Drug Discovery and Development Archives - Page 5 of 158

Beyond GLP-1: OrsoBio targets mitochondria to treat metabolic disorders from a new and potentially complementary angle

Emerging from stealth in late 2022, Palo Alto–based biopharma startup OrsoBio announced four development programs targeting severe metabolic disorders. The CEO and founder, Dr. Mani Subramanian and chief medical officer and head of development Dr. Rob Myers formerly worked at Gilead. Founded in 2020 with a quest to “try to modulate energy metabolism in severe metabolic disorders like obesity, diabetes, dyslipidemias, NASH, etc.,” as Myers put it, the company focuses on drug targets that affect fundamental aspects of mitochondrial function.

To date, OrsoBio has completed a $60 million Series A financing round, bringing its total fundraising total to $97 million. Longitude Capital and Enavate Sciences co-led the fundraising, with significant participation from existing investors Samsara BioCapital and NuevaBio. The round also brought in a notable new investor — Eli Lilly. Lilly’s stock has nearly doubled over the past year, thanks in part to its FDA approval of t…

Employees reveal highs and lows at 8 Big Pharma firms in 2024

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Ahead of our deeper Pharma 50 analysis of top pharma firms’ performance, this new 2024 analysis provides a timely snapshot of cultural and innovation metrics across eight of the leading Big Pharma firms. Looking closely at the pivotal issue of “Big Pharma work culture 2024,” we examine data and reviews from the employee site Glassdoor, the female employee resource InHerSight and insightful employee comments on the social media site Reddit.

To rank the pharmaceutical companies, we converted their Glassdoor overall ratings, benefits scores, recommendation rates, and InHerSight overall scores to a uniform scale out of 100, weighing the overall score, benefits, recommendation rate and InHerSight scores equally.

Merck comes in on top

Among the major pharmaceutical companies compared, Merck & Co. fared best with an overall score of 82.75. It also had the highest overall Glass…

Fauna Bio CEO on tapping extreme mammals for human disease breakthroughs

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Could the genetic secrets of “extreme mammals” help unlock treatments for myriad human diseases? The Emeryville, California–based startup Fauna Bio is betting on that premise. One of the animals the firm is studying include the 13-lined ground squirrel, which can double its body weight in fat accumulation in summer before entering hibernation in an obese state. After entering hibernation for roughly half the year, the squirrels’ enter a state of extreme metabolic suppression where their metabolic rate dips to 1–3% of normal.

Fauna Bio has inked significant deals with pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, tapping its Convergence AI platform to identify potential obesity drug targets across 452 mammal species, including 65 other hibernators in addition to the 13-lined ground squirrel. The insights from the research could pave the way for new treatments for a…

Alliance with Google Cloud the latest to help Atropos Health bridge the evidence gap in medicine

The Stanford spinout Atropos Health, which taps real-world data to analyze patient outcomes, disease trajectories, treatment effectiveness, is joining forces with Google Cloud. The company had already forged an alliance with AWS to offer its real-world evidence offerings on the AWS Marketplace and join the AWS Partner Network. The company’s core aim is to give physicians access to rapid, high-quality real-world evidence data to inform daily medical decisions.

There are different numbers out there, but only about 20% of daily medical decisions have high-quality evidence behind them,” said Dr. Brigham Hyde, CEO of Atropos. “We call that issue the evidence gap.” While clinical-decision making is a central focus area, Atropos collaborates with life science companies. “We launched officially in pharma about six months ago,” Hyde added.

Compressing RWD generation from months to minutes

Brigham Hyde, Ph.D.

F…

How digital pathology can transform the value of clinical trial information

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The field of pathology is gradually going digital, marking a pronounced shift from the traditional use of glass slides, a practice that dates back to the Victorian era. Digital pathology uptake reached an “exponential” pace in the wake of the pandemic, noted Dr. Monika Lamba Saini, director of pathology, at Q2 Solutions, an IQVIA subsidiary.

Adoption has grown from a negligible amount to roughly 15% over the past five years, said David West, CEO of Proscia, a digital pathology company, and a Q2 Solutions partner. The Digital Pathology Association notes that adoption in recent years has been brisk, hovering between 27% and 37% growth from 2021 to 2023, with the pandemic serving as an accelerant. Growth is cooling but is still brisk. According to Proscia’s 2023 Life Sciences Digital Pathology Adoption Survey, 70% of life sciences organizations were using digital pathology, with an additional 53% of t…

Mapping the more than 1,000 biotech and pharma layoffs in January 2024

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On the heels of a strong year of FDA approvals, there are signs in early 2024 that the biotech sector is recovering. Examples include two recent biotech IPOs, signs of investor optimism and continued M&A momentum. But the biotech sector continues to see a significant number of layoffs. Major layoffs in early 2024 include companies like Cara Therapeutics, Ikena Oncology, Pfizer, and Sana Biotechnology. In early 2024, the rate of layoff events has continued at roughly the same clip over the past several months. Altogether, there were more than 1,300 job cuts in January.

Public companies driving the most layoffs

In terms of the source of the layoffs, public companies such as Pfizer, Intellia Therapeutics, and Thermo Fisher Scientific are letting the most workers go, with more than 600 layoffs in January 2024. Next in line are clinical-stage companies such as the oncology-focused biotec…

Why clinicians are the critical link for AI in transforming oncology care

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In the third episode of AI Meets Life Sci, Ben Newton, General Manager of Oncology at GE Healthcare, offered a succinct definition of artificial intelligence that harkens back to the original conception from the 1950s, when researchers gathered at Dartmouth College to lay the groundwork for the field. “AI for me is the simulation of human intelligence by machines, essentially, or computer systems,” Newton said.

Harnessing the power of machine intelligence is increasingly a priority owing to the surging volumes of data in the field. Contributing to the trend are advances in radiological imaging, genomics as well as the continued evolution of electronic health records and personalized medicine. The healthcare industry is emerging as one of the biggest producers of data with RBC Capital Markets estimating that the sector now produces roughly 30% of the world’s data volume. RBC projects that the compou…

M&A strong at the dawn of 2024, but it’s too early to tell if it will match 2023 levels

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The biopharma sector appears to be gearing up for a dynamic year of merger and acquisition activity in 2024. Analysts at EY indicate the sector could see between $225 billion and $275 billion in total deal value, in line with 2023’s roughly $238 billion. In the first 24 days of January this year, there were about a half-dozen significant deals compared with 10 in the same period a year earlier. This pace is roughly in line with the average monthly activity throughout 2023, excluding the unusually high spike in January of that year.

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Inside Amgen’s ATOMIC strategy to use ML to accelerate clinical trials

[Image credit: Amgen]

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.

ML-powered clinical trial oracle could compress clinical trial cycle time

“With the massive amounts of data we’re pulling from various sources, we anticipate that by 2030, we’ll be able to shave about two years off the development times for our drugs,” said Sheryl Jacobs, vice president, global Development operations at Amgen. For now, the company is steadily ramping up the number of trials using the ATOMIC process. “Within the next year or two, we expect the majority of our trials will be using the AI …

Rice Biotech Launch Pad plans to make Houston a top-tier biotech hub

Rice Biotech Launch Pad: A collaboration hub at TMC’s Helix Park. [Image courtesy of TMC Helix Park | Texas Medical Center]

Houston boasts many world-class assets that have made it a formidable player on the global stage. From the world’s largest medical complex to mission control for the cosmos, few other cities can compete with its diverse strengths. Houston is also home to the prestigious Rice University, renowned for its leading science and engineering programs.

Houston, the nation’s fourth largest city, has not traditionally been a leader in biotechnology, but Rice University’s new Rice Biotech Launch Pad aims to change that. As Omid Veiseh, director of the Launch Pad, explains, “What we wanted with the Launch Pad was something different.” The goal is to capitalize on Rice’s research strengths and the vast medical expertise at the nearby Texas Medical Center.

Ho…

Devices, disease, and digital: Holy Grail of healthcare AI

[Image courtesy of GE HealthCare]

In episode 3 of AI Meets Life Sci, DeviceTalks Managing Editor Kayleen Brown and Pharma and Biotech Editor Brian Buntz sit down with GE HealthCare Chief Digital Officer and GM of Oncology Ben Newton and Haley Schwartz of Catalyze Healthcare to discuss the impacts of AI to screen, diagnose, prognose, and treat cure disease while addressing real-world implementation issues from regulation and liability to clinician trust and adoption.

They review the AI challenge of organizing disarrayed informational islands such as technology, clinical protocols, and digital solutions into cohesive, well-developed systems and offer insight into the medtech industry’s progress in this area.

The AI Holy Grail for decision support

Ben Newton

AI technologies emerged quickly over the last several years in medical imaging and oncology…

Supercomputer-based Bayesian approach to AI pays dividends for BPGbio

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 an exclusive relationship with Oak Ridge National Labs, using its Frontier supercomputer to perform complex computational tasks, including the analysis of multi-omics data, the development of predictive models, and the simulation of biological systems. Frontier is hailed as the world’s first exascale supercomputer, meaning it can perform more than 1 quintillion calculations per second.

BPGbio’s AI-powered platform, known as NAi Interrogative Biology, illustrates its approach to drug and diagnostic discovery. The platform includes a lmassive biobank of multi-omi…