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As we break for the holidays and begin to look forward to 2025, we're also taking a beat to look back on what most drew our readers' attention in 2024.
On the occasion of a documentary about living with cystic fibrosis and the drug that turned his life around, Gunnar Esiason reflects on his personal struggle, the roles of patients and their caregivers in drug development, and the scientific struggle we so rarely see publicly depicted.
Thanks to the relentless efforts of scientists at Vertex Pharmaceuticals, there will likely soon be a novel non-opioid pain medicine. How insurance plans, including Medicare, decide to cover this drug will make a world of difference to whether we get even better non-opioid options down the road — and whether this progress makes a dent in the ongoing opioid misuse crisis.
Today, AbbVie announced it is acquiring Aliada for $1.4 billion, motivated by the potential for ALIA-1758, Aliada’s lead program, to be the best-in-class for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, and by the potential of the BBB-crossing platform to enhance its discovery and development efforts for other difficult-to-treat neurological diseases. As we congratulate the Aliada team, we wanted to share a bit more of the story behind the second significant acquisition from our Raven incubator this year and the first full-circle acquisition of a company we built with technology spun out from a larger company.
The link between environmental sustainability and health outcomes — now a hallmark of planetary health — builds on a foundation of public health, which brings a systems-level approach to health issues.
Starting with a blank slate is exciting – the ability to create a platform, a pipeline, a team from scratch is a big reason why one comes to biotech – but it requires a fearless and innovative team and bold investors and partners. The story of how PKU became the first killer app for Jnana’s SLC discovery platform -- a key pivot point in demonstrating the platform's value -- is emblematic of the calculated risk taking that we embrace in biotech.
Rechargeable batteries are ubiquitous and power our lives in myriad ways, but to “electrify everything” we will need dramatically more of them, and that in turn means we will need cheaper and more environmentally friendly ways of manufacturing them.
Motors drive a lot more than cars. They are a ubiquitous and established technology that currently consume roughly ¼ of all energy produced on Earth. So you might think the motors surrounding us would be maximally efficient, right? Not so fast.
Whether you enjoy air travel or not, it’s increasingly common and persistently bad for the environment. Almost three million passengers fly in and out of US airports each day and global demand for air travel is expected to double by 2050. In addition to emitting pollutants that lower air quality, aviation is recognized as a hard-to-decarbonize sector and accounts for ~3% of global CO2 emissions. Airlines have recently announced commitments to switch to "green" fuels, but as of today 95% of jet fuel is produced from fossil fuels. Why is that?
There is a real and urgent need for better flu prophylaxis and therapeutics. RA Managing Director Laura Tadvalkar writes about why RA is excited to lead a transformative transaction that returns a long-acting antiviral for flu to its original developer Cidara, and RA’s new initiative to help make outlicensing from pharma companies faster and more efficient.
The technological renaissance in covalent inhibitor technology over the past decade is impressive. Relatively recent advances in structure-based drug design have unlocked the tantalizing opportunity to engineer covalency into small molecules. Now, RA Capital has incubated and seeded Hyku Biosciences to unlock histidines, tyrosines, and lysines for covalent modification to greatly expand the druggable proteome.
Our year-end wrap of the site’s most popular articles of 2022 reflects a challenging year for the biotech sector, featuring tumultuous markets and the shifting drug pricing policy landscape. But those pieces also reflect the ingenuity, hopefulness, and opportunity that is inherent in drug discovery and development.
In today’s FutureCast discussion, RA Capital Principal Zach Scheiner, Senior Associate Becca Silberman, and Managing Partner Peter Kolchinsky talk about the past, present and future of depression therapies and why we’re confident that new uses and forms of old molecules, including psychedelics, will, in the next decade, bring relief to many of those among us who suffer from untreatable depression. Hop in the DeLorean with us at 88 miles per hour as we go 'Back to the Future'.
GoodRx, in collaboration with RA Capital, is surveying patients who have used or even just applied to a PAP. GoodRx is a free price comparison resource that helps Americans find the lowest prescription prices at their local pharmacies. We hope the results of this survey will shed light on PAPs’ role in the healthcare ecosystem as well as shed some light on their strengths and weaknesses.
With all the hype around Covid and monkeypox, it’s easy to forget that viruses aren’t the only infectious game in town. Bacteria caused 3 million worldwide deaths in 2019, at a rate at least five times that of the flu. So why does it still take so long to identify & treat a bacterial infection?
Though its program failed in clinical trials, Nektar kicked off an appreciation for what might be possible with a better IL-2. As other companies carry on with programs in part inspired by Nektar’s early data and vision, we explore failure in biotech, ignoring the naysayers, and the value of carrying on when the odds are slim.
Some might consider Trikafta’s gains to be “good enough” for CF patients. But I think we can do better. And that’s why we’re so excited to introduce the world to Sionna.
Covid has flooded a barren vaccine startup landscape with capital. And that has revealed some valuable lessons for investors, company builders, Congress, and the public.
As more established targeted protein degradation companies produce promising data in the clinic, newcomers have been greeted with sustained enthusiasm from the investment community. Here we revisit a few key intellectual and scientific breakthroughs & focus on molecular glues as an exciting new frontier.
The story of Alexander Fleming is a popular one. As it should be - it’s a good story about one of the most important discoveries in medical history, penicillin. But most people only know the first act of the play.
LENZ Therapeutics CEO Eef Schimmelpennink spoke with RApport about how last year’s acquisition of Pfenex by Ligand gave him a chance to seek out a new challenge, the benefits of breaking the mold, and helping 120 million Americans ditch their reading glasses.
Listen in as RA Capital’s TechAtlas Associates convene to discuss recent Covid-19 news. Learn about the emerging Delta variant, new data from Novavax and CureVac, and the potential association between mRNA vaccines and myocarditis.
Interest in life science technologies and tools is accelerating with the advent of CRISPR and other aspects of synthetic biology. The ability to have a capital efficient way to advance these innovations is very attractive and will help drive innovation.
Listen in as RA Capital’s TechAtlas Associates convene to discuss recent Covid-19 news. Learn about the emerging Delta variant, new data from Novavax and CureVac, and the potential association between mRNA vaccines and myocarditis.
