{"id":481950,"date":"2024-01-10T17:20:09","date_gmt":"2024-01-10T22:20:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/jpm-day-3-had-a-cautiously-optimistic-outlook\/"},"modified":"2024-01-10T22:59:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-11T03:59:12","slug":"jpm-day-3-had-a-cautiously-optimistic-outlook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/platohealth.ai\/jpm-day-3-had-a-cautiously-optimistic-outlook\/","title":{"rendered":"JPM Day 3 had a cautiously optimistic outlook","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"

In honor of JPM Week, you\u2019re reading a special edition of our biotech newsletter, The Readout. To stay on top of the latest scoops and live reporting from the San Francisco conference, join our newsletter list<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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We\u2019ve reached the Wednesday of JPM Week, when gaits get sluggish, voices go hoarse, and early-morning meetings run an increasing risk of cancelation. Persevere. And while you\u2019re at it, don\u2019t miss STAT\u2019s multimedia coverage of the conference<\/a>, featuring decidedly lively interviews, commentary, and on-the-ground reportage.<\/p>\n

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The consensus is that the dark skies over biopharma are clearing<\/h2>\n

Maybe it\u2019s the abundance of sunlight that filled San Francisco this week. More likely, it\u2019s the surge of deals that came in December. But the sentiment around Union Square has been markedly more positive this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m feeling a lot of good energy, honestly,\u201d said Mira Chaurushiya, senior partner at VC Westlake Village BioPartners. \u201cIt\u2019s not only what happened the last few weeks of the year, but what people are projecting moving forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, it\u2019s not all rosy skies ahead. Biotechs are continuing to lay off staff and make painful strategic shifts to conserve cash. But the worst may be over. During the course of this week, we bumped into people like Celsius Therapeutics CEO Tariq Kassum, who made the difficult decision last August to lay off 75% of his staff<\/a> in order to keep the company afloat long enough to run a clinical trial for its first drug candidate. The early data is in, and it looks like Kassum made the right move, he said.<\/p>\n

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DNA sequencing doesn\u2019t line up<\/h2>\n

Nvidia grabbed headlines by talking about how artificial intelligence would create an inflection point for drug development. But another technology that was supposed to do that, DNA sequencing, didn\u2019t do so well at this year\u2019s J.P. Morgan.<\/p>\n

The new CEO of Illumina, Jacob Thaysen, basically gave investors what they want after the long, losing battle the company made to own cancer diagnostics firm Grail: a return to focusing on the core DNA sequencing business and a promise to move quickly on spinning off or selling Grail, which the company bought, disastrously, over regulators\u2019 objections. Unfortunately, that was about as boring as it sounds: a company that had always had a healthy dose of wanting to change the world sounded a lot like a maker of, well, laboratory tools.<\/p>\n

Element Biosciences, an upstart trying to move into the market, announced that it had booked $25 million in sales in 2023 and launched new machines that can also sequence RNA and proteins. Oxford Nanopore \u2014 probably currently the most exciting company in the group for its ability to sequence DNA on thumb-drive-like machines and to get much longer readouts of DNA code than the tiny bits of sequence other technologies must stitch together \u2014 announced earnings of \u00a3169 million, about \u00a38 million less than investors expected. The company\u2019s shares fell 14% on the London stock exchange.<\/p>\n

Roivant\u2019s drug hunt<\/h2>\n

Roivant Sciences CEO Matt Gline has been spending his JPM Week meeting with investors in an upper-floor hotel suite. The more interesting action is taking place in another hotel room floors below, where Roivant\u2019s business development team, flush with $7 billion in cash largely from the recent Roche deal<\/a>, is hunting for its next drug asset.<\/p>\n

In an interview with STAT, Gline said Roivant\u2019s licensing team has been meeting with pharma companies about existing drugs in their pipelines that may no longer fit with spending or research priorities, but which in Roivant\u2019s hands could be developed further to create mutual value.<\/p>\n

Roivant is not narrowing its search to any specific type of drug or disease area, said Gline, although it\u2019s likely to be something in the middle- to late-stage of development. Cancer and gene therapy are not in Roivant\u2019s wheelhouse, and while Gline would love to find the next great oral GLP-1 for weight loss, finding a hidden gem like that isn\u2019t likely, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that still leaves us with a whole bunch of potential drugs to consider,\u201d he said. \u201cThe right thing for us to do is be patient.\u201d<\/p>\n

Think of genome editing as \u2018a molecular surgical procedure\u2019<\/h2>\n

That\u2019s the advice of Verve Therapeutics CEO Sekar Kathiresan, whose company is at work on an audacious plot<\/a> to move genome editing from the world of rare disease and tackle the world\u2019s most common cause of death.<\/p>\n

The plan is to use base editing, a successor to CRISPR, to silence a gene called PCSK9, which encodes for a protein involved in the body\u2019s clearance of bad cholesterol. Shutting off PCSK9 should dramatically reduce cholesterol, which in turn would reduce the risk of heart attack. Verve\u2019s multiyear plan to bring genome editing to the mainstream starts with treating a genetic form of high cholesterol, followed by studies in more common forms of heart disease, and, finally, proving that its one-time treatment should be a widely used preventive medicine.<\/p>\n

But how do you turn genome editing, a technology associated with small patient populations and multimillion-dollar price tags, into something globally accessible?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not committing to anything right now, but you could imagine a world where this is priced much more like other one-time procedures in cardiovascular medicine, like a bypass surgery or a stent, other procedures that are permanent and one time and intended for lifelong benefit,\u201d Kathiresan said. \u201cThat\u2019s kind of how I see our medicine ultimately: Less a drug and more like a molecular surgical procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More reads<\/h2>\n