Business Strategy

Public Company Edition: While panelists at Biotech Showcase argued merging with a special purpose acquisition corporation is not as attractive as it used to be, firms continue to pursue this go-public alternative. Also, Hillstream launched a small IPO and Cytokinetics accessed cash from Royalty Pharma. 

The company laid out plans at J.P. Morgan to reach revenues of $5bn by 2025, focusing on already marketed products and its pipeline plans.

The next chapter of Cipla’s innovation journey goes beyond its core respiratory thrust to include new platforms spanning areas such as peptides, where it has seen its first major approval in the US and has multiple programs lined up. Devices and diagnostics are among the other avenues being explored as the Indian company seeks to bring more patients into the “funnel”.

Licensing deals and partnerships carried the day during another hectic J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Pfizer racked up its third deal of the week in a cancer collaboration with Dren Bio.

From a STING agonist to a SOS1 inhibitor, Lupin listed oncology candidates from the preclinical stage to those in IND-enabling studies during the recently concluded J.P. Morgan conference. Meanwhile, the newly spun-off oncology subsidiary awaits partners.

Sanofi India's managing director is moving on after an eventful innings that saw the company re-orient operations, moving out of certain non-strategic areas to focus on core therapies. Pre-pandemic early digital adoption appears to have played out well too for the French group’s listed Indian arm.

With up to $100m from Abingworth and a recent $75m FOPO, CymaBay has runway to await pivotal data in primary biliary cholangitis in 2023 for seladelpar, after the candidate failed in NASH. It sees a significant market opportunity in the second-line setting cornered by Intercept.

With a candidate for ulcerative colitis set to go into Phase III soon with a safety profile that looks cleaner than anti-TNFs and the JAK class, the French biotech could soon be getting some interesting offers.

Nearly a year into the job, research chief Christian Rommel tells Scrip he is impressed with Bayer's arm's length approach to running acquired firms like AskBio and BlueRock and the task ahead is to deliver on the potential they offer, while getting later-stage projects across the approvals finishing line.

From BeiGene to Innovent to Wuxi Biologics, executives at Chinese pharma firms are now discussing collaborations to go beyond China to become biopharma operations with a truly global presence.

The company is aiming for an outcomes-based payment model in the US, while it is confident the gene therapy will fare better than some others have in Europe.

No big buyouts were revealed during the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference for a third year in a row. Big pharma firms are in acquisition mode, but execs stress desire for easy integrations and scientific alliances.