Sajith Wickramasekara

Investment, therapeutic viability, and next-gen. technologies... That's what the cell therapy field needs. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jason C. Foster of Ori Biotech recently on their podcast to talk all things cell therapy, the enabling technologies that support this modality, and the need for more investment. What did we touch on (and link to full podcast below)? Investors needing to see a return when investing in cell therapies. Need to bring manufacturing costs down to expand access. Next-gen. tools to create better, more robust therapies. Purpose-built therapies require purpose-built tools! Our consulting practice, how we help our clients, and how we view the field of advanced therapies. We take a differentiated approach to tracking, following, and mapping key trends across advanced therapies to bring novel, business-impacting insights to our clients. Want to discuss any of the above? Where the field of cell therapies are going? What it means for your own development pipeline? Reach out and let me know what you think in the comments! #celltherapy #venturecapital #consulting https://lnkd.in/g7SH9FAU

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When investors think your gene therapy isn't good enough... That's what Lexeo is feeling right now on LX2006 for cardiomyopathy associated with Friedreich's Ataxia. Their Ph1/2 trial saw 50% of patients (8 total in the trial) experience a reduction of 10% in left ventricular mass index. There are only a handful of companies developing therapies for Friedreich's Ataxia, let alone the heart-related components of this rare disease. While Lexeo was optimistic about the data and taking it to discuss a future pivotal study with regulators, the market was not, knocking the stock down at present ~25%. The public markets are brutal with earlier stage companies. Depending on capital needs, it can be a bit easier to not be public when you're early in development. Regardless, another piece of positive news for AAV as it slowly comes out of its winter. Lines up with our beginning of the year predictions below! https://lnkd.in/drRreSCd

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The life science panelists at Asian American Pioneer Medal Symposium are inspiring the audience with great insights 1. Randy Schekman: study of how the 23k gene inside a cell to communicate across the cells leads to manufacturing of insulin that impact millions of lives. Relying on large gene data available to innovate new algorithm for AI. 2. Helen Blau: Discovery of drugs to stimulate the stem cell leads to muscle Rebuild. Using AI to predict how different protein combining. 3. Ziyang Zhang: how training in chemistry allows him to study life science from new angle, and then new discovery. 4. Liquin Luo: recent Computation progress allows more hypothesis to be studies than experimental method alone. Computation neuroscience is hot! 5. J. Jean Cui: Traditional clinical trial is no longer always working, major huddle is the precise modeling, thus, new approaches are needed to speedup in validating the targets, and bring lab to in-person use much faster. #AAPM #LifeScience #DrugDiscovery #Tech4Innovators

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The popular image of how to startup is a VERY bad fit for biotech. 🧬🚀 The usual markers of success - bringing in a mountain of cash and growing the team FAST - are actually really good ways to kill a promising biotech concept. 📉 Unfortunately in our current down cycle, we’re seeing lots of examples of this… 💻 Many of the most celebrated startups have been in SaaS and social. These startups are born with virtually no technical risk, minimal operating expenses and a very much unproven market opportunity. Proof of concept comes from acquiring customers and/or users. Once the product has been validated, money is poured onto the team in a race to reach the required scale for profitability. 🪞 Most biotech startups are the mirror opposite of this! 🔬 Biotechs are defined by serious technical risk and shockingly expensive development cycles. Even small experiments can easily require thousands of dollars worth of equipment and specialty chemicals - and not many biotech ideas can be prototyped in a garage by a couple of ambitious novices. 🚙 📈 However, biotech startups often have essentially ZERO market risk. A cure for cancer or a natural, no-calorie sweetener are both examples of biotech concepts with obvious and massive commercial upside. 🌿 The existential goal of a biotech startup is NOT to build a minimum viable product or to demonstrate product market fit but to show that the product can be MADE at all. “Minimum viable product” can be an especially misleading concept, as many biotechs build in highly regulated industries where you get ONE chance to roll out a highly-polished product that achieves every commercial requirement. 💊 You can’t float an MVP pharmaceutical that “kinda” works… 🔬 Instead, biotech startups need to be built around lean, capital efficient and ruthlessly product-focused R&D campaigns that are intensely impatient to get the tech fully WORKING. 🧬 You need to learn FAST in an early stage biotech startup but paradoxically this can be best accomplished by small, focused, intimate teams. Large, multi-layered teams and lots of cutting edge equipment creates complexity and process that suppresses the flashes of unexpected insight that drive cutting edge science. 🏭 A lean early operation will also save equity for the often VERY expensive industry veterans and facilities that will be required to secure regulatory approval, manufacturing scale and commercial launch of complex regulated products. 📈📉 We’ve seen many biotechs in recent years take on too much investment, hire too many people and buy too much equipment and facilities too early - undermining their valuation before their technical product had even been developed. 🧬 If there’s one silver lining in our current down cycle, perhaps this short term austerity will drive greater long term ROI and a better-known playbook of how to best build our future bioeconomy. #bioengineering #molecularfarming #syntheticbiology #future #foodtech #agtech

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