Silverback Therapeutics’s wind-down and reverse merger process can serve as a template for other companies when their clinical trials fail. The company’s response to its setback also teaches us about scenario planning, the importance of moving quickly when a key program doesn’t deliver hoped-for data, and why we should look ahead to a biotech ecosystem that anticipates the consequences of – and opportunities stemming from – its inevitable clinical setbacks.

Our January 2023 analysis Semper Maior: Time to Reboot Biotech argued that the development-stage biotech industry had found its footing, following one of the sector’s most sustained and painful drawdowns. Now, in our first update to that analysis, we’re happy to report that development-stage biotech remains on solid ground. In the first half of 2023, biotech investors harvested considerable gains from M&A and have already partially redeployed that capital back into what is now a smaller, slightly more highly valued set of promising development-stage companies.

Gateway is RA Capital’s new board-building tool. It’s free to use, so give it a try. And if you’re on a biotech board or aspire to be on one, please take a minute to fill out a profile.

Take a few minutes at the beginning of a board meeting to give the board the big picture before asking them to analyze individual pieces of your narrative. At RA Capital, we encourage our companies to use a tool called the Elephant Slide. This slide helps visualize a company’s value proposition, goals, challenges, and upcoming decisions in one place - allowing you to address the elephant in the room.