BioPharmGuy News

April 20, 2023

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BioPharmGuy

"I love edibles...I only have one problem with edibles - it's all kids food. It's all like weed lollipops and weed gummy bears. I'm a grown man. Why can't I get a weed Cobb salad?"

-Tommy McNamara

Companies Added & Removed

This week we added 230 companies and removed four.

230 companies, you say?

Yes. Sometimes we come across lists of companies and it takes a while to gather all the details. A typical scenario is someone sends us a list and it's mostly trash. We always go through one by one and check if we list the companies. If not, we throw them into the "Companies to Add" file and investigate when we can.

Generally, 95% or more are either already listed or unlistable because they're out of business or not a good fit for BioPharmGuy.

230 companies is a large group even for us. Got a little behind on moving them into the real directory.

But also there was that open letter from 300 biotech companies who were against a federal court attempting to revoke an FDA approved drug. We asked for your guesses of how many of that 300 would end up added to our directory. And we received it.

Yes, 16,951 of you could not be bothered to venture a guess - the only guess received was 42. (at least no one lost) The actual number added was 27, many of which were companies without websites, which probably means they are more like aspirations than companies.

Newly Added Name Rankings:

1) Y-Trap

2) NaNotics

3) Ripple Therapeutics

228) Scruffy Biotech

229) Snoretox

230) VGYAAN Pharmaceuticals

Excel file of added/removed companies available on our downloads page.

Industry

Moderna

At the annual AACR meeting, drug companies get together to release a waterfall of clinical and even preclinical study information. Among the promising results this week was a Moderna/Merck trial where an mRNA therapy was tested alongside Keytruda in high-risk melanoma patients. It was a small trial, less than 200 patients, but showed a solid improvement vs. Keytruda alone. A Phase 3 trial is planned to start later this year.

Another indication that mRNA is going to be an exceptionally versatile drug modality going forward? Probably.

Abridged Brag

If someone in biotech is going to flex about their media presence, generally they've at least been featured on CNBC or maybe Forbes 30 under 30 (though that's become more of a most-wanted list).

What you don't expect to see is a CEO flaunting their Reader's Digest piece. Who knew that thing still existed?

Alphabet Schmalphabet

Biotech companies hate admitting they’ve taken a lot of funding rounds. They all want to pretend they're in a seed or series A round.

In the case of Geneos, they just hauled in a funding round for the fifth consecutive year which they have dubbed an “A3” round. The hell is this, Battleship?

Speaking of, BioPharmGuy is a collector of old board games and owns a pristine 1967 original Battleship. In recent years you may have seen a retro version of the game at your local toy seller with an old looking box cover. However, this was not the original cover, or at least not all of it:

Yes - the original had Mom and Sis cleanin' dishes while the boys played games. Not sure why that ever made sense to include, but definitely a good choice to lop that off the retro version. Yikes.

Wings

Always good to explain your company's name on the website, especially when it's something like Wista. If you must know, the name was derived from:

"Wings with Innovation, Strength, Thinking and Aspiration"

It all makes so much sense. Except wings. That part makes zero sense.

Would be a pretty good chicken restaurant creed. Not as sure wings are applicable to a company making mostly generic anti-infectives. #hireamarketer

Oh. No.

Oh Pharmaceuticals wants us to know they have the whole world in their (creepy as hell) blue hands. Yuck. Three mental options when you see blue hands:

-Avatar (overrated)

-Smurfs (bunch of commies)

-Blue Man Group (weirdos)

That's a lose-lose-lose.

Lesson: no blue hands. (With one exception)

Biotech Compensation

Few weeks ago, Pillar VC released results of a compensation survey in biotech. They have a nice chart of salaries by position. It's all presented very nicely. Only drawback is there seems to be no cost-of-living adjustments. Weird, since $150k makes you rich in a small town, but borderline destitute in San Francisco.

Ah, and there it is - they're selling access to this resource and the regional info is probably behind the paywall.

Snoretox

Found out about this company and assumed they made some sort of snoring remedy. How naïve. They're using tetanus toxin to increase muscle tone.

Hey, if it works, cool. But this is an absolutely horrible name for a company working on a muscle drug. Just the worst.

0/10 - Rebrand!

PharmaLab

We can guess that companies with a generic name like PharmaLab don't spend a lot of time on their marketing copy. But in this case, we can be almost sure of it since their slogan sounds, how shall we say...a little too mature:

"Filling your needs…by providing solutions"

Biotech Bio Bio

If you need a CEO for your biotech company, you could do worse than a guy who has decades of experience. But if he's actually named Bio? Home run. You can read all about him here as there is a bio for Bio on the biotech’s website.

Health & Science

Attack of the Clones

As if the problem of pay-to-publish journals weren't enough, we are now facing a new problem in the scientific publication world - journal cloning.

So, what does it mean?

It happens when a real journal gets its website and everything copied by a group who has created a similar website url. In at least one instance, the real journal later ceased publishing and the clone kept it up, accepting submission for hundreds of dollars. Ultimately some of these papers ended up in registries of real papers, using the cloned journal name.

Obviously, this could only happen at lower-tier outlets, but given the enormous size of the modern life science industry, the quantity of low-tier publications has exploded. This is a problem that will be around for a while yet.

Return of the Lakes

California grows a lot of America's food in its Central Valley. The problem is, it used to be a big lake. So, when a lot of water suddenly shows up, it tends to stick around for a bit. And that's bad news for farms.

Tulare Lake was the largest lake west of the Mississippi before it was drained. But it's back for the first time in 25 years and that's before the spring thaw in the mountains.

Many farms are already a total loss for the season. Given the scale of the problem, it's not easily solvable in the short term. Up to 11 feet of subsidence in the region is not helping things.

What's also not helping is how many communities in the area declined to take part in California's statewide flood protection plan. The classic, "Small government! (until I need it)" mantra.

But don't worry - it's not like California occasional gets storms so epic, the entire Central Valley becomes a lake for a year. Oh wait, that happened in 1861.

If you thought food price inflation was bad now, climate change will likely put that to shame in the coming years.

Platypus

Our older readers all know the duck-billed platypus has feet like a duck but it's furry, thanks to those 1980s commercials for Wildlife Treasury. But what you may not know about these critters is there are exactly two of them alive outside of Australia.

San Diego is your only other option. You can try out their webcam that appears to be streaming over dial-up, or if you find yourself at the actual zoo, check 'em out in person. And also check out that reptile house. The setup is old school, but as far as interesting species go, they have a great lineup.

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