Don’t look now, but biotech has fully recovered
As of yesterday, the XBI biotech index has not only reversed last month’s slump but reached the full-year high it set in April. And that’s despite the fact that drug pricing rhetoric has hardly subsided, and next year’s presidential election remains as unpredictable as ever.
One potential (and potentially simplistic) explanation: Drugs have been working lately. The likes of Karuna Therapeutics, Myovant, Constellation Pharmaceuticals, and NextCure have all had positive data in recent weeks. And while some of the individual stock reactions might not age well, the cumulative effect has perhaps reminded generalists that there is quite often a lot of money to be made in biotech.
Novartis' agreeing to pay about $10 billion for The Medicines Company didn’t hurt, and then there’s the suddenly expeditious FDA. As BioPharma Dive’s Ned Pagliarulo pointed out, the last five accelerated FDA approvals have been particularly accelerated, arriving between two and five months ahead of schedule.
Feel free to screenshot this and make fun of it three weeks from now, when a tweet, a clinical disaster, or an international incident sends biotech into a meltdown. But at least for the moment, the industry’s worst fears about 2019 are looking unfounded.
One potential (and potentially simplistic) explanation: Drugs have been working lately. The likes of Karuna Therapeutics, Myovant, Constellation Pharmaceuticals, and NextCure have all had positive data in recent weeks. And while some of the individual stock reactions might not age well, the cumulative effect has perhaps reminded generalists that there is quite often a lot of money to be made in biotech.
Novartis' agreeing to pay about $10 billion for The Medicines Company didn’t hurt, and then there’s the suddenly expeditious FDA. As BioPharma Dive’s Ned Pagliarulo pointed out, the last five accelerated FDA approvals have been particularly accelerated, arriving between two and five months ahead of schedule.
Feel free to screenshot this and make fun of it three weeks from now, when a tweet, a clinical disaster, or an international incident sends biotech into a meltdown. But at least for the moment, the industry’s worst fears about 2019 are looking unfounded.
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