In February, a team of scientists achieved a long-held scientific goal — creating a bespoke CRISPR editing therapy to treat a single patient with a unique genetic mutation. “Baby KJ” got his own custom treatment only six months after he was born. Now, Rebecca Ahrens-Nicklas, a pediatrician and gene therapy scientist at CHOP, and Kiran Musunuru, a UPenn gene editing scientist, have a plan to replicate that success. They’re joining Post-Hoc Live to talk about what’s next.
The obesity wars just got spicier. Today, a month after Pfizer said it would buy Metsera, Novo Nordisk swooped in with its own bid for the cardiometabolic drug developer. Metsera says Novo’s offer is “superior.” Pfizer says it’s breaking their terms. We’ll tell you what comes next on Post-Hoc Live with BMO Capital Markets Head of Healthcare Research Evan Seigerman.
Don’t look now, but there are signs of life in the biotech market. The XBI has been ticking up. There were 22 M&A deals in Q3, according to John Carroll’s analysis with DealForma, and deal values are already close to the totals from all of 2024. Is it a mirage, or is the worst really over? And how much will we jinx things by saying it out loud? John and Tim Opler, Managing Director at Stifel's Global Healthcare Group, will join the show to break it all down.
Vijay Pande left Andreessen Horowitz this summer after 11 years as a life sciences investor. Now, he’s building a new firm focused on AI. He joins Post-Hoc Live to take the 10,000-foot view of AI in biotech and Silicon Valley: what do investors get right and wrong about biotech? What are the business models for AI in biopharma? Which moonshot project will stick? We’ll continue the conversation next week at Endpoints AI Day. Sign up for the virtual program here: https://events.endpoints.news/aiday2025
On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it had cut a deal with Pfizer on drug pricing and tariffs, and said it’ll launch a government website called TrumpRx where people can purchase cheaper drugs. But there are a lot of lingering questions: How big might Medicaid discounts be? What role will insurance play in the direct-to-consumer website? How are negotiations going with other drugmakers? Join us to recap all this and more from a busy week in Washington.
What would it take for US biotech to match the speed and cost of China? Former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, who now works as an investor and board member, will talk about how the US can play defense against China's surging biotech startup ecosystem by moving faster and smarter, and if we're making steps toward doing so, or moving backward.
There are hundreds of digital health tools out there claiming they can do everything from manage diabetes to treat depression. But unlike drugs or devices, these tools don’t have to prove they work before they go on the market. Caroline Pearson, executive director at the Peterson Health Technology Institute, is working to fill that gap by evaluating how good some of these tools actually are. Her team is about to release a new report on virtual solutions for opioid use disorder, so she’s joining our health tech team on Post-Hoc Live to talk through what they found — and why their approach matters.
Will the XBI ever go up again? Today, we’re posing the intentionally provocative — but revealing — to Cantor’s Josh Schimmer, who has a new analysis out on the index. He’s joining Post-Hoc Live to tell us why, after years of flat numbers, things might be better than they seem.
Each year, the Endpoints newsroom places bets on the 11 private biotech companies that we think are the most promising, the most cutting-edge — and would leave the biggest crater behind if things go belly-up. Wednesday on Post-Hoc Live, we’ll share a behind-the-scenes look at how we pick the Endpoints 11, tease what types of companies we focused on this year, and look back at what’s happened to the 66 startups we’ve had on the list so far. And we’ll see you on September 18, when we unveil this year’s list in Boston. Reserve your spot here: https://events.endpoints.news/eleven25
John Maraganore and Clive Meanwell are teaming up again. The two biotech luminaries are coming out of stealth today as co-CEOs of Corsera Health, and have plans to create a two-RNAi drug for cardiovascular disease prevention. They’re joining Post-Hoc Live today to talk about why they’re betting their own money on the venture, their approach to starting companies, and what they think is coming next for the industry.
mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccines were a signature accomplishment under the first Trump administration. But now, RFK Jr. is in charge at HHS, and he’s cutting contracts with mRNA vaccine makers. We’re joined today by Brett Giroir, the assistant secretary for health at HHS under the first Trump administration, to talk about the impact of MAHA’s vaccine agenda — and what the changes mean for the future of mRNA and public health.
After three weeks of corporate earnings reports, we’ve got a roundup of news and analysis taking in all of the biotech and pharma companies that gave updates. We’ll dig into what big pharma companies are saying about the Trump administration’s tariff, pricing and regulatory moves, how companies are talking about China and what we learned about closely watched results from a few key companies like Lilly and Novo, a pain drug failure and how big pharma is positioning itself for its patent cliff.
Earlier this month, Curie.Bio CEO Zach Weinberg joined Post-Hoc Live to give his take on why he thinks investors should stay away from Chinese biotechs. Today, we’re joined by Cui Cui, the head of Asia healthcare research at Jefferies, to get her perspective on the China biotech boom, and why US pharma companies keep turning to China for their deals (and not to US startups).
In the last two weeks, Sarepta has been threatened by the FDA with having its drug pulled, refused to do so, then capitulated, and then won a reversal by the regulator. We'll talk with R.W. Baird analyst Brian Skorney, who has followed the company's ups and downs for years, and what this latest twist tells us about the company's future, how this FDA is operating, and the power of patient and political pressure.
Things don’t look good for Sarepta. After reports of a third patient death on Thursday — this one in a clinical trial — which wasn’t disclosed by the company in its corporate update, an HHS official told Endpoints that the FDA would ask the company to stop shipping its Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment Elevidys. Stock is down. Leadership is under fire for not being transparent about patient deaths. Where does the company, and the gene therapy industry, go from here?
Are drugs in space for real this time? Varda Space Industries, which just announced they had raised $137 million to start industrializing bio-processing in low-earth orbit, certainly thinks so. Endpoints Executive Editor Drew Armstrong and Senior Science Correspondent Ryan Cross are more skeptical — so Varda’s Chief Science Officer Adrian Radocea is joining Post-Hoc Live to try and convince them that it’s not just hype. They’ll talk about microgravity chemistry, experiments in orbit, and what Varda plans to do with its new influx of cash.
Biopharma companies are increasingly turning to China to find new molecules, and looking to Chinese companies for licensing deals. Some investors are leaning in — but others, like Curie.Bio CEO Zach Weinberg, think they should stay away.This week, Weinberg joins Post-Hoc Live to help us to take stock of the landscape. Be sure to check out our coverage before you tune in: https://endpoints.news/us-investors-divided-on-chinas-biotech-rise/
It’s a busy week in Washington. RFK Jr. faced the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health. The newly reconstructed ACIP will meet for the first time. And Susan Monarez will go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee for her confirmation hearing to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We’ll go live after the final ACIP votes on Thursday, June 26 to unpack what we learned about the new direction of the committee and discuss what comes next for US vaccination policy.
We’re coming to you live from Boston, where Endpoints reporters have spent the past few days at BIO 2025 talking with industry leaders. The mood in the industry has been bleak — how is that playing out on the ground?
Today, Drew Armstrong will be joined by senior biopharma correspondent Andrew Dunn and Abhi Mahajan, a machine learning expert who writes about the intersection of ML and biology at Owl Posting. They'll talk about how AI is evolving, what it’ll mean if (or when) it improves past our ability to understand it, and how that will affect drug development.
