Adam Brass

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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Wow, I think we're really witnessing the Apple-ification of Illumina 👏👏👏 Jacob has really been focusing his messaging on offering customers a full NGS vertical and this new MiSeq seems to embody that vision very well. There's virtually no mention of $/Gb in the announcement (folks are scrambling to try and decode that) - tag line is "Fastest, simplest. For every lab." Steve Jobs famously envisioned the Macintosh as an "appliance" - a computer for everyone vs its predecessor Apple 2 which was a computer for hobbyists (we're now called geeks). This MiSeq evolution follows that Apple evolution pretty well. Obviously not a consumer product, but MiSeq has been radically improved in terms of ease of use that may create some elasticity in this stale market: - Room temperature simple-to-load cartridge: 3 steps/20 minutes. - Much faster run times (4X faster than old MiSeq) - Seamless integration of DRAGEN (local) and BaseSpace (cloud) Technically there's a radical technology change underling the new instrument: its hardware is based not on the old MiSeq design, but on the flowcell-on-CMOS design of the iSeq. That means that (I think, not an engineer 🤣 oh wait am an engineer 🤣) ALL the optics and ALL the fluidics are in the consumable. This flips the economics of the old MiSeq on it's head as the instrument becomes super cheap - it's just a box with a computer and a display - and the consumable gets more complex as it contains the CMOS imager chip that gets thrown out each run. BUT the utilization of MiSeq has never been that high - sits in the corner a lot - so maybe this is fine 🤔 Two misses in my opinion: - No sign yet of any simplification of the product line. Do we need MiniSeq and the iSeq 100? Can't the new instrument replace both of these plus the old Miseq?! Maybe one low cost/high margin instrument platform with a range of consumables of varying capacity? - WTF with the nightmare new name that I've avoided saying up until this point 🤯🤯🤯 MiSeq i100 🤯🤯🤯 You took too old names MiSeq and iSeq 100 and jammed them together and kept the iSeq 100 in the product line?! Why not call this something new and simple like, I dunno, Macintosh 🤣, and position it as replacing the old MiSeq, MiniSeq, and iSeq 100. This would distinguish the new instrument from the MiSeq which will have to be around forever for the DX version. Grrrr. Anyway, if a dumb name is the worst thing here, that's a big win for Illumina, congrats to all involved. Nice first major product launch under Jacob that delivers on differentiating beyond price. Could have made a bigger splash compltely reimagining the product line - but maybe he's more Tim Cook than Steve Jobs - ain't nothing wrong with that! 👏👏👏

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🚀 Join the HCS Pipeline Early Adopters Program! 🚀 We’re excited to announce a special Early Adopters Deal for those interested in getting hands-on with the HCS Pipeline—the modular platform designed to streamline high-content screening (HCS) data analysis. If you're tired of waiting days for data scientists or struggling with rigid, time-consuming workflows, HCS Pipeline is here to help you take control of your analysis. 🎯 What You Get as an Early Adopter: 1️⃣ Personalized Pipeline Setup: I’ll work with you one-on-one to design and build custom analysis pipelines that fit your specific research needs. 2️⃣ Custom Module Development: Have a unique data challenge? I’ll develop custom modules tailored to your HCS data analysis problems, giving you complete flexibility. 3️⃣ Premium Support: As an early adopter, you’ll receive dedicated, hands-on support to make sure you get the most out of the platform. 🧬 Why Choose HCS Pipeline? - Cutting-edge data analysis: Reduce the time to results from 48 hours to just 2 hours. - 10x more cost-effective than hiring a data scientist. - Fully customizable & modular: Build, modify, and expand your analysis workflows with ease. Ready to be part of the next big step in HCS data analysis? Get in touch during the early adoption phase and unlock exclusive benefits. https://lnkd.in/d_smiuFc 💬 Interested in learning more? Drop me a message, or comment below, and let’s chat about how we can streamline your HCS analysis. - - - #HCS #DataAnalysis #EarlyAdopter #Bioinformatics #HighContentScreening #DataScience #Software

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Happy Tuesday all! Check out this new ACS Chem Bio article by Lynch IV et al., "Quantitative Measurement of Rate of Targeted Protein Degradation." Abstract: Targeted protein degradation (TPD) is a therapeutic approach that leverages the cell’s natural machinery to degrade targets instead of inhibiting them. This is accomplished by using mono- or bifunctional small molecules designed to induce the proximity of target proteins and E3 ubiquitin ligases, leading to ubiquitination and subsequent proteasome-dependent degradation of the target. One of the most significant attributes of the TPD approach is its proposed catalytic mechanism of action, which permits substoichiometric exposure to achieve the desired pharmacological effects. However, apart from one in vitro study, studies supporting the catalytic mechanism of degraders are largely inferred based on potency. A more comprehensive understanding of the degrader catalytic mechanism of action can help aspects of compound development. To address this knowledge gap, we developed a workflow for the quantitative measurement of the catalytic rate of degraders in cells. Comparing a selective and promiscuous BTK degrader, we demonstrate that both compounds function as efficient catalysts of BTK degradation, with the promiscuous degrader exhibiting faster rates due to its ability to induce more favorable ternary complexes. By leveraging computational modeling, we show that the catalytic rate is highly dynamic as the target is depleted from cells. Further investigation of the promiscuous kinase degrader revealed that the catalytic rate is a better predictor of optimal degrader activity toward a specific target compared to degradation magnitude alone. In summary, we present a versatile method for mapping the catalytic activity of any degrader for TPD in cells. #drugdiscovery #tpd #protac #lytac #ubiquitin #scientificresearch

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In biotech, we all start with the same goal—pushing boundaries, making discoveries. But too often, I've seen brilliant teams bogged down by building custom triggers, webhooks, python scripts—just to get data flowing smoothly. This is especially true for sample centric workflows in LIMS. You are not just managing experiments; you're also managing infrastructure. And sometimes, it’s for something as simple as a Slack notification when a sample gets processed. Your heart’s in the science, in that next big breakthrough. So why spend precious time on setting up and maintaining orchestration for every little alert? That’s where Scispot’s alt-LIMS and our Zapier partnership come in. With a few clicks, you’ve got your notifications and triggers set up to work with over 6000+ apps. This is made possible using Scispot's Labsheets - connected data dictionary for your samples and experiments. One lab recently set-up their complete sample chain of custody in Scispot. Post that, they configured Slack notification for all the QC steps throughout their sample journey. If you are building something custom around notifications and triggers for your sample workload, feel free to reach out! https://lnkd.in/gcQ38ZUr

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🔬 My quick expert take on the newly priced ~$500M market cap of liquid biopsy pioneer, GRAIL Firstly, it's important to note that the market cap here is quite arbitrary, as it is linked to the amount of cash Illumina left in GRAIL’s bank account for the spin-off. What really matters is the implied firm value that the market is attributing to GRAIL. In this case, it assigns a negative $400M firm value to GRAIL ($500M market cap minus $900M in net cash). This implies that the market believes the management will simply burn through the cash without meaningful results, destroying economic value in the process. This situation is not uncommon in biotech companies where the lead program has allegedly failed but the cash is trapped and management refrains from distributing it to maintain their jobs and people's hope. This outcome aligns with my previous GRAIL valuation article 📈, which has garnered over 4,000 unique reads by the way - and appear as the top search on Google 😅. All other comments I made in my article about potential pivot, M&A catalysts, and strategic changes still apply: https://lnkd.in/emnGF4AJ Meanwhile, liquid biopsy company Natera now boasts a $13.3B market cap, up 74% year-to-date. And next-generation technologies are on the horizon with greater business models 🌟😊 Mursla Bio #LiquidBiopsy #GRAIL #Cancer #Diagnostics #NextGen #Mursla #Natera

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Here's what Tempus moved up their quarterly earnings release for. I'm not familiar with Ambry Genetics, but it's a major deal for Tempus since Ambry does nearly half as much revenue as Tempus and, unlike Tempus. appears to be profitable. Tempus will pay for Ambry by issuing a lot of stock, raising a lot of debt, and putting some cash in. As for Tempus' earnings itself, I need to review the full quarterly filing- so expect that review with the quarterly recap later this month.

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Whether you recover from #bio2024, or held down the fort in the #lab: If you are working in small molecule drug discovery, the #SanDiego event reemphasized the importance of #AI for your field. If you are planning to engage with an external partner for your drug design and chemistry, consider how the partner or CRO is integrating AI into their #DMTA cycles. Some of these players drive their AI integration via acquisitions or partnering with a third party AI outfit, often resulting in a patchworked landscape, which compromises the sought-after efficiency gains. The most efficient way to leverage this groundbreaking technology - a great overview is provided in the recent Chemical Engineering News article below - is by have natively grown AI/ML expertise work hand-in-hand with your synthetic and medicinal chemists. Something Evotec's Molecular Architects, headed by Christophe Boldron, embody in many of the integrated drug discovery programs we design and execute for our partners and clients. #bayarea #chemistry #researchneverstops #ML #medchem #drugdesign #drugdiscovery #idd

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Illumina CFO Ankur Dhingra interviewed by Vijay Kumar at the Evercore health conference yesterday. Some really interesting snippets: MRD is a big potential growth driver: "What we'll really drive is more towards what are the emerging applications beyond what we have today that could drive higher sequencing growth. Some of the emerging applications we could talk about is MRD...If you take our next three year view, we're anticipating some of the MRD volumes will become accretive...that would be a good addition within the sequencing volumes." AI-driven drug development using perturb-seq for training data: "The other exciting areas where we see a lot of sequencing-related development is on the single cell side...if you think about how pharma can utilize Perturb-Seq from an early drug discovery perspective, is an entirely new exciting area if you take a three to four year view of how that could be incremental sequencing activity from that space. So we do have meaningfully large new sequencing applications emerging over the next several years." Population sequencing - 1M is the new 50K: "The discussions are also happening around 1 million patients, which used to be 50,000 patients in the past. We're saying, okay, five year program, we want to do 1 million patients. How do we do that, right? So good positive evolution. It remains an attractive business." Still incredible capacity growth in NGS: doubled in the last 3 years: "We've placed 528 Xs as of end of Q3. We still have about 1,700 6000s active in the market, give or take, not precise. But the point there is that's roughly double the capacity in high-throughput sequencing over a three year period since launch. If you pare that back with saying, sequencing has been growing between 25% to 40%, I'm taking that range, but either ways, talk about actual sequencing activity doubling over three years as well."

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If you are in #immunology or #drugdiscovery and need to accelerate your discovery pipeline with specific targets we have a new product for you! #singledomainantibodies #vhh #library #phagedisplay

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Pretty upbeat Illumina earnings call. Two positive things jumped out to me (not an investment analyst 🤪): NovaSeq X average pull-through hit $1M (money printer go brrr!) and margins are up (poor margins are long time analyst complaint). Illumina also announced an entry level NovaSeq X - a cheaper, single flow cell version of the X plus. At first I figured that was just a product strategy to increase the X's addressable market, but then this exchange happened, making me think this is all about fighting off Element Biosciences: Question by Puneet Souda/Leerink: "So just trying to understand the mid-throughput market, is cost per gigabase a lever that you can use to lower cost in the near term to compete more effectively [with Element😳] in that market?" "Or do you think the new NovaSeq X [single flow cell, coming out Q4] with pricing that is actually moving lower will address maybe a potential gap there with a competitor [Element😳] in the mid-throughput segment?" Answer by Jacob: "Yeah, I think both [are strategies we need to fight off Element😳]. With the new [cheaper] NovaSeq X you can run the 25B flow cell and get the full power of the pricing we have for the NovaSeqX plus [$2/Gb, thanks Element😳]. " "But I would also say on the mid-throughput we certainly have an opportunity to use our pricing [i.e. we've told sales to cut prices to whatever to win deals against Element😳] if we need to." "And while I certainly believe there are a lot of great members of the teams of our competitors [Element😳 is taking all our great people], I think sometimes we also get caught up in very too narrow definitions of claims." "I agree we could do a better job in communicating this [i.e. Element😳 is winning the PR battle] and we will spend more time next week also providing more insight on that."

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AltruBio Raises $225M in Series B to Advance Ulcerative Colitis Candidate San Francisco-based biotech AltruBio has raised $225 million in an oversubscribed Series B round, the company announced Tuesday. The financing will help the company advance its ulcerative colitis candidate into mid-stage clinical trials. AltruBio’s candidate ALTB-268 is a first-in-class immune checkpoint enhancer (ICE) PSGL agonist antibody that is currently in a Phase IIa exploratory biomarker study in patients with biologic refractory ulcerative colitis (UC). The readout for the Phase IIa’s primary endpoint of clinical remission per modified Mayo score is expected sometime in the first half of next year. The Series B funds will support the trial and a Phase IIb study, which will have a primary endpoint of clinical remission in advanced therapy experienced and treatment naïve patients with moderate to severe UC. The biotech expects a readout in the second half of 2026. The Phase I data for ALTB-268 was encouraging as AltruBio reported positive topline data in August 2023. While the company initially gave no hard data points, the data supported the candidate’s progression into Phase II studies. “With this substantial investment, we are one step closer to bringing our first-in-class, novel immune checkpoint enhancer, ALTB-268, through our ongoing Phase IIa exploratory biomarker study and initiating an additional Phase IIb study while paving the way for potential indication expansion beyond ulcerative colitis,” AltruBio CEO Judy Chou said in a statement. https://lnkd.in/earF9qf7

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One of the many weird things about the Illumina acquisition of GRAIL is that Illumina closed the deal in defiance of the EU, but also tried to pacify the EU by promising to operate GRAIL as an independent entity 🤪 So GRAIL became the Schrödinger's cat of companies: simultaneously an acquired company fully dependent on Illumina AND a company fully independent of Illumina. But now, using the new SEC filings for the spin-off, we get to see inside the box that contained the cat...I mean GRAIL...and it's super interesting! As usual, the most interesting place to look is at executive compensation (while the cat's away...🤣). First things first, who's job was it to set compensation? Form 10: "GRAIL did not have a compensation committee (or any other committee serving a similar function). Decisions as to the compensation of those who served as our executive officers for that fiscal year required agreement with Illumina (including its compensation committee) on a mutually acceptable and workable approach." OK, so seems GRAIL had no board, and so no comp committee. But it was "independent" from Illumina so seems they hacked together an arrangement (Schrödinger again?) where they kind of/sort of borrowed/consulted Illumina's comp committee. Alas this was the very same comp committee that earned Icahn's fury by DOUBLING Illumina's CEO salary to $27M just as ILMN became one of the worst performing stocks in the S&P 500. Soooo, how did Illumina's comp committee treat the GRAIL execs? Form 10 comp table below. What a coincidence 😳 the GRAIL exec team ALSO had its compensation DOUBLED from 2022 to 2023. Stockholder value performance must have been amazing! Let's check. Oops, by Illumina's own accounting, the value of GRAIL halved from $8B to $4B in this period 🤯 And there's more! GRAIL no longer had its own stock so the "Stock Awards" in the table below were actually paid out in cash 🤯🤯. I'm no lawyer (🤣) but seems like more fuel to the "violating fiduciary duties" litigation fire burning in Delaware 🤯🤯🤯. (Oops, can't believe I forgot there was also this comp committee gift to an unidentified exec: "The award has an aggregate potential value of up to $78.0 million and expires, to the extent unvested, in August 2030." Linked to Galleri sales performance and so will not pay out at all.)

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Cormorant Asset Management, LP is very pleased to be supporting Altrubio’s Series B financing. I’m quoted in this WSJ article by Brian Gormley highlighting recent advances by biotech companies like AltruBio Inc. and our former portfolio company Prometheus (acquired last year by Merck for $10.8B), bringing novel targets and approaches to the treatment of inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as ulcerative colitis. Altrubio is in the vanguard of efforts to exploit checkpoint inhibition in T-cells to restore proper balance of the adaptive immune system in inflammatory disorders. Blockade of checkpoint inhibition to stimulate anti-tumor T-cell immunity has revolutionized the treatment of cancer. Altrubio is now taking an inverse approach leveraging the novel immune checkpoint inhibitor PSGL-1 to combat T-cell-driven inflammation in ulcerative colitis and other autoimmune/inflammatory disorders.

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Planning is worth more than any plan. The actual act of planning is where the true value resides. Our team recently spent an entire week in Colorado at Enveda Biosciences HQ, making plans for various scenarios on both the upside as well as the downside. At one point, someone made the observation that seldom does anything pan out the way we planned, so why do we take time to create a plan? That’s when I realized that the product of all this work is not the plan, but rather the process of planning, which allows us to: —get on the same page as everyone else  —get specific about our needs and constraints —enunciate our different perspectives —consider potential outcomes and developments that were never before stated out loud The future is always meaningfully more complex than what any of us can predict. Lacking a crystal ball, we are unlikely to precisely state what is going to happen. But the act of planning brings at least three benefits: 1. Camaraderie 2. Getting all of your assumptions in order 3. Beginning to think about many various possibilities and opening your mind to the range of outcomes and your range of responses The result is that your team is consciously and subconsciously much better prepared than if you didn't have the planning session. Don’t value the plan. Value the process inherent in creating it! #entrepreneurship #mentalmodel

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Picture this: you're in your molecular diagnostic lab, racing against the clock to produce accurate results. With Grenova's tip cleaning technology, you can say hello to efficiency and goodbye to contamination worries. Imagine the confidence you'll feel knowing that both the CDC and top molecular diagnostic labs trust Grenova's technology to effectively remove any traces of contamination from your precious samples. That's right, Grenova doesn't just meet standards, it sets them! Introducing Grenova's revolutionary tip cleaning products! Get ready to embark on a journey of innovation and sustainability that will transform the way you think about lab practices forever. Are you tired of the traditional, wasteful methods of disposing of single-use plastic pipette tips? Say goodbye to that endless cycle of waste because Grenova is here to shake things up! But wait, there's more! Let's talk about sustainability. As scientists, we have a responsibility to protect our planet, and Grenova is leading the charge. By reusing pipette tips instead of constantly throwing them away, you'll be reducing plastic waste and doing your part for the environment. It's time to challenge the status quo and embrace a greener future. Now, you might be wondering about contamination. Rest assured, Grenova has you covered. Their cutting-edge technology ensures that genomic material remains pristine, free from any lingering contaminants. So go ahead, dive into your experiments with confidence, knowing that Grenova has your back every step of the way. So, are you ready to join the revolution? Say yes to efficiency, sustainability, and innovation with Grenova's tip cleaning products. It's time to think differently, act boldly, and make a positive impact on the world. Get ready to elevate your lab game to new heights with Grenova! DMark Biosciences Grenova #tipcleaning.

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As you may have noticed I keep gnawing on this issue of how GRAIL makes its Illumina gift of $1B stretch to the EU-mandated 2.5 years when it is burning $0.8B/year. Maybe special GRAIL math? 🤣 Alas new terrible thought just occurred to me: I've been assuming Illumina's duty to fund GRAIL was complete after the $1B was put in. But the EU's focus is and always has been making sure ILLUMINA does no harm to GRAIL; to them Ilumina is the predator and GRAIL the innocent prey. (I'm starting to think it's the other way around, provisional book title "The GRAIL Grift: How the world's smartest investors took the world's smartest company for a $15B ride" 😂) Anywho if GRAIL continues be the incredible cash incinerator it has been since its founding (talk about a core competency!) the EU may well blame Illumina and demand it put MORE money into GRAIL to keep it alive for 2.5 years. 🤯 Let's do some ALEX math: 0.8B x 2.5 = 2B. $1B already in means Illumina could still be on the hook for ANOTHER $1B 🤯 🤯 So, what IS Illumina's exposure here? There's an agreement between Illumina and EU on the GRAIL divestment plan and it surely covers this eventuality. BUT BUT BUT it's a SECRET! Illumina has never released this agreement, only said that it needs to fund GRAIL for 2.5 years. This is a material amount (even though it's just another billion🙄), I don't understand how Illumina has gotten away with not revealing this information to investors given these numbers simply don't add up in the way they claim 🤯🤯🤯

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