Maybe we have enough biotech companies already
Yesterday, Atlas Venture partner Bruce Booth noted an alarming trend: While more and more money is flowing into private biotech startups, the number of companies cashing first-time checks has steadily fallen since the beginning of last year. That means fewer new companies are getting off the ground.
As Booth points out, that might represent a mere pause in biotech’s years-long boom cycle, or it could just be statistical noise. Or “it could meaningfully reflect a changing sentiment in the long-range prospects of biotech in light of the drug pricing debate and general anti-biopharma political punditry,” he wrote, meaning that Washington’s bluster has finally made that long-foretold harm to innovation a reality.
Each of those explanations could be true, but it’s also possible the issue has more to do with Jamie Dimon than Bernie Sanders. The path for most biotech startups involves going public, and nearly 150 of them have done so since 2017. There are now more than 500 biotechs trading on the Nasdaq. And investors in turn have become increasingly skittish about supporting those companies’ constant need for cash, according to Cowen's regular biotech thermometer, not because of politics but because there’s such a glut of supply.
As Booth points out, that might represent a mere pause in biotech’s years-long boom cycle, or it could just be statistical noise. Or “it could meaningfully reflect a changing sentiment in the long-range prospects of biotech in light of the drug pricing debate and general anti-biopharma political punditry,” he wrote, meaning that Washington’s bluster has finally made that long-foretold harm to innovation a reality.
Each of those explanations could be true, but it’s also possible the issue has more to do with Jamie Dimon than Bernie Sanders. The path for most biotech startups involves going public, and nearly 150 of them have done so since 2017. There are now more than 500 biotechs trading on the Nasdaq. And investors in turn have become increasingly skittish about supporting those companies’ constant need for cash, according to Cowen's regular biotech thermometer, not because of politics but because there’s such a glut of supply.
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