EOMESBiotech

MD, Science & biotech, l/s views, No investment advice.

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

Treating and detecting core drivers early? Beautiful research confirms CHIP and MDS develops during 40 years of live

[Caroline Watson @carolinewatson]

How does leukaemia develop? 🩸 How long does it take? ⏳

🌟 Our paper, started back when I was a PhD student in @jrblundell’s lab, is out today in @Nature 🌟

Yearly blood samples from women who developed AML in later life let us trace it back decades 👇
https://t.co/fqyOpc5OKH

[Dave A Ricks @DaveARicks]

Brad I do! Biotech + AI will be powerful to speed candidates forward, increase enrollment speed in RCTs and, maybe the boring but vital part, fix the last mile problems in healthcare. That last part seems most tractable, consumers detest waiting in offices, want to have reliable access to digital advice and diagnostics and health care financing is a consumer crisis. These problems most closely resemble the breakthroughs and productivity gains tech has brought in customer service and fintech - and need more hype not less IMO.

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

this mans wise word should be heard

[Dave A Ricks @DaveARicks]

I think that would be amazing and I think it’s not likely. The map of biology is still largely a blank page and randomized human proof is the long pole in the tent. I am excited about the use of AI in our sector but progress will likely be steady and incremental.

[David Liew @drdavidliew]

BREAKING:
Reports that Novartis still working on IEC-HS investigation after rap-cel CAR-T deaths.
Georg Schett calls lack of details "very sad" & has submitted commentary to @NEJM (with Carl June, CAR-T inventor) to discuss it

https://t.co/Tn2svGi0BP

#ACR26 @RheumNow

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

I have never said that. I just argue about the safety and durability profile we have (see my longer post) - and it appears to be vector/product specific. People tend to over interpret new data for experimental modalities in both ways. But I have seen the 10th post now suggesting this data is a hint of a short durability as a class effect, which is not valid based on the data we have seen so far.

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

You might have seen he was short before

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

Massively short on the upcoming $MRNA RCC readout ? 😆

[Seedy19 @seedy19tron]

@MM3915038575333 @TTRAmyloid @A_May_MD No

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

@DrPaulyDeSantis @bdermanmd Sadly, I feel like you really don’t understand myeloma

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

@bdermanmd @srqstockpicker Vector issues I guess - safety is also worse seen with other products

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

Known data; who dafuq is surprised by this outcome today? $IOVA

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

$IOVA Short; Like in many occasions I agree with Adam. IOVA has a rough competition in both melanoma and NSCLC. TILs are extremely hard to scale - you just need to look to CAR T players. Even a blockbuster MM CAR T from $LEGN does not materialize. In CAR T everyone talks about the only way cell therapy has a future - in vivo engineering. Given this ridiculous squeeze on the neck of massive over valuations in current biotechs, I'm entering another short today.

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

@OnlyContrarian Yes William

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

$IOVA Short; Like in many occasions I agree with Adam. IOVA has a rough competition in both melanoma and NSCLC. TILs are extremely hard to scale - you just need to look to CAR T players. Even a blockbuster MM CAR T from $LEGN does not materialize. In CAR T everyone talks about the only way cell therapy has a future - in vivo engineering. Given this ridiculous squeeze on the neck of massive over valuations in current biotechs, I'm entering another short today.

[Adam May @A_May_MD]

Another glimpse into the historic biotech sector short squeeze that has transpired over the last two months: $IOVA

You may have seen it was up ~40% yesterday, after having rallied relentlessly in the weeks preceding as well. What was the big run yesterday topping off almost 2 months of nonstop squeeze?

$IOVA *finally* press released their revenue guidance update, which they said they'd do late this quarter during their Q2 earnings call in August.

See, in Q2 they'd had better-than-expected revenue numbers come in. $99.3M to be exact. Not a massive beat of expectations, but a beat for sure. Of course, they still had a net loss of $50M that quarter, but a beat's a beat.

Most companies would have just updated their guidance during this quarterly update. $IOVA especially should have been able to do this, since they should know their revenue numbers further in advance than most drug companies do, given that their cell therapies must, uniquely, be ordered FAR in advance of their administration/prescription - unlike nearly every other type of drug.

But, likely hoping to make another separate catalyst out of the update, they waited. Fortunately for them, the mother of all biotech shitco squeezes started shortly thereafter when $MRNA kicked the madness off with their "surprising" melanoma update.

Ignoring the fact that Moderna's supposed success would be an objective, material negative for direct melanoma competitor $IOVA, Iovance rallied along with everything else that the smart money has been shorting in biotech.

So, $IOVA got the earnings beat squeeze, the market-wide biotech shitco squeeze, and then yesterday *another* squeeze on finally giving the guidance update that they should have just given us with the conference call.

...But...was the updated guidance yesterday actually impressive/bullish over what should have been expected?

Q2 revenue was already ~$100M. Their newly updated guidance suggests ~$122M/Q (per midpoint) in revenue over Q3 and Q4...This new guide represents *decreased* QoQ growth on *BOTH* a percentage and absolute basis!

Between Q1 and Q2, revenue grew from $71M to $99M. A $28M, ~40% QoQ increase.

Now, $99.3M to $122M jump would be a ~$23M and ~23% QoQ increase...

So the QoQ growth through the rest of the year moves from ~40% (the datapoint that started the squeeze from $4/share) to ~23%...and that's...bullish news?

Was this update actually bullish over expectations, or were shorts just getting another round of squeeze from momo traders who couldn't even define for you what exactly melanoma is?

Almost certainly the latter. The math simply does not work out for this relatively small (+15%) bump in guidance to have come as a positive surprise to the market. If anything, the update seems negative to me, as a true breakout growth story would NOT involve decreasing QoQ growth like yesterday's new guidance does!

Like, what did people expect? Q2 revenue was ~$100M already and the FY midpoint is now $415 🤣...That's pretty damn close to 100x4 isn't it? 😅

I previously thought there was a chance that $IOVA management was sitting on some super bullish numbers and that was the reason for this bizarre delayed updating of guidance...but, no...this new guidance is actually meaningfully *below* the growth we saw from Q1 to Q2! Not just in percent growth, but in absolute dollars!

Now, it ended up being a pretty genius move by management to play it this way, because as we have seen: The biotech market has been seeing absolutely record breaking squeezing on popular shorts like in the ~2 months since $IOVA had Q2 earnings. Some of these moves have been quite literally without precedent. Great timing for $IOVA to play this game!

The stock has pumped relentlessly while waiting for this highly anticipated update yesterday just because the market has been squeezing. Then, they squeeze another 40% on top of that! All with an update that actually would not have been considered *that* bullish if it had been provided back in August (when every other "normal" company would've updated their guidance with earnings).

Look at that chart! From the August Q2 earnings announcement to today, we have a 275% rally!

A...275% rally...all on....a....15% increase in their guidance midpoint?! 🤣🤣🤣

Even the bulls have to admit, this one has been all momo, leaving fundamentals completely behind.

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

@1976hank Ok

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

@1976hank tell me how you think IOVA can compete in NSCLC landscape

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

Congrats to this boi Cody - If you read his posts during the last years, you could have known this dude is 2 SDs off and in hindsight somehow obvious he would do big. Can be a true role model for any of us here and a reminder, real ballers are around behind many pseudonymous profiles. Keep going Cody!!

[Professor Oak @Prof_Oak_]

Surprise 1: Anthropic acquired a one-person biotech
.
.
.
Surprise 2: that person is me
Surprise 3: I’m here to tell you all about it

Yes, this is what you think it is; after 6 yrs of increasingly loose anonymity: the Professor Oak reveal post

…and yes, it has gotten so boring around here that I’m literally doxxing myself to spice up the timeline

-------
Ok, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cody Tranbarger. I mostly tweet, but occasionally find time to dabble in drug dev & starting/building biotechs. My past lives span the VC, crossover, startup continuum; Prof Oak has been my way of keeping a digital foot in those worlds, despite having my physical feet planted elsewhere.

The past 18 mo, ‘elsewhere’ was Mithril Medicine, a co. I founded to develop bsAbs for LAMA2-CMD & other ECM-related genetic diseases.

Mithril was born out of hands-on building with @MikeNGladstone, @JasonPaulRhodes, @LifeSciVC, & team @atlasventure. Somehow, I made enough half-decent calls along the way (even a broken clock is right twice a day, eh?) to convince them Mithril/I warranted a small seed. While I can hardly rationalize such an outrageously cavalier bet, I’m grateful for it, & I'd partner with Atlas again in a heartbeat.

In typical AV fashion, Mithril’s primordial form was virtual, decentralized, & ultra-lean. This stage tends to be short-lived, but for Mithril, it worked surprisingly well, for surprisingly long, thanks in part to the rapid maturation of the AI tools I used liberally.

Eventually, Mithril became a bit of an experiment itself - to find the upper bound of how far it could scale as a single operator + a bunch of Claude (+ a stellar bench of part-time consultants).

In parallel, I started spending time with @nc_frey, @an1lam, & @CoefficientBio team; and promptly experienced, for the 1st time, AI at the frontier. Soon thereafter, Mithril stopped looking like an experiment, & started looking like a preview of an entirely new operating model.

From that spark came “Pipeline-in-a-Person.” The idea immediately resonated when we shared it here back in April; and it was central to the shared vision that led to Anthropic’s acquisition of Mithril, & my joining the team.

Why join Anthropic? Three reasons.
(1) For Mithril, the programs continue, with more resources & infrastructure behind them, and as much Claude as I can put to work.

(2) For me, the chance to start several more programs, & find out how many one person can actually run in parallel - an almost unprecedented luxury for a curious drug hunter.

(3) For our mission, a path to institutionalize & scale this new way of working, then put it in the hands of all of biopharma, all over the world - which, candidly, I find the most energizing.

Will AI x Bio cure diseases? Unequivocally yes, imo… but not by the route that gets the most airtime. Rather than timeline acceleration & compression, I see orchestration & parallelization as today's low-hanging fruit.

Most drug hunters see a handful of go/no-go calls in a career, & spend entirely too much of the rest trading emails (my inbox can attest).

Give them the bandwidth to run several programs at once, and the time to focus on scientific judgment, and I’m willing to bet they’ll make better calls. And at scale, better calls translate to more drugs, higher hit rates, broader patient impact, & likely, a disease or 10 or 100 cured. I couldn't be more excited to build toward that future @AnthropicAI.

Finally, a heartfelt thank you to BioTwitter/X. The end of anonymity is bittersweet, but if anyone’s earned a proper introduction, you all have.

It’s difficult to overstate how much this app has done for me: a decade of education, plenty of friends, many job opportunities, several mentors, a few investors, even a co-founder (fmr). It was the generosity of this community that inspired me to start posting 6 years ago, after just as many years lurking. I hope I’ve been able to pay it forward, in my own small way.

But, to be clear, Prof Oak isn’t going anywhere. Same beat, same themes, and now, a front-row seat to drug development at the frontier. Stay tuned for dispatches from the trenches; and remember...

Gotta Cure 'Em All

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

Tone has changed $MRNA

[Adam Feuerstein ✡️ @adamfeuerstein]

I spoke with Moderna $MRNA CEO Stéphane Bancel about intismeran and what's next for the cancer vaccine and the biotech he runs.

"We know the clinical impact in the Phase 3 study is real and big, so we need to go and be aggressive. We need to explore the biology. There will be some risk, because it’s not going to work everywhere."

Read the Q&A:

https://t.co/Y4JcWzAwlC #ESMO26

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

@AppleHelix many reasons for IVIG, hypogammaglobulinemiaa after CART or suspected CIDP (likely this one). Infection not primarily. Weird story. Why high dose chemo?

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

Been asking the same for some time. Trust me, this question is NOT broadly discussed in investor circles. Given it’s not only one but 9 repeated vaccinations with mRNA-LNPs with - and there is no doubt - immune activation properties (check papers about IFN activity after LNP). I don’t say the neoantigen have no effect - I just question how much is this immune stimulus contributing. And I was quite surprised this discussion took until ESMO to start publicly. Even if @adamfeuerstein is suggesting otherwise (why?)

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

@OverboughtWatch Generally OS is super hard to crack with the 2L landscape in advanced stage melanoma, like you said. That’s why RFS is the primary here. Agree this going to be an uphill battle with payers but particularly bcs there is neoadjuvant as an easy option.

[Pete @drpetetobin]

Spectacular and deserves a standing ovation

[EOMESBiotech @TCRAnalyst]

@GIMedOnc GvHD?? (non-HLA matching)