In Washington, senators and representatives usually fight for their states’ economic interests. Why then, when it comes to the biopharmaceutical industry that is so important to Massachusetts, are we such an outlier? This article examines the origins of this Massachusetts Paradox, what kinds of biopharma-related policies the state’s voters and politicians should logically support, and proposes a new approach to rallying our neighbors to support those policies. This campaign is rooted in a kind of engaging storytelling that all of us in the biopharma ecosystem, from startup to pharma and from investor to banker, can and should contribute to.

GCEA shows us how to value a medicine not in terms of what you’d pay for the stock but what society should be willing to pay for the product itself. In this article, we perform GCEA for Cidara’s CD388, an anti-flu drug candidate.

When Capstan Therapeutics agreed to be acquired by AbbVie for a record-breaking price of $2.1B upfront, it had just started its Phase 1 study in healthy volunteers, was well-capitalized, and was on a mission to put a range of autoimmune diseases into deep remission and maybe even cure them. Some people will wonder about the significance of this deal and what lessons it may have for their own ventures. We can share our insights. We’ve been on the Capstan journey since the beginning and are incredibly proud of the team and its work. This is a story worth hearing.

Is AI coming for my job? It’s not uncommon to wonder these days. 

What if AI could just read a press release and appreciate the value of a stock at least as well as I think I can? Might not be a big jump from there to AI opening up its own biotech fund. 

But before I ceded my job to ChatGPT, I figured I would at least take it for a test drive by having it analyze a press release from a company I knew well.

Wouldn’t it be better if everyone in our ecosystem were candid with one another?

After all, within companies it’s common to encourage everyone to speak their minds. If you see a problem, call it out; give honest feedback; feedback is a gift; people have a duty to dissent if they disagree with something. So, what stops this corporate if-you-see-something-say-something from going beyond managers and employees? If we normalized candor, we could learn more from one another, cross-pollinate best practices, and correct misunderstandings.

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.

The many fees and expenses associated with running any company are more than just a headache. Particularly for R&D-intensive biotech companies, failing to stay on top of them can significantly saddle a company with unnecessary cash burn. A new video resource at RA Capital's free Gateway platform for boards and biotech leadership features industry leaders sharing their experiences navigating these pesky financial challenges.

A LinkedIn discussion about “crossover” financing rounds deepened my sense that we’re not all saying the same thing when we’re saying the same thing. And that’s a challenge, if not necessarily always a problem, in an industry that’s only becoming more scientifically and financially complex as it matures. Because to understand one another and avoid unnecessary hiccups it helps to have a common language.

Our usual top-down biotech sector metrics showed that 1H24 was… pretty boring (though for us bottom-up folks, individual companies offer plenty of excitement). After the last few years, boring ain’t bad. With expectations of Fed easing interest rates due to waning inflation, the excitement level for the second half of the year has already picked up, but that’s not reflected in the metrics here.

A year ago we published the first “Semper Maior” piece, making the case that biotech was on firm ground and ready for a reboot. We put out the second piece last summer, when it felt like the rebound was underway. Had the year ended in October or even November… well, you know. But here we are after a general market and XBI surge feeling like biotech is now truly recovering from its prolonged downturn. So let’s mine the data, as we have before, to get a sense of what happened in 2023 and what lessons to take with us into 2024.

In today’s FutureCast discussion, RA’s Raj Shah, Jake Simson, Tess Cameron, and Peter Kolchinsky revisit one of our most talked-about articles: Time to Reboot Biotech. Fresh financial analysis and actionable board room advice abound.

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.

Biotech board members and management teams are increasingly asking how their companies can benefit from what RA Capital and others call a “Series I” IPO process (also known as a data-driven or logic-based IPO). Here we’ve compiled common questions and answers.

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.

If the Biden drug plan passes, the United States will be consciously volunteering to put less capital to work in a large industry where we lead the world. No real argument can stand against the fact that less capital means fewer new products for patients.

The way that hospitals benefit from inflated list prices is a common theme across different kinds of drugs dispensed at hospitals and clinics across the country. When drug prices are a Trojan Horse for all kinds of other health care costs, we all lose.

Repatriating the American drug supply is key not just to averting shortages but to restoring and preserving the integrity of generic drugs in America.

Whatever therapy or intervention solves a previously unmet need is inherently novel. So any treatments for COVID-19 that turn out to work will be "novel" in every way that matters.