The "winter" strategy of pharmaceutical companies, layoffs are not happy, and he has to collect rent...

The general trend is irreversible, and the global biotechnology track continues to cool down

Financing events and the amount of financing have declined.

For the windward track and enterprises, this is an opportunity to take off, but for those players who suddenly "passed", "overwintering" has become a big problem.

It is difficult to change from extravagance to frugality.

The easiest way is to lay off employees, and foreign media even set up a "layoff tracker" to keep an eye on the layoffs of foreign pharmaceutical companies

Among them, there are many well-known pharmaceutical companies such as Novartis and Biogen, and many companies that have already listed products are also reducing their expenses, hoping that the money in their accounts can last longer

Of course, in addition to layoffs, there are other "winter" strategies.

Biogen wants to be a "charter wife"

Biogen may be one of the most in-depth pharmaceutical companies in the world.

Regeneron and Genentech, which were established at the same time, may become emerging giants or field leaders.

There have also been successes during this period.

However, they still suffered from Alzheimer's disease

Aducanumab's ups and downs of "pharmacist" is like a big drama.

As a result, Biogen did not believe in evil, and continued to dig into the horns, increasing the dose to restart the clinical practice, finally getting the approval of the FDA, putting the drug on the market, and being "taught to be a man" by the market.

In March of this year, Biogen issued a layoff notice, planning to lay off more than 1,000 people in order to achieve the plan of "saving 500 million US dollars a year"

Before the people were laid off, the next money-saving plan came out - subletting the office

In its wealthy early years, Biogen bought a large number of offices and research sites in Massachusetts, which were vacated as staff and programs dwindled

Biogen plans to lease a total of 260,000 square feet of office space, including an entire office building opposite its headquarters and two floors of another office building
.

Their spokesperson remains optimistic, saying it will optimize our footprint, reduce the space we occupy, and experiment with new hybrid office models
.

It is hoped that the rent collection will help Biogen survive the cold winter and successfully develop the next generation of new drugs
.
It is worth mentioning that Biogen will continue to drill into the horns of Alzheimer's disease in the future.
One of the focuses of drug development is still Alzheimer's disease drugs, and new drugs based on the β-amyloid hypothesis.

.

I wish them success
.

It's not a merger, it's a merger

The names Bone Therapeutics and Medsenic are about to become history, although not many people know them, to be replaced by a new company, BioSenic, formed after the two companies merged
.

The merger is based on complementary technologies and similar pipelines
.

Bone has a unique allogeneic cell therapy product ALLOB®, which is said to be a promising direction, but Bone did not take the usual path, instead of making efforts in the field of oncology, it entered the field of orthopedics
.

ALLOB® is an allogeneic cell drug derived from bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells from healthy adult donors and produced through a proprietary scalable GMP process.
In preclinical studies, ALLOB® can transform delayed healing fractures.
The healing time in the model has been cut by more than half
.

In 2020, Shenzhen Prigen Bio and Guangzhou Lingsheng Medical jointly signed a licensing agreement with Bone Therapeutics to acquire the rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize the product in the Asia-Pacific region
.

At that time, Bone was in the limelight, but as a result, the cold snap hit, and the drug was not on the market, so the company could not hold on
.

Also in March of this year, Bone announced a plan to lay off 1/4 of its employees to save cash flow and cut all early projects to focus on ALLOB®
.

Medsenic is a Biotech company that focuses on autoimmune diseases.
It focuses on precise compounding, and only uses arsenic trioxide to develop new drugs
.

Source: Medsenic official website (Original in French, translated page used here)

On August 10, 2022, the two companies jointly announced that they would be reorganizing
.

According to the press release, integrating the two companies will significantly reduce development risk and expand Bone's therapeutic portfolio of existing therapies into a broader range of inflammatory and orthopedic indications
.

Both companies are currently conducting mid-to-late clinical trials in lupus erythematosus, chronic graft-versus-host disease, tibial fractures and other indications, and the integration will generate synergies in financial, operational and other aspects
.

Such a merger can't help but remind people of Astra and Zericon back then
.

In 1999, the two companies faced the problem of patent cliffs at the same time.
After some entanglements, they finally merged and established AstraZeneca.
This is the literal translation of the English name.
The more convenient official Chinese name is - AstraZeneca
.

Layoffs with or without money

Absci is an AI protein design company whose goal is to use synthetic biology to develop technologies that revolutionize protein production and biomanufacturing – namely, the production of proteins (including the full-length antibody insulin, etc.
) from E.
coli
.

It is said that this company should not appear on the "winter" list, because AI pharmaceuticals is one of the few directions that can attract investors' interest
.

Absci should not be short of money
.

In 2020, Absci received an investment of US$65 million; in March 2021, Absci received a cross-investment of US$125 million, and the IPO went public in the same year, raising more than US$100 million again; in January this year, Absci signed a cooperation agreement with Merck & Co.
Unknown, but the total deal value reached $610 million
.

Despite the bulging purse, Absci decided to lay off staff and reorganize, probably because of the fear of the future after seeing the stock price falling all the way
.

Source: Snowball

Absci CEO Sean McClain said in an open letter that the macroeconomic situation in the past few months has prompted the company to conduct a comprehensive business analysis.
Through layoffs, the company's R&D and operational activities can be simplified and focused on better research and development of the next generation of drugs
.

It is reported that the number of layoffs at Absci is about 40.
By the end of last year, Absci had only 200 employees, and the ratio of layoffs was as high as 1/5
.

Epilogue

In the foreseeable next few years, "how to survive the winter" will still be one of the main problems faced by many biotech companies.
There have also been rumors that Chinese star Biotech companies have fallen into "selling themselves", or have taken out the production capacity that was originally intended to be reserved for PD-1.
Do a part-time job and get in touch with the CDMO business
.

This is a reshuffle, and there will definitely be pharmaceutical companies eliminated due to R&D strategies, business strategies, or bad luck
.

But we still hope that every pharmaceutical company with ideals and feelings can survive the cold winter and live well
.

References:

https://endpts.
com/amid-massive-restructuring-biogen-looks-to-reduce-physical-presence-in-boston/

The self-rescue road of a Biotech company is worth learning from Chinese counterparts

https://endpts.
com/merck-revs-up-dealmaking-engine-ahead-of-jpm22-inking-collaborations-with-ai-protein-design-player-absci/

Official websites of pharmaceutical companies

Other public information