1. Can Biotech Bust Eroom’s Law?
Tech has Moore’s law: transistors double every two years, increasing computing power. Pharma has Eroom’s law (read it backwards): drug costs double every nine years, reducing R&D productivity. The debate now – of course – is whether industry can use AI to stop the Eroom doom loop. Elliot Hershberg, an investor in Silicon Valley, thinks biotech – not big pharma – has a good shot:
Already, self-reported “AI biotechs” are proving they can make drugs faster and with greater clinical success. With each iteration, founders are testing new theses about what will drive the greatest improvement on both fronts.
Again, this will not be the biggest driver of cost reduction in late-stage clinical development. We should expect to see the impact first show up in improved returns for biotech investment, rather than the fully loaded costs for a big pharma company to get a new drug approved.
2. Another Tale of Two Cities
British labs are some of the world’s most advanced. British clinics are not. Despite the UK’s standing as “one of the world’s leading drug-discovering nations…only 37 percent of new medicines are fully available to patients, versus 90 percent in Germany.” A searing editorial in London’s The Times paints a grim picture:
Britain is failing patients twice: first by not offering enough access to clinical trials, then by being too slow and inconsistent in adopting medicines once approved. The result is worse patient outcomes, avoidable deaths, declining investment and Britain failing to capture the value of its own science. It’s a moral failure that so few patients are ever offered the choice to take part in clinical trials. The UK is not losing because our science is weak, we’re losing because our policy remains so.
3. #pharmacore
Viagra ties. Ritalin rulers. Zoloft sweatshirts. Such giveaway tchotchkes – relics of another time – are making a comeback, of sorts. The souvenirs are not trending with reps, but with thrifters and online shoppers:
Each week, some 23,000 users visit r/PharmaRepCollectables, a Reddit group created less than two years ago, where people often share, seek and sell authentic pharma swag. The swag has also become a desirable commodity on resale platforms like eBay and Poshmark…Pharmacore — medical-branded pieces worn as fashion — has found new expression at the confluence of identity, medicine and commerce, and at a time when skepticism toward pharmaceuticals is at a high (see: the MAHA movement).
4. Killing Dead Time
The FDA says it’s done waiting around. It has completed two pilot programs that allow it to see “endpoints and safety signals in real time…in the cloud as data is generated…not submitted months after the last patient completes follow-up.” The blog Beyond Approval sees profound consequences in evidence design, global regulation, and reimbursement:
In the current model, there is a gap — sometimes measured in years — between when clinical data is generated and when a regulator sees it. That gap is where companies shape their submissions: selecting endpoints, framing analyses, constructing the narrative that becomes the regulatory dossier. Real-time transmission eliminates that gap. The FDA sees what the trial produces, as it produces it. The implication is not subtle: every endpoint, every data capture decision, every protocol design choice must be regulator-ready from day one. There is no retrospective curation.
5. Buy Now, Pay Later
Big Pharma has been buying Chinese assets for years. Now biotechs are following suit, but with less upfront cash and more downstream equity. The FT sees a trend:
Aaron Gu, a life sciences partner at law firm Han Kun, said many deals were “too early for big pharma to buy”, creating an opening for investors to set up companies…to back drugs at an early stage of development. The “NewCo” structure is not unique to the pharmaceutical industry. In biotech, however, it often involves investors aiming to cash in by bringing foreign drugs to the US… “Big Pharma and these NewCos also come with different term sheets,” Gu said, adding that the big groups generally pay more upfront for assets in China. By contrast, if the Chinese party sells to a NewCo, they will receive less cash but potentially a stake in the new company.