Biotech VC may not be out of the woods just yet

Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, biotech venture capital had a historic first quarter, as Atlas Venture partner Bruce Booth neatly summarized in a post on his blog yesterday. He noted a record $5.5 billion went into biotech companies last quarter — and he's optimistic that number will only take a small hit over the months to come.

That could be true. But those numbers likely don’t reflect the full impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, STAT's Kate Sheridan reports. Deals take time to negotiate and close. The impacts of a major event — like a pandemic — may lag months behind.

That doesn’t necessarily mean every company will see lean times ahead. As Booth correctly notes, investors have committed a lot of fresh money to biotech VC firms, and that money has to go somewhere. But understanding the pandemic's impact on private markets may be difficult to do with any accuracy for a while.

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Pfizer thinks it has a treatment for Covid-19

Pfizer is about four months away from human trials with a potential treatment for the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, working about three months ahead of the company’s self-imposed timeline.

As STAT’s Matthew Herper reports, Pfizer has singled out an investigational drug that targets an enzyme key to viral replication. The company screened scores of potential treatments against the coronavirus and picked out the most potent compound in its library.

In the meantime, Pfizer is pressing ahead with partner BioNTech on an mRNA vaccine slated to enter clinical trials this month. The company is also testing whether Jakafi, a pill approved to treat arthritis, can help patients hospitalized with Covid-19. It’s all part of an effort to, as Pfizer top scientist Mikael Dolsten put it, “expel the virus from the soil of America and back to the empire of bats.” (The coronavirus originated in other species, with bats as a likely culprit.)

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For the unpopular drug industry, the pandemic presents a ‘real enemy’

In recent years, there's been a rare biparisan consensus that the pharmaceutical industry should be treated with something ranging between skepticism and contempt. Now, with the world in need of treatments in a deadly pandemic, George Yancopoulos, chief scientific officer at Regeneron, says it's time to put aside “petty differences” over politics and drug pricing and “show that humanity can rise."

Speaking to STAT’s Matthew Herper, Yancopoulos was equal parts Matt Damon in “The Martian” and Bill Pullman in “Independence Day” on the topic of how science — and in particular, drug development — has the opportunity to galvanize society against Covid-19, which he called the "real enemy."

“We’re just like bacteria in an Erlenmeyer flask,” he said. “The only thing that keeps us from dying from our own disease and pollution is our God-given ability to think our way out of that flask.”

Watch the full conversation.

J.P. Morgan might be sparse next year

Yesterday, we asked readers (in this newsletter and on Twitter) whether, given what they know right now about the coronavirus pandemic, they would attend next year’s J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. And the results suggest a downbeat 2021 for biotech’s biggest annual meeting.

About 49% of respondents said they’d absolutely be skipping JPM next year, while 34% said they weren’t sure whether they’d go. Just 17% said they’d definitely be there.

This all comes with the caveat with no one’s certain just what things will look like come January. It’s unlikely there will be a widely available vaccine by then, but it’s possible some of the therapies in development will prove useful. At the same time, if the coronavirus proves to be cyclical, packing hallways and cafes at the height of flu season might sound dangerous enough to keep regular attendees at home — or persuade J.P. Morgan to cancel the meeting outright.