John Carroll

There may be a sol­id chunk of ex­ec­u­tives in the End­points 100 who feel that bet­ter times are ahead for the biotech in­dus­try in 2024, but they’re still out­num­bered by doubters and the un­de­cid­ed. This H2 snap­shot of the opin­ions of 100+ biotech ex­ecs — the large ma­jor­i­ty of CEOs — found many are still re­cruit­ing new work­ers, but on­ly when ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary. The over­all tone re­mains dis­tinct­ly cau­tious in the wake of the post-pan­dem­ic plunge. Most CEOs — 70 re­s…

Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing is stak­ing out a new home base in Asia, re­cruit­ing a long­time McK­in­sey vet — and a col­league to Flag­ship CEO Noubar Afeyan — to start work­ing on a fresh set of strate­gic deals in the re­gion for its port­fo­lio of biotechs. The move to tap An­dré An­don­ian for the role of Sin­ga­pore chair comes af­ter a move in­to Lon­don ear­li­er in the year un­der­scored Flag­ship’s am­bi­tions out­side the US.

Weight loss drugs were her­ald­ed as one of the biggest in­no­va­tions in bio­phar­ma in 2023, as the GLP-1 con­tenders swelled in­to megablock­busters. But for one small biotech look­ing to make it big in the busi­ness of shed­ding pounds, this year marks the end of the line on a long and wind­ing trail that led to biotech Boot Hill. Gele­sis, which was backed by PureTech, qui­et­ly filed for Chap­ter 7 bank­rupt­cy liq­ui­da­tion mid-week, weeks af­ter PureTech gave up on a plan to bring the s…

As the head of John­son & John­son’s on­col­o­gy R&D, Pe­ter Lebowitz’s port­fo­lio ran the sci­en­tif­ic gamut, from dis­cov­ery through de­vel­op­ment and on to the big com­bos and post-ap­proval stud­ies that grow ma­jor drug fran­chis­es in the can­cer are­na. The sheer scope of his ca­reer, run­ning more than 11 years as on­col­o­gy chief, put him in the dri­ver’s seat for a range of big drugs like Darza­lex, a fast-grow­ing mul­ti­ple myelo­ma block­buster which un­der­pins the en­tire com…

Well over a decade ago, I was look­ing over my read­er­ship num­bers and de­cid­ed I need­ed to fig­ure out why we had such a loy­al group of biotech sub­scribers in the UK for the pub I was ed­i­tor of at the time. Well be­fore I launched End­points News, I knew that the UK and Eu­rope as a whole would play a ma­jor role in any glob­al biotech pub­li­ca­tion. But I just wasn’t quite sure how it all worked. We start­ed End­points with Eu­rope and Lon­don in mind, and we’ve dou­bled down in the l…

The biotech IPO mar­ket crashed hard last year, but we’re see­ing the win­dow creak open in a steady up­ward trend in 2023 that bodes for bet­ter times — though it’s a long, long way from a boom. Chris Doko­ma­ji­lar at Deal­For­ma is back crunch­ing the num­bers, and we’ll start with signs that biotechs are brush­ing the dust off their S-1s and go­ing back to the mar­ket in search of cash to grow their busi­ness­es.

Ed­i­tor’s note: With some big sup­port from biotech en­tre­pre­neur Bill Haney and Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, long­time can­cer drug re­searcher Kris­ten Hege has raised sub­stan­tial sup­port for a new ef­fort to en­cour­age the re­cruit­ment of women sci­en­tists in­to the Penn lab of Carl June and Bruce Levine. She’s been hik­ing trails along the West Coast for months now, telling her sto­ry about the #trek­for­to­mor­row and the key play­ers in­volved in an im­por­tant chap­ter of CAR-T his­to…

No two biotech VC groups are ex­act­ly the same. Each has its own spe­cial­ty; each has its ideas about as­sets and plat­forms. And you can cer­tain­ly place the ex­pe­ri­enced crew at Medicxi in the as­set wing — with a spe­cial set of re­la­tion­ships with the top sci­en­tists in their own Eu­ro­pean sphere of in­flu­ence in the start­up world. And now they have a new $400 mil­lion fund to keep go­ing in ex­act­ly the same di­rec­tion.

Kris­ten Hege’s cam­paign to raise $500,000 to en­cour­age the re­cruit­ment of women sci­en­tists in­to the Penn lab of Bruce Levine and Carl June is gain­ing some re­al mo­men­tum as the new­ly re­tired R&D ex­ec­u­tive makes her way along the Pa­cif­ic Crest Trail. Bill Haney, the doc­u­men­tar­i­an and biotech ex­ec who helms two biotechs — Drag­on­fly and Sky­hawk — has con­tributed $100,000 to the fundrais­er, match­ing the six-fig­ure sum that Bris­tol My­ers pro­vid­ed ear­li­er.

Paul Bion­di has hatched a new de­vel­op­ment deal at Flag­ship Pi­o­neer­ing, and this one comes wrapped with a $100 mil­lion cash bow ar­riv­ing on the same day their dis­cov­ery team is con­duct­ing an of­fi­cial rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny for new of­fice and lab space in Cam­bridge, MA. Pfiz­er and Flag­ship are each chip­ping in $50 mil­lion of cash on the joint ef­fort, which will in­volve spring­board­ing up to 10 drug pro­grams off the R&D plat­forms of Flag­ship’s port­fo­lio biotechs…