Occam's Toothbrush

Biotech Operator | Not investment advice

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Pretty surprising that prediction accuracy doesn’t fall at longer time horizons

But plausible data and kudos to @Kalshi for doing the analysis and making it public

[Tarek Mansour @mansourtarek_]

We ran a study on over 2 million markets to evaluate their calibration. To our knowledge, this is the largest replicable study on this topic.

Here are the results: 🧵

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

$MRNA up 150% today and nearly 500% YTD

Market cap is now over 2x that of $BNTX

the controlled experiment in strategy is still ongoing …

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

$MRNA v $BNTX - a controlled experiment in corporate strategy.

- '19: MRNA $6B v BNT $5B; clinical-stage Cos

- '22: MRNA $80B v BNT $40B; MRNA keeps vax wholly-owned ; BNT partners w Pfizer

- Now: MRNA $15B v BNT $25B. MRNA stays tech-focused ; BNT diversifies through BD

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

@bearablylight We are. We are also alarmed by the $2B and 8 years it takes from IND to launch.

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Could be a good thing for the industry?

May help drive interest in the field & innovation in particular. Could contribute to greater generalist investor interest.

$XBI

[Adam Feuerstein ✡️ @adamfeuerstein]

Kalshi comes for biopharma, with prediction markets for clinical trials and FDA approvals https://t.co/ztfiYiuUwJ via @elaineywchen

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Another Fairmount company goes public.

Why change the playbook if it always works — large market + validated target + incremental innovation / differentiation

[Adam Feuerstein ✡️ @adamfeuerstein]

Welcome Avere Therapeutics, basically a new long-acting I&I company launched to make @A_May_MD 's head explode.

Former Akero executive team + Fairmount + reverse merger into $NXTC + $320 million private placement + oral, weekly IL-23 drug from China's Hansoh.

https://t.co/yZEfVHlBc1

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Great article on the declining rates of dementia over time in @TheEconomist

May be attributable to the modifiable factors below. Have to imagine that GLP1 adoption would accelerate this trend.

https://t.co/0J48TLsgZq

[Jonathan Rosenthal @rosenthal_jon]

This week in @TheEconomist I wrote about the incredible progress that we have been making against dementia. Though total numbers are rising (because we are living longer), the actual rate at every age has been coming down sharply for decades. A short 🧵 1/

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Good WSJ article on the rising threat of Chinese biotech including some commentary on YolTech

$BEAM $PRME $CRSP $XBI $BOLD

https://t.co/gbCSdduMIN

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

@zhaoweiasu $BEAM paid for an exclusive license but effectively got a non-exclusive one.

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Have to say I’m surprised that Prime doesn’t owe Beam ANYTHING for AATD … to me the contract language seemed pretty clear (transition mutation rights -> Beam).

But good news for Prime and for patients.

$PRME $BEAM $CRSP $BOLD

https://t.co/jlDL8OBQAG

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

@MartinShkreli Agreed.

No risk-taking mentality in that pipeline or company.

Not the way to develop game changing drugs.

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Interesting read

In some ways $APGE $ABBV Resembles $NVS $RNA deal from late 2025.

Both were >$10B deals with >45% premiums and only one real bidder

[Seedy19 @seedy19tron]

$abbv $apge Merger doc out;

Late Mar - mgmt meets AbbVie + Party A, B, C at AAD
04/07 - CDA w/ AbbVie (no standstill)
05/05 - CDA w/ Party A (no standstill)
05/15 - CDA w/ Party B (no standstill)
05/29 - Party A signals unlikely to participate in a near-term process
06/08 - GS/Jefferies outreach to A, B, C + Party D post $124 from $abbv
06/09 - board reject $abbv offer
Party D declines (portfolio priorities); Party A "considering" bid, needs data room
06/10 - Party B declines (no reason); Party C declines (data-readout timing)
06/12 - Party A tells Jefferies it will not proceed
06/14 - Party D re-approaches → rebuffed (exclusivity in force)
06/17 - $135.11 $abbv offer accepted

Interesting tidbit: $abbv put down a 5pm CST exclusivity ultimatum on 6/12

No bidding war but AtD space remains of interest to BP $kymr $crvs $nktr

You can read the whole background here https://t.co/pww9x9Gtom

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Great news for the genome engineering field if Meek has gotten Genetix to profitability.

Claim is striking but plausible:
- 100 pts treated last year
- $3.2M list price
- 175 FTEs

With typical GTN and evisceration of all R&D spend, very plausible.

$BEAM $PRME $NTLA $CRSP

[Adam Feuerstein ✡️ @adamfeuerstein]

A year after distressed buyout, what’s become of Bluebird Bio? (Besides the new name, Genetix)

Well... a lot, Genetix CEO David Meek told @Jasonmmast in a swaggering interview this week.

Let me summarize Meek's proclamations:

Genetix is profitable and on target to dominate the market for sickle cell gene therapies.

"We’re the market leaders,” he said. “And our lead is just getting bigger," Meek said.

$VRTX $CRSP Casgevy sucks, and the $BEAM effort is lame. “Let’s see if Beam even comes out, right? It’s a ghost right now,” he said.

He offered no proof to back up the claims.

Read more from Jason's interview with David Meek, link below.

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Nobody does earnings like Masa.

Honestly, he had me until the golden goose turned out to be an animatronic machine rather than a literal goose

Either way, made his point about the lack of ‘platform value’ in SoftBank

$SFBY

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

@BiotechObserver @daphnezohar @AnthropicAI It’s a fair point. I’d interpreted this as being ultrarare diseases that don’t make sense for biotech either.

But don’t know for sure.

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

@PeterKolchinsky Has anyone called for a ban on scientific publication?

The concern is about the massive flow of US funds to China which is turbocharging their biotech ecosystem and starving our own

[Jason Kelly @jrkelly]

US patients are source of 70% of the profits in the drug industry (since others counties, like China, don’t have a free market for drugs and instead centrally control drug prices at unsustainably low levels).

This was an OK deal when most of the value of the drug industry also flowed back to the US in the form of keeping the frontier of biotech R&D onshore, US patients getting access to experimental drugs first in clinical trials, and the economic value of the scientific and manufacturing jobs associated with the industry.

That deal has been getting increasingly broken as more of the industry is offshored to China (most recently the R&D portion which is a big national security mistake for a dual-use emerging technology).

Biopharma is effectively an exclusively US domestic market given how drug pricing works. We should be hanging US flags at biotech VC firms and pharma cos like they do at defense-tech cos. I’d expect more and more of the sort of actions you see today from USG until we change the tune in the industry towards onshoring rather than offshoring.

A great next step would be for our industry leaders like @IAmBiotech to support the addition of biotechnology to the COINS Act list of strategic technologies to prevent the offshoring of R&D to low cost scientific labor in China. Believe in our US startup biotech ecosystem and scientists !!

https://t.co/pX7Ym0t1n1

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

Adding complexity and scrutiny on Big Pharma + Chinese Biotech deals will likely stem the flow of VC dollars into Chinese biotechs.

Limits exit opportunities.

Good to see debate on this topic at congress and some consideration of financing massive capabilities build China.

[Drew Armstrong @ArmstrongDrew]

Exclusive: Pfizer + BMS (which have both done major china deals recently) got letters from the House China select committee yesterday:

Ask about China trials, PRC military sites and informed consent in trials:

[Occam's Toothbrush @occams_tooth]

@cremieuxrecueil There may be some merit to this for subpar AAV gene tx when potentially better AAV gene tx are close behind …

For example would you have gotten $SRPT Elevidys for DMD if you’d known $SLDB and $REGN were close behind