A Japanese Telecom Giant Bets $1 Billion On Pharma

Investors bet big on AI for health diagnostics, CRISPR patent battle in Europe and other interesting reads for the weekend.

Look at the differences between the parties in new Kaiser Family Foundation poll out this morning:

  • Large majorities of Democrats and independents want President Trump and Republicans to work to fix the Affordable Care Act now that repeal has failed.

  • Overall, that's the verdict of roughly seven out of 10 Americans.

  • But six out of 10 Republicans, and Trump supporters want them to keep working on repeal.

Why it matters: It's hard to dismiss what your own voters want — which is why it's tough to see how Republicans avoid the temptation to expand a bipartisan ACA stabilization bill this fall into yet another repeal exercise.

MilliporeSigma, a subsidiary of pharmaceutical giant Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany, has become a new major player in the complicated European patent battles over CRISPR.

The European Patent Office (EPO) on 27 July signaled that it intends to grant a patent to MilliporeSigma, which operates in the United States and Canada, for the use of CRISPR to splice genetic information into eukaryotic cells. Just such a “knock-in” strategy made headlines in a controversial experiment that corrected a disease-causing gene in a human embryo. The MilliporeSigma claims explicitly state that “the method does not comprise a process for modifying the germ line genetic identity of a human being.”

International data shows that despite making up 4.4 percent of the global population, the US gobbles up a disproportionate amount of the world’s opioid supply; about 30 percent of the total. And Americans use almost all of the entire world supply of certain opioids, including a full 99 percent of the world’s hydrocodone supply.

Also, it's so much easier to get an opioid prescription in the US than in Europe or Japan. The American insurers are quick to cover opioids for pain but the Japanese and European insurers are far more hesitant.

RoivantSciences, helmed by 32-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy, has raised a monster $1.1 billion in private financing from the SoftBank Vision Fund and other investors. 

Roivant and its federation of biopharma companies focused on developing drugs in specific disease spaces is attempting a very new form of pharmaceutical R&D. Essentially, the company takes existing treatments that fell by the wayside at other companies for one reason or another and then attempts to get them a regulatory green light. The first major data from some of Roivant's member companies are due out soon.

A Silicon Valley Bank analysis last month found that 44 venture-backed deals raised $2.2 billion between 2015 and the first half of 2017 for diagnostics/tools (Dx/Tools) companies that use AI/Machine Learning as part of their underlying technology.

SVB segmented Dx/Tools into three subsectors: Dx Tests (yes/no test results), Dx/Tools Analytics (actionable data analytics to help direct treatment), and R&D Tools (research equipment and services for biopharma and academia).

Medical schools are now choosing to focus more on communication and ethics, as opposed to rote memorization, as the wealth of biological data being made available to patients and physicians gradually transforms clinical medicine.

A little more than eight months into 2017 and the FDA is on pace to break its record for abbreviated new drug application — or ANDA — approvals from last year. According to the latest version of the activities report of the generic drug program, FDA has approved 633 generic drugs in FY 2017, which compares with a total of 651 approvals in FY 2016.

A new study by Harvard University and University of Vermont researchers suggests that just may be the case. In the study, authors created an algorithm which “looked at roughly 44,000 Instagram photos posted by 166 study participants — 71 of whom were diagnosed with depression in the past. 

Analyzing factors such as hue, the use of filters and the presence of people, researchers were able to determine what they call ‘depression markers. Those markers may be attributes such the hue of a picture (darker colors may be more associated with depressed users). And, according to the research team, their method was able to accurately suss out depression in 70% of study participants. A regular doctor’s success rate? Just 42%.

A treatment to stop the progression of the most common type of diabetes in children and young adults has shown promising results in its first clinical trial. Injections of MonoPeptide halted the decline in patients’ own production of insulin. 

A global shortage of the Hepatitis B vaccine because of supply issues at Merck and GSK is leading to rationing in the UK. The problem is likely to continue until early 2018.