Endpoints News

When we looked around #HLTH2024 last week, the companies everyone was talking about weren't startups with big ideas of how to disrupt the healthcare industry — they were ... compounding pharmacies?? In today's Endpoints News Health Tech newsletter, Shelby Livingston breaks down why compounding pharmacies ended up being the buzziest players at the conference (some were even there for the first time this year!). + Ngai Yeung caught up with NVIDIA to hear more about its digital health ambitions + what's inside the latest Peterson Health Technology Institute (PHTI) report + more! Check it out: https://lnkd.in/g5JuQSwV

What's going on with the Novo Holdings - Catalent Pharma Solutions deal is a weird one. Novo Nordisk will get three major plants to help it make more GLP-1 drugs, which are in such demand that the company can't meet it. It's biggest rival for the drugs appears to be appealing to the Federal Trade Commission to block the deal. And now Roche, which also has an obesity pipeline, has also voiced its opposition. https://lnkd.in/emvCUCUB

“We’ve arrived at a really exciting point with this technology,” Iambic Therapeutics’ co-founder and chief technology officer Fred Manby told me. “This demonstration that, yes, you get better at clinical predictions by training on more preclinical data really feels like a moment where something qualitative has changed about the way you can leverage AI in drug discovery.” My latest for Endpoints News on a new AI model debuted today by Iambic the predicts clinic properties. In predicting the half-life of compounds in humans, Iambic's model scored a 0.73 on a zero-to-one scale measuring how its predictions match reality. That's a moderate-to-strong correlation, and a jump above the prior, public state-of-the-art score of 0.58. More here on how Iambic built this transformer model, Enchant, and what to watch next:

In our latest newsletter, executive editor Drew Armstrong previews what could happen on Tuesday, when Pfizer is set to report its third-quarter results. Drew writes: "At the heart of Starboard’s argument is that [CEO Albert] Bourla hasn’t turned Pfizer’s huge achievements during the Covid-19 pandemic into a great, post-Covid company. The investor argues that Pfizer has made too-expensive deals, hasn’t delivered on R&D promises, and has mismanaged its financial forecasts." What do you think happens next?

The Dutch biotech Synaffix has long been one of the top partners for biopharma companies working in antibody-drug conjugates. Now the company is spinning out a pipeline of drugs into a new company, Kyle LaHucik reports. https://lnkd.in/ezTX3FN8

Hot off the press! Andrew Dunn reports: https://lnkd.in/eDGh7WTm

David Epstein, who was the CEO of Seagen when it was acquired by Pfizer for $43 billion last year, is joining a new biotech that’s looking into one of the buzziest approaches in cancer, reports Ayisha Sharma. https://lnkd.in/e7uxTxZZ

Kyle LaHucik from Endpoints News speaks with Mohit Trikha President and COO Kivu Bioscience and Daniel O'Connell MD,PhD partner at Novo Holdings about the $92M Series A and official launch. 🚀🚀 In the race to create next-gen ADCs, Kivu said it hopes to make Topo1i-based medicines that are more durable, can be dosed higher and have less toxic impact on healthy parts of the body. The startup said it anticipates entering human trials with its first solid tumor ADC, codenamed KIVU-107, next year. Read the article: https://lnkd.in/eR_KWZ4S

In today's Peer Review: - Tom Frohlich reunites with Chinook alumni following exit to Novartis; - Recursion CEO Chris Gibson joins Cellino's board of directors; - Scancell gets a new CEO; Read the full update: https://lnkd.in/ekqampct

Kyle LaHucik reports: https://lnkd.in/eBhE4nyA