharmaceutical company based in Lausanne, seeks to carve a niche in the competitive oncology and infectious disease markets. Its business model focuses on in-licensing promising drug candidates from universities and smaller biotechs, aiming to add value through development. (The company is also partnering with AI-focused firms like VeriSIM Life.) Sandra von…

Pharma’s potential breakthroughs in AI, ADCs, and GLP-1 receptor agonists raise a critical question: can innovation outpace the relentless rise of chronic disease? The IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science sheds light on this theme, among many others, in its 80-page Global Trends in R&D 2024 report. Pillar 1: GLP-1 receptor agonists targeting metabolic disease…