Entering 2023: Life sciences edition

With less time to recover from New Year’s festivities than we might have liked, we found ourselves back online in Q1 of a new year. Many of us even found ourselves back in the office – imagine that. Wherever you logged in, we hope you enjoyed going through all those emails. Hopefully you started with the unreads you watched come in on your last work day but “just didn’t find time for”.

Nothing to feel guilty about – the company Christmas party counts as work and you were right to prioritize it.

Increasing job cuts were a troubling theme of 2022 – over 100 biopharms had major layoffs over the course of the year, peaking in November, as a symptom of a very troubled economy, including rising inflation and interest rates, greatly spurred by the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. This struck the global supply chain, eventually slowing manufacturing and causing shortages for life science companies. War also has a habit of reducing investor appetites. Life science industries in particular were impacted by post-pandemic market correction corresponding to a reduction in demand for Covid-related business. Recruitment firms were among the impacted, noticing and feeling a loss of business due to the drastic reduction in demand for permanent-position recruitment (perm rec). For many firms, the difference in perm rec between 2021 and ‘22 was like day and night.

When the music stops, somebody loses their chair. In the case of economic recessions, the game is virtually always won by the bigger players… with bigger chairs… or at least more chairs of the same size. Startups are the lifeblood of innovation in the life science industries – a new one seems to pop up every time someone has an idea for a new drug or medical device. Provided investors, the first product approval a company receives can well mark the beginning of its ascent to international success. Alternatively, product approval can be followed by selling out – getting acquired by a larger company looking to assimilate the product into their own arsenal. As such, one may have expected more M&As than ultimately happened with the economy’s decline over 2022. Instead, M&As reverted to historical averages at 2020 level with Q4 limping to a close after a transient spike in fall.

On the bright side, struggle has a way of catalyzing innovation, just like Covid saw global interest in messenger RNA (mRNA) technology sky-rocket with German biotech BioNTech’s Comirnaty and US biopharm Moderna’s Spikevax vaccines. This year may see an immense increase in the price of both vaccines, with Moderna considering raising the price of Spikevax by over 400 % – from $ 26 to around $ 120 per dose.

Having finally entered the mainstream after decades of research, mRNA tech is increasingly finding application in other therapeutic areas, such as oncology. Moderna itself has joined forces with US pharma Merck (MSD), applying their mRNA vaccine tech on the cancer front, combining their candidate with Merck’s humanized mouse antibody Keytruda (pembrolizumab). Phase II results showed the combination to be remarkably better at preventing post-surgical melanoma recurrence, reducing risk by 44 % over a one-year period compared to Keytruda alone.

One acquisition which did happen, in – big surprise – Massachusetts, was that of local clinical-stage genomic medicine company LogicBio Therapeutics, mid-November, by fellow American global pharma Alexion Pharmaceuticals. Alexion better be excited: Initially focused on pediatric liver disorders, LogicBio had developed their unique “GeneRide” technology. Unlike other gene therapy platforms, which require exogenous – “artificial” – components, GeneRide can precisely edit genomes by endogenous – “natural” – means. This is big news as studies have correlated traditional gene therapies’ use of these exogenous components to cancer and immune response risks. In other words, Alexion – and, let’s not forget, British-Swedish multinational AstraZeneca, who acquired them for a modest fee of $ 39 billion back in 2021 – now has a new, safer means of tackling cancers as well as genetic diseases in general on a cutting-edge level.

On the topics of nucleic acids and Massachusetts, British big pharma GSK just added over 14’000 m of prime Boston lab space to their site on Cambridge Park Drive dedicated to their RNA and viral therapies research. This development comes a month after their investing $ 170 million upfront in a collaboration with US genetic medicine company Wave Life Sciences based in – you guessed it – Cambridge, Massachusetts. The deal was sweet in its granting GSK exclusive global license to Wave’s preclinical RNA editing program. The focus of the collaboration will be alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a genetic disease impacting the lungs and the liver.

2022 turned out to be a surprisingly promising year for Alzheimer’s (AD). Since 2021’s aducanumab, “Aduhelm”, fiasco involving the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and US multinational biotech Biogen, Swiss multinational healthcare company F Hoffmann-La Roche entered the space, getting their anti-amyloid antibody gantenerumab to Phase III trials by November 2022. Unfortunately, gantenerumab failed to beat placebo. Surprisingly, Biogen turned out to be a bringer of hope, with amyloid protofibril-clearing antibody lecanemab passing a Phase III trial testing cognitive and functional decline. Lecanemab obtained accelerated approval by the FDA on 6 January this year. It’s nice to see Biogen and the FDA’s friendship is fiasco-proof – that’s the good stuff. Furthermore, US multinational pharm Eli Lilly has also made headlines with donanemab, a humanized mouse monoclonal antibody, announcing at the end of November that it had passed its 6-month Phase III outcome trial, reducing brain amyloid plaque levels v baseline by 65,2 %, a figure somewhat more inspiring of confidence than Aduhelm’s 17 %.

Further good news for neurology: At the end of November, Swiss-Polish biopharm Captor Therapeutics signed a drug discovery collaboration with one of Japan’s largest pharmas, Ono Pharmaceutical. Particularly exciting about this collaboration will be its CNS focus, specifically on neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer. Ono already has an Alzheimer drug on the market, “Rivastach”. For Captor’s technology, on the other hand, “Targeted Protein Degradation” (TPD), this will be the chance for it to show its applicability beyond immunology and oncology, its two areas of application thus far.

Geographic atrophy (GA) is a prominent, advanced form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – cause of blindness – afflicting over five million people worldwide. If you’ve heard of GA before, you may have also heard of US global biopharm Apellis Pharmaceuticals, a company headquartered in – you guessed it – Massachusetts, but present here in Switzerland. GA is Apellis’ foremost target and currently has no approved treatments. This, however, may change as of February 26, depending on the FDA’s decision on investigational drug pegcetacoplan.

In October ‘22, Swiss clinical-stage biopharm LimmaTech Biologics found a partner in Australia, with Griffith University in Queensland. Together they’ve been developing vaccines preventing critically unmet diseases caused by antibiotic resistant strains, where LimmaTech acquired exclusive license to a suite of vaccine tech developed by the University’s Institute for Glycomics. Dr Michael Kowarik, LimmaTech’s CSO, commented “Antibiotic resistance and rising rates of gonorrhea infections worldwide demonstrate the need for a gonococcal vaccine that can protect against potentially life-threatening variants. Our collaboration with Griffith University will enable us to develop a much-needed vaccination option to address gonorrhea and to advance other new vaccines for rapidly evolving global challenges.”. Gonorrhea remains one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases globally and still lacks a vaccine.

Another ailment you may have heard of – heart disease: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) didn’t go anywhere in 2022 and there’s a very distinct possibility it will definitely still be killing us throughout 2023. According to the European Heart Network (EHN), reported last month, 60 million EU residents live with CVD. That’s over 13 % of the EU’s population. One notable combatant in the fight against CVD is Irish-American biopharm Amarin Corporation, developer and marketer of Vascepa (icosapent ethyl), an antilipemic (lipid-lowering) agent.

Another antilipemic – one you’re more likely to have heard of before – are statins, which have been prescribed and lowering blood cholesterol since the 70s. Combined Vascepin-statins therapy has been showing success in the United States since approved by the FDA in July 2012. In the European Union, the EMA approved this adjunct approach in January 2021. On 7 December last year, 2021, Switzerland followed suit and Amarin’s foundational product received the all-clear from Swissmedic, this country’s equivalent to the FDA or EMA.

Adjunct Vascepin-statin therapy approved in the European Union, United States and, since December ‘22, Switzerland

As always, but for the first time in 2023, many thanks from all of us at headcount for taking the time to read this blog post. 2022 was tough for many of us and we hope you ended it as well as possible. More importantly, we sincerely wish you a great start to the new year. May 2023 be the year of applying what 2022 taught us – and riddled with new opportunities.

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