Arjun Murthy

Fresh takes on life sciences
Past stops @Yale and @McKinsey
Boston 🌎

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

@Kazanjy @Kazanjy how do you think about 'no similar tool spend' when you are in a category creation type offering, where no similar tools existed before? My intuition is you focus more on the pain and what is being done manually that could be aided by the new tool.

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

The top 10 immunology drugs generated ~$70 billion in revenue in '23. Some call outs:

1. Humira finally facing competition - there are now 9 biosimilars in the US.

2. Sanofi's Dupixent continued to hit records - new approval and positive phase 3 for COPD

3. J&J's Stelara will face competition in 2025. The drug accounts for 20% of J&J pharma sales.

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

Oncology is the single largest pharma market - here's a look at the 15 biggest oncology drugs by sales in 2023.

Notable that several of the top sellers are facing LOEs soon - Keytruda and Opdivo both in '28

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

Satya Nadella on Bloomberg tonight with the understatement of the century:

When asked if Microsoft will push for governance changes at OpenAI:

"Surprises are bad" and that "This idea that changes happen without being in the loop is not good"

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

💊 2023 Market Map of Life Sciences Partnerships

The 10 largest pharma companies have struck more than 60 partnership deals so far in 2023 📈

Here's a recap of the 3 biggest takeaways:

💉 1. Oncology and Immunology dominated, accounting for almost a third of all partnerships, with Infectious Disease, CNS, and Cardiometabolic rounding out the top 5.

#️⃣ 2. Sanofi was the most active with 9 partnerships, while Pfizer and Novartis were the least active, with 3 and 4 deals each respectively.

💰 3. Merck's $5.5 Billion dollar deal with Daiichi Sankyo last month was the largest partnership of the year so far, with a potential lifetime value of $22 Billion based on sales milestones

To access the spreadsheet:
Comment below and I'll DM you the link

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

Blockbuster drugs come at a price

In most industries, a breakout product is a blessing.

But in life sciences, its a race against time to develop new products to cover when the patent expires

And some are more reliant than others...

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

Q3 Earnings Snapshot: AstraZeneca kept sales growth in the double digits for the 3rd quarter in a row

The GLP-1 deal with China's Ecogene got a lot of buzz, but oncology remains the powerhouse driving growth

Worth noting the solid level of diversification - top 5 products account for only half of total sales

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

@andrewpannu Great analysis. Curious whether the variance is driven by the overall pie in that market getting bigger, or the particular drug getting more share than thought. I'm assuming it's the former...

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

@JohnCendpts Sound strategy IMO - they are too late to catch the current gen of GLP-1s, but they could still be competitive in the next-gen of Orals

The price also seems relatively good value given how hot the space is

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

Vertex missed Q3 estimates, with sales growth cut in half compared to the prior quarter...

...but the company advanced a strong pipeline in acute pain, hematology, and kidney disease that will help it diversify beyond its mainstay Cystic Fibrosis drugs

[Boston Cambridge Biotech Networks @BCBionetwork]

Biogen CEO seeks collaborations to expand pipeline as postpartum depression, Alzheimer’s and ALS drugs launch https://t.co/Uu86egahSt #news #biotech

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

What do Ken Griffin (Citadel) and Eric Schmidt (Google) have in common?

Both donated $10mn each to the UK Biobank, which has longitudinal health data on 500,000 people

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

Pfizer dropped its Q3 results yesterday... and saw Paxlovid sales crash 97% 📉

It's the corporate version of 'long covid' ⚕️

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

Thiel on America: “Companies started since 1990 worth $100B+. 11 are in the US, 6 in China. Zero everywhere else.”

🤯

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

@KristijonasU @RightPageAI 100% agree - teams need to realize the true value of support!

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

There are many AI customer support tools out there, but RightPage (YC S23) is the only one built for *complex* tickets that aren't simple actions. Their data pipeline for their LLM means their bot writes detailed indistinguishable-from-human answers.

https://t.co/cnCgY9jCYT

[Paul Graham @paulg]

How is continued economic growth possible with finite material resources? This is not, as some think, a rhetorical question. It actually has an answer: because the most valuable kinds of economic growth take the form of rearranging resources more cleverly.

[Arjun Murthy @AMurthy100]

780 days - that's long it took Twitter to reach its first 10 million users - something Threads has achieved in just 7 hours, thanks to leveraging Instagram's pre-built distribution