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Chestnut Roast – Ysopia
We held on to this one all year only to have the rug pulled last week. The website is down, so we can't prove to you that Sandy Claus is real.
Or can we?
Internet Archive to the rescue! Yes, Sandy Claus is real and she is (or at least was) the CSO at Ysopia Bioscience.
So, what are they working on over at Ysopia? Just the therapeutic potential of the bacteria known as CHRISTensenella.
Blue Water Vaccines -> Blue Water Biotech -> Onconetix
Onconetix is the latest name for Blue Water Vaccines/Biotech
It made sense to shift the name from Vaccines to Biotech - opened up their therapeutic world. But they had second thoughts on that openness, because now it’s all oncology with the extremely boring Onconetix, which sounds like a million other biotech names.
How many companies do we list that start with Onc? 114.
Even better, there's already been an Onconetics Pharmaceuticals (RIP)
3/10
T-rex Battle
Why settle for one biotech named after Tyrannosaurus Rex when we can have two?
Because there can be only one, that's why. Showdown time!
Participants: TRex Bio vs T-Rex Biopharma
Logo
TRex Bio: stylized dinosaur eye
T-Rex Biopharma: standard t-rex skull
Winner: TRex Bio
Color Scheme
TRex Bio: light and dark greens
T-Rex Biopharma: blue
Winner: TRex Bio
Business
TRex Bio: Immunology therapies
T-Rex Biopharma: staffing
Winner: TRex Bio
It's a wipeout - TRex Bio is the winner. Though once we realized the second was just a misleadingly named staffing company, it kind of defeated the purpose since they're not a biotech company. Ah whatever.
Oh, by the way, you missed out on the chance to buy a T-Rex skull for $20M last year.
Pipeline Therapeutics
One of the most atrocious names in the biz has been retired. Pipeline Therapeutics has moved on to become Contineum Therapeutics.
This new one is not the greatest looking name, but man, Pipeline Therapeutics was just useless. Naming their company after a standard drug company website menu item was something to behold.
You think they considered Contact Us Therapeutics or Team Therapeutics before going with Pipeline?
Feudal Funding
BioPharmGuy has suggested this story multiple times to journalists and they have ignored it, so it’s time to let it rip.
If you didn’t know, there has been an explosion of small biotech funding that is being executed by large drug companies, all of which seem to have a venture capital arm these days.
Owning your future competitors might be just a little anti-competitive, right?
So why is this being ignored by everyone, everywhere as if it’s some irrelevant detail?
Can people really not imagine a scenario where Lilly may snuff out a portfolio company’s drug in its clinical infancy in what is nothing more than veiled monopoly preservation?
Let’s not be naïve – that’s at least partially why these companies are investing, no matter what they say.
What brought this to a head for us was the announcement of a funding round by EvolveImmune Therapeutics that was bankrolled by Pfizer, Takeda and BMS.
Did you know there are 43 companies in the BioPharmGuy directory partially funded by Eli Lilly. 43!!
Another 25 for Pfizer, 21 for Novartis, 14 for Bayer, etc.
Large companies partnering with smaller ones has long been a common way for big companies to effectively outsource their drug development. But when those happen, they're usually the only large company connected to the small one and have an ownership stake in the drugs.
How would that work if multiple competing drug companies co-invest in a small one? It's murky to say the least.
That older partnering method of funding is still going on. Fierce recently published survey results and found about half the small companies are relying on big companies to fund them through these tough times.
Any biotech journalist out there who wants some data to help research this topic, let us know.
Stupid Apparatus
Thanks to a company changing its name, then changing it back, we have this stupid sounding, yet accurate, entry for a company called Biostage in our deep directory:
“Renamed Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology, Jul 2023; fka Harvard Apparatus Regenerative Technology”
StimWave Goodbye
You can’t do any business in America these days! Now the government has indicted a medical device CEO for simply implanting totally nonfunctional medical devices in patients.
Come on! Free market!!!
But seriously, it doesn’t get more egregious than this right here. The Florida-based company is alleged to have knowingly installed nonfunctional devices in patients.
This isn’t like those electrotherapy devices that gullible people buy to sit around and “heal their cells” or some crap. This involved actual surgery. What the hell.
Hopefully this CEO can say hey to Elizabeth Holmes when she meets her in Federal Prison.
Florida: Still the medical fraud capital of America.
Google Sees All
When you build a website from a template, it’s a good idea to delete the prefilled pages you are not going to use, lest some cheeky copy make it into the Google search results.
Pragma Bio, did not prune the bushes and thus you have this Christmasy filler item from an episode of Doctor Who about Santa aka Jeff. Oops.
Oh Ship
Sometimes metaphors can be taken too far. If you liken your company to a ship, that's ok. If you're working on drugs and want to say that ship is moving "forward in the blue ocean of health care", acceptable.
But if you then refer to something else as a ship, you lose us. From Hasten Biopharmaceutical's CEO message:
"Hasten Biopharma is like a ship flying forward. We will strive to move forward in the blue ocean of health care by the ship of doctor-patient service, taking human health as the shore, innovation as the paddle, forging ahead as the sail."
Paddles and sails? Amusing they decided to model their organization after a Carthaginian warship.
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