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Not So Fast, My Friends!
Amgen's $28B takeover of Horizon Therapeutics has been halted by an FTC lawsuit. The agency believes the acquisition would stifle competition in the thyroid eye disease and chronic refractory gout markets.
Interestingly, the agency is not saying Amgen will corner the market or anything like that - Horizon itself already has the lone approved products for both indications. So, the market was cornered before this acquisition.
The FTC is alleging that simply by being a big drug company, Amgen will strongarm everyone into purchasing more of these products by giving them discounts on other Amgen products.
Since the whole pharmaceutical industry is built on short-term monopolies via patents, this really stretches the limits of making sense. Horizon is already charging whatever it thinks it can get away with - it's a publicly traded company who answers to its shareholders.
To suggest that Amgen will somehow extract more money from people by giving discounts is an interesting argument that does not seem to hold much water on its face. Feels like regulatory overreach.
Spread 'em
In other drug pricing news, the US Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee passed a law restricting the pricing power of Pharmacy Benefit Managers who are industry middlemen and one of the culprits behind opaque and astronomical drug prices.
The new law restricts what the PBMs call “spread pricing”, which is the practice of charging insurance companies more than the PBMs actually pay out to pharmacies.
But don’t all companies charge a markup on stuff they buy then re-sell? Isn’t that how a market economy works?
These middlemen can always just start charging eye-watering, Ticketmaster-style service fees instead. But will this action matter? Who knows. Maybe it will lend a little more transparency to the pricing in this god-forsaken system. (It won't)
And by the way, can we get some government agency to crack down on Ticketmaster already? How is this monopoly allowed to keep ripping us all off decade after decade? They have to be the only business who has consistently increased service fees while removing any semblance of actual service. It's crazy.
Are We Having Fun Yet?
Here we have an email invite to Bio Bash 2023 which will be held June 6 during the BIO conference in Boston. Last year, they were whooping it up at the Hotel del Coronado, this year will be at the Courthouse. Somewhat less party-ish setting but will probably be fun.
You'll notice the last question on the invite is "Are you ready to party?" Not sure what will happen if you select 'No'. Will you be put on a list of people banned from the grounds?
Anyways, it's 1980's themed, so you will be ready to party.
Nona Biosciences
Nona just announced a strategic partnership with PharmEssentia, which is a big miss. Why couldn’t they have collaborated with NoNO instead? Together they would have kept the entire biotech industry overfed for years!
Fratagene
If a company has really important news, you may expect them to pop it on their homepage so all website visitors will learn of it. But Fratagene went an alternate route – they posted their own obituary on the News tab.
Probably fired the web guy a while back and only knew how to edit the one page.
Cheeky Funding Round
It’s no secret that most biotech funding is denominated in dollars. And also, that most US keyboards do not have a Euro key. Thus, when we come across a euro round, we use trusty old ALT+0128 to enter the € sign.
So was Oniria Therapeutics being funny when they announced this oddly-specific, €1.28M round?
If we see a £1.63M round out of the UK next week, we’ll know some PR shenanigans are truly afoot. (ameter for you metric people)
Team Roast – Theolytics
Not uncommon for a company to get casual with their team page and call everyone by first names. But for Theo to not be wearing any clothes (safe for work) is just a bit over the top.
All nudity aside, Theo’s profile pic proves he has an infectious personality and also mentions how he was promoted within five years of joining the company. Definitely a hard worker who evolves to fit the job.
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