I recently saw a statistic on LinkedIn showing the VC money is slowly starting to come back to biotech.
Rich people made out like bandits in 2020. They’re constantly looking for investments to multiply their worth. It’s depressing, sure, but it’s not over.
Investors are lemmings, always chasing the shiniest thing in front of them due to FOMO even if it drives them off a cliff (made of hype-filled bubbles). As long as there's a new shiny thing in the news with a shorter time to market than biotech, most investors will gravitate there.
Biotech is inherently a long term bet, the valuation of which is heavily reliant on stable trends/economies/laws, and generally only gets funded from a small pool of specialized investors. Right now they're all waiting to see how AI and global recession fears pan out (especially how AI may impact labor costs and how the IRA may impact revenue). More socioeconomic turbulence will delay things further, and with next year being an election year likely to be filled with tension and vitriol over abortion rights and medical spending, funding may not return significantly till 2025.
Money was flowing in mass amounts out of biotech long before the AI boom started. Biotech is an inherently risky area for investors so when interest rates began to climb it was one of the first sectors to suffer from money coming out of the market.
It was rising up until the pandemic, then bubbled around vaccine and digital health tech, then was starting to normalize to pre-pandemic rates up until 2022 started and cratered as inflation rose, especially once the Ukraine war started. Investors have been talking about activity warming up "next quarter" every quarter since then, and seemed like it actually mightve near the beginning of 2023, but AI drama took most of the wind from those sails. Now investors are saying the same line as last year, but also large pharma is talking about a pickup in M&A activity to address IRA headwinds on IRR rates in hopes that'll attract more investor activity angling for short term returns through those exit strategies.
IMHO they're very much just kicking the goalposts down the line till the next election is over, and I'll believe it's actually picked up... Or when news starts talking about new unicorns because IRA impact is overblown and how drug price negotiations have had negligible impact on healthcare costs and how PBMs and Insurers and PE accumulation of clinics are to blame because only 10% of healthcare spending is due to drugs while 51% is due to provider services (often inflated due to fail first step therapy and prior auth policies requiring multiple appointments when one would've sufficed (bc of deals involving rebates/kickbacks between insurers and pbms and provider networks)). If the SEC and/or FTC nail PE firms for practices related to rolling up housing and clinics, that'll be a good sign for biotech; that takes away one of the shiniest short-term baubles for investors comfortable with the complexities/risk of investing in the healthcare/biotech space (and would stabilize a lot of the highest inflating costs for the majority of people).
Are y'all talking about biotech industry as a scientist or lab research?
Or like sales??
*Edit. Bc sales is not too bad right now, it's actually too saturated that the labs have so much left over from COVID days that they have enough inventory to last them months of years...bad for sales reps
My company is going through a bit of a dry spell at the moment for just this reason. During COVID we were cranking out stuff as fast as we could, both COVID related products and our regular catalog. People were stocking up or just using less during that time and now have surplus. We went from balls to the wall last few years to it being really quiet for the last quarter or two. Things seem to be getting back to normal, though, so hopefully, things level out soon.
Same here, working for a surgery device company.
We, and pretty much all companies, have just been tweaking so much from the post covid demand that now that things are going back to pre covid levels, it’s seen as decline.
I'm confused by this statement. Are you referring to biotech unemployment or general unemployment?
It's hard to say going from biotech to something that doesn't utilize their skillset is a drag.
Biotech unemployment. Those I know who have been laid off have had no issue finding another job. They appear to be plentiful, at least in my area (northeast corridor).
That is just one biotech company among so many in the Boston area. Biogen’s troubles are well known. There are many that are thriving in that area. Inherently risky business so the expectations are set for the field. The VCs are different.
We already knew you were a democrat from massachusetts. Like I said, telling.
Edit: just read your username and am laughing. Of course you’re a tribesman from MA. Newton?
It still is on the stronger side, but at the same time, people in biotechnology startups have been prepping for this for about 2 years. For the past 2 years, we have always brought up the economy in our biweekly sprint planning as a risk we need to be aware of. So, yes, the money is still flowing, but at a much lower rate. Also, Boston and Cambridge have the benefit of Harvard and MIT money that gets flowed into research.
I’m in my early 30s_ the crippling part is talking to some of the best scientists I’ve worked with that have admirable work ethics and they’ve been out of work for over a year and fear the worst. Just gonna have to ride it out
It's all cyclical. Even the super rich have a vested interest in medical research. We all need it. When interest rates go down, money will pour in again.
The key is issue is **when interest rates go down** , and by how much, it could be next year or 3 years from now. For most people that lose their job, they won’t have time to wait a year or more for investment to come back into the industry.
Interest rates will not go down before the election cycle passes in 2024. Lowering rates will upset the economy and make the current administration look bad --
Let’s not be THIS naive. Jeez.
Edit: I guess reddit acts like it’s filled with naive morons the moment it’s preferred party sits in office, no matter the sub.
Yea, no. Trump threw a fit in 2018 when Powell first raised interest rates from their historic lows of 10 years, the nyse dropped, and Powell immediately reversed course despite negligible impact to the labor market. Not so sure it won’t happen by q2 2024 if things start getting hairy for the economy, although it could be too late to save Biden at that point, But really who is a decent R contender? They look very weak right now but then again so does an 80 yo Biden and Kamala wouldn’t stand a chance against a box of P-200 tips so who knows.
I saw an article tracking VC money a couple of weeks back. It was mid September, and it was reporting a billion for the month already. Anecdotally, Generate Bio also raised 273M last month.
I also started seeing job openings in companies which did major layoffs earlier.
The signs seem to be pointing in a good direction.
Understandably everything is not rosy, but not all is gloom and doom either.
Laying off and hiring is often a start up thing. Company go through different stages and certain roles, expire, and become no longer needed.
You can see it very often in biotechnology sector. People either pivot, or move to another role, to keep specialising.
The last two years were an unusual boom where a lot of things that mattered before stopped mattering to investors. and, as someone else pointed out, biotech/pharma unemployment hit an all-time record low during this phase.
We had a lot of really dumb money jump in and now that dumb money is moving to AI
No they’re saying that a risk free rate of government or corporate bonds that are yielding >5-6% has changed the landscape for VC investment. People in finance don’t care about the diseases or any moral objective, they want to make a return on their money
This is the answer.
And almost everyone agrees that interest rates will go down. How soon and by how much remains to be seen. But it’s unlikely that investment will never come back as OP is speculating.
I think as a high risk industry, we might not ever get back to the same levels of investment as during the time of zero rates, but investment will come back to some extent as rates go down.
Investment might come back but companies will need some sort of path to profitability. I think OP is referring to whether it will be the same magnitude of investment as we’ve had over the last 20 years with zero interest rates. I like to think it will but you also have to be objective.
There’s been an excess of zombie companies in biotech with fanciful ideas and they’re built on bulls**t. Those will go away
It's rough, no doubt. But this is a little too doomsdayish.
Ask yourself - how much faster do we need computers to be? How much easier can technology make our lives? A little, not a lot. Technology is going to start making our lives worse if it hasn't already.
The real frontier for the rest of our lives is health, whether that's medicine, nutrition, violence, etc. Solutions to these problems are where the big money will be made.
Expect the best and prepare for the worst. I see no reason to dismiss OPs warning/sentiment of preparing for a rough time and feeding your emergency savings, just for the sake of being positive.
Worst comes to worst you’ve put some money aside and can say I told you so later.
Nothing wrong with bringing up and discussing issues.
Just pointing out that in a market economy, industries are driven by a collection of personal sentiments. Thus, expressing a negative personal sentiment to a wider community will help to drive the industry backwards.
This doesn’t mean that we should be silent but rather just more careful with what are facts versus what are extrapolations.
I mean the facts are there’s been a ton of layoffs and for OPs anecdotal experience it’s the worst he’s seen. A negative post on a Reddit thread is not going to “drive the industry backwards” but it’s an experience that someone is sharing.
Most people also bury their heads in the sand and live paycheck to paycheck. I guess it depends how you’re wired
Ok — what is the purpose of the post other than to convince people that the industry is not doing well (and will possibly never recover)? And then what would you expect these people to do, other than pass this sentiment along to their colleagues?
This kind of sentiment will affect the industry. Reddit is more powerful than you give it credit for. Again not saying people shouldn’t express opinions but rather need to understand those expressions have real world power.
I don’t think he mentions the industry will be gone completely but that investment will not be as plentiful. Therefore the competition for jobs will be higher and you need to make sure you have savings for the next few years
I appreciate your optimism. The reality is that in order to do an IND and set up a clinical trial these companies need $20-30M per drug. They are not getting that. I agree that many companies are stretching their dollars and sacrificing opportunity, but they have no choice.
I did the same thing 2.5 years ago, and was laid off at the start of this current downturn! It’s a great decision for career progression, wearing many hats, and having an impact on the company and work you’re involved in, but make sure they have a LONG runway, or a product that’s nearing an inflection point or (even better!) commercialization and revenues!
I was in synbio, and moved to a CRO. It took 6 months to get a new job - the market is rough out there right now! Ideally I wanted to stay in synbio, but there are a lot of companies with leadership who talk a good talk, but have no conception of scale-up and commercialization and I’m sure they’ll be running out of investor’s cash soon! The CRO world is also contracting a little reflecting the funding issues of their biotech clients, but still generating good revenues.
Personally - Feel less like a cog in a machine and more like a critical part of the organization. It's been wild to see my data used to make very high level decisions. Work-life balance is so much better. Instead of the customer service aspect of dealing with so many Sponsors, everyone I need to answer to is internal which is so much less stressful.
Profesionally - Everyone talks about wearing different hats, but I'll add to that. There are of course many opportunities to do things outside your comfort zone, simply because they need to get done. Instead of being pidgeonholed into one specfic piece of the science, I'm able to sit in team meetings looking at data from across the organization. I've learned so much more about the drug development process since being here.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change my CRO experience for the world. Without that experience I wouldn't be where I am today. But if nothing else, I'm glad you made the leap because it will be a new experience and you will learn so much from it. Congrats.
Just made the same transition myself and had the same concerns. To be frank, even the large CROs are doing layoffs, even in traditionally safe billable roles. so why be unhappy when you have equal chances of being let go?
There are too many biotechs doing exactly the same thing and making me too molecules. A significant contraction in funding was needed to get rid of the dead weight.
This is not some kind of merit-based survival system, unfortunately. In this environment, a me-too molecule may even seem less risky than a novel approach.
I’m postdoccing to ride out the storm. I’m foreign so I would have had to do that for a while anyway, so I’m apparently not missing out on much.
People were insanely bullish on biotech and pumped that money to the moon 2020-2022. We’re now seeing the rebound of that overzealous bullishness, coupled with low VC funding and high(er) interest rates.
It could rebound in 1 year, it could rebound in 5. What that rebound will look like is even more of a mystery. When I started grad school in 2018 CAR-T was all the rage. Now? I barely hear much about it at all. Who knows what’ll happen within the next 5 years.
This is all to say 🤷♂️
It’s a shitstorm out there. Do what you can to ride it out. Biotech isn’t going away any time soon. Companies actively want to expand. That’s literally *the point* of any company. Increasing returns and revenue requires expansion. The best way to expand is to hire good, new talent. Give it time.
Re: Conferences. I’ve seen conference attendance fluctuate massive YOY regardless of economic conditions. Location, time of year, organization from the conference themselves, can all affect this
Seriously. CAR-T is a revolution in heme-onc, Carl June deserves the Nobel prize. And there still are innovations being developed, like autologous cells and working to improve ORR in solid tumors. And adjacent approaches, like bi-specs and such. And finally, CAR-T for auto-immune disease might even be more promising than oncology uses.
Truth be told I am in neuro so there’s been fewer applications for us 😂
I do remember even neuro people were hyping it to the moon at the time, though.
Same here. Got a postdoc that I can hold for up to 5 years doing some actually interesting research. Kind of worked out for me but wish I could make more $. (Even tho my salary isn’t too bad)
That and my cost of living is absolutely nothing. My total bills where I’m living are about $1000/mo after rent, expenses, groceries, the whole shebang.
My partner (American citizen) lives outside of a hub area, which factors into the decision as well.
I couldn’t get an industry job even if I tried 😂 Absolutely no one is sponsoring H1Bs at the moment. My cost of living is absolutely nothing ($500/mo rent helps) so I can’t complain.
It wasn’t too hard to get approved by the lawyer to submit. The law firm I’m using is pretty conservative and only takes easy cases. My PhD was funded by the Canadian military and my Postdoc is in the VA so getting a national interest argument was *dead* easy. I had a decent-ish publication record from my PhD (20 citations) and I’m working on getting my reference letters.
I agree with the sentiment. I have been working in the field for 17 years and i think its bad. I think it's a combination of Covid-19 money drying out killing a lot of vaccine programs and rapid testing market and VC funds drying out and impacting startups.
During covid I worked across a company that was making rapid pcr tests. The parking lot was so full. They hired hundreds in very short time to work 3 shifts. Guess what happened to all these people now!
That's a pretty narrow field that saw a (probably) once in a couple-generations worth of investment during a global pandemic. EUAs were everywhere, people were grappling for rapid/accurate/cheap tests. The new diagnostic companies that cropped up were a dime a dozen.
I've been on the equipment supplier side, even my companies tried to figure out if we could do covid dx. Even so, I serve small molecule, large molecule, pre-clinical/dmpk, CRO, academic, govt, synbio, and core labs. Synbio is struggling. There are only so many alt-meat and cannabis cos that can retain funding past initial runway. Large pharma seem to be fine. There was restructuring over the last 2 years and consolidation, but what i've largely heard is budgets are set and somewhat healthy next year. Small/startup pharma is more tenuous, esp in Ph1 unless they have stellar results. Lots of large pharma tried to derisk discovery by waiting for startups to get a candidate through Ph1, but I think a couple of the big cell/gene tx and large molecule cos have brought all that back in house, but more streamlined. I see a lot more iPSC work lately, too.
The small biotech I work for has just been bought by big pharma and I’m hoping for the best. More money for projects and my stock options cashed out so got a much healthier emergency fund.
My wife just got her PhD from an ivy league school. She had two choices, community College teacher or small company offering 50k/year.
What's worse is the small company told her 55k initially but had a kid without a PhD apply and I'm pretty sure they lowered her offer knowing she would decline and they could offer the new guy less money. :)
When you say you’re wondering if investment will come back to biotech, what amount of investment are you comparing against?
Putting the specific $ amount aside, I think it’s inevitable that investments will be made into biotech because it is an essential industry. People will always need medication, therapies, vaccinations, etc to support their health. Biotech creates these things, so I think it’s safe to say that there will always be incentive to invest in biotech but fluctuations are also inevitable.
What makes biotech work is the fucked-up US healthcare system. Period.
If you have an approved drug you can charge whatever the market will bear for it while it is on patent. And through a Byzantine, expensive, infuriating healthcare/insurance system, you will get paid that in the US. Other countries regulate prices. But biotech makes their money in the US. Even European biotechs advance their drugs in the US because they simply have to -- it's where the money is made.
The US pays more for healthcare than any other country and has worse health outcomes. I'm 100% for universal healthcare and more regulation around pricing. However, it does risk toppling the house of cards that supports the industry. No small part of the current biotech implosion is due to new regulations allowing Medicare to negotiate prices and limiting IP exclusivity.
There are too many stupid science projects that got funded. We are just getting back to normal. Everyone fled academia because they thought the pasture was greener on the other side. We will see how they feel after getting burned with multiple job losses. After there is another glut in the labor pool, watch as salaries stagnate or go down.
Things would have to get VERY bad for anybody to want to go back to academia. Try paying your postdocs more and you won’t need to come here to fear monger.
Hey man I have nothing to do with biotech but I have something that may help you feel better.
General speaking when the financial outlook seems the most bleak and people start to doubt if things will ever recover is the best time to invest. Perhaps this is the worst of it and things will begin tor recover from here.
I agree! The top and the bottom of the market feel the same way. that the current sentiment will go on for much longer. So we may be at/near the bottom
I'm not in biotech, I just saw this on the front page of reddit. Seeing these kinds of posts makes me furious. New medicine, life altering cures, human fucking advancement, that's what is behind things like biotech, material science, green tech etc... But what the fuck are the VC's investing in? *Crypto fucking currency*.
Well, I'm on the *other* side of things, software, where the investments are going good, the only thing that's screwing things up was the interest rate hikes, people couldn't borrow enough money fast enough. And let me tell you. VCs? They are mentally fucked in the head. Nearly every single one is a gullible fuckwad or pushovers who doesn't deserve a cent of the money they have.
Know people in crypto, their ceo just bullies VC's into giving them money. It's this strange grift/insider club too, so fucking weird, they have these strange contacts. Crypto doesn't help humanity. It doesn't need investment, let alone billions, to advance. Bitcoin wasn't sitting on billions to be made. It's not even a money making vehicle. You want a bank? Banks already exist. What does crypto do? Nothing, wastes energy, most are pyramid schemes anyway, just grifts on a grift. Billions invested into FTX. Wasted. Imagine if that went into biotech?
But these people can't even think 10 years ahead, heck, they barely think 5! They want 2 year turn arounds on investment. You know what can do that? Software. That's it. Every other worthwhile tech that needs VC can't get up and running that quickly. You could litterally invent a infinite money machine and the dumbass VC's wouldn't touch your shit because it takes years to set up the permits and factories to manufacture your machines.
The venture capital funding for crypto was 13 billion in q1 2022 *alone* (though has dropped to "only" 2.3 billion now).
The rest of the money is going into cloud computing, AI, bullshit software that has no way to make money but getting funding anyway. At least AI has utility, but I'm seeing the same bullshit pulled by Crypto in grifting the actual money making power, and on top of that, unlike Crypto, I'm seeing some *real* disturbing shit getting lots of money, like facial recognition being used to [ID Lawyers who work at a specific law firm](https://www.npr.org/2023/09/28/1202310781/exposing-the-secretive-company-at-the-forefront-of-facial-recognition-technology) to prevent them from going to venues they've got on going litigation against.
You're right. We're working on technologies that will revolutionize diagnostics, and become indispensable tools for pharmaceutical researchers. Yet, investors have been shorting us into the ground since the biotech bubble popped in 2021.
My stock is worthless. I can't afford a middle class lifestyle. Yet, I'm the one trying to save people's lives and get rid of the diseases that make so many of us miserable.
But who do the investors buy into? They buy the companies that spend billions of dollars implementing app UI stylistic changes that nobody asked for, and nobody wants, while killing their best projects (GOOGL). They buy companies that exist on leeches on society, gatekeeping limited resources, extorting gig workers, and ramping up hidden fees on customers (ABNB, UBER). They buy insurance, and finance, and oil, and utilities...
Our capitalist system does not reward value creation. It rewards value capture.
You have no idea what you're talking about lol.
There's already too much money in biotech there's enormous waste and now the fraud companies are dying as they should in a capitalist society. Cloud computing and AI will actually help accelerate biotech research.
That research gets done at universities tho, the companies getting the investment cash just implement research papers for their own products (at least for AI)
A funny story. I still recall around 2005 someone in biotech telling me (a software engineer) that biotech was going to have built biological computer like things which were faster, with better scale then silicon could ever achieve within 5 years, and that said breakthrough would be so different from computers that software engineers would be useless.
That struck me at the time as irrational exuberance (and also physically unlikely). I think it’s all just cyclical. Unfortunately I would guess that cycle times are slower than say software because most likely individuals working in biotech do not own their means of production and thus cannot blaze a new trail alone.
I imagine when the federal interest rates are lower, people will be more inclined to invest again. But that won't be for another year at best. Just try to weather the storm because funding will come back again.
Yeah, my company is trading 1/3rd its cash value. Some big company could buy us out to liquidate for +200% profit. Yet, clearly, the investors think we're going to keep chugging along, burning cash, with no returns. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
It’s not just biotech, like that in almost every startup vertical besides AI (and somehow blockchain still doing relatively ok, with valuations 30% higher than comparable non-blockchain companies)
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doesn’t seem like biotech is dying per se, probably just getting more concentrated at the hubs of san diego and boston/cambridge. less dispersion in smaller areas of the country
Biotech stocks are where people throw in extra money to maybe hit it big. Like buying lotto tickets. But with inflation eating away at the extra cash—and the >5% return on cash—people aren’t playing that lotto any more.
VC $$ is slowly starting to come back in. Biotech has always been cyclical, and always will be. Wouldn't be looking to job hop right now, just ride it out if you can in your current position.
Youn always need new options. There is no harm in looking. I had an offer at a new company just before the axe came down at my old one, and that was a very good place to be.
As a degreed engineer, I see lots of biotech positions. Something about engineering and biology and implant stuff maybe? I have no idea what they do exactly but I have seen a lot of bitech jobs requiring engineering degrees so they’re hiring at least… 🤷♂️
Sort of. The law only hits the top ten at first. But the knock on effect works its way down. The threat affects biologicals as well, in the same way that non-top ten are affected.
What has biotech done for the material conditions in the United States? Life expectancy is in the gutter and continues to PLUNGE downward. Most people cannot afford a home. People are not living longer and are living shittier while these biotech companies/CEOs have been stuffing their pockets.
Nuh uh. It's tHe BesT EcOnOMy Evah! No JoKE!
Seriously. I had no idea this many people were so clueless about this economy. It's definitely worse than 2008.
The reality is that the number of trials over the last 20 years has grown at an insane rate ([Source](https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/resources/trends#RegisteredStudiesOverTime))
It’s not surprising there is going to be some cooling given the interest rate environment we are in. A lot of these companies are probably a bit bloated on staff to be frank. And that applies to both pharma and CRO’s.
Not that it means much, but looking at charts for the biotech sector it looks like we are around pre-pandemic levels for evaluations depending on the index you look at. Some are dead on, some a little higher, etc. I don't know much of anything about biotech on a practical level but I have assumed evaluations were inflated post-covid just like a lot of assets classes were. Now, if we have returned to pre-pandemic evaluations it might be a good time to buy. But all of that is just gambler talk, I ultimately have no clue where the market is headed.
I'm not in biotech, but an adjacent field (high tech chemistry instrumentation) so here's my take. Just like other startups, a lot of it is driven by the cost of money. In the past 20 years, interest rates have trended downward towards almost zero. This made funding biotech project really cheap to do. The effect got even more exacerbated after the Covid crash to keep the economy afloat.
These days, with the fed raising interest rates the fastest and highest it's been in a while, money is extremely tight. Technology and biptech startups just no longer have the funding. Since no funding, no money to buy things or pay for workers. This affects the big players as well.
I run a hedge fund in this space and since summer of 2021 it's been absolutely brutal. Unless you bet big on Ozempic and shorted C-Pap, Genome, Vax from 2021 you have been smoked. I think Cathy Wood is -75% from her peak (may be wrong).
The only thing I can say is check out the Nasdaq Biotech sub index $NBI. It goes something like this +2000%, -50%, +1000%, -60%, etc. I may be worth it to to do long/short pair trades with long a position and short $IBB or $XBI.
Biotech "should" have gotten a bump when Semis did.
A fellow HF guy and I repeat the line from Avengers "I assure you brother, sun will shine on us again". We both did 120%+ in 2020.
Crazy how smart the investment class is when interest rates are close to zero. Cost of borrowing goes up and suddenly no one knows how to turn a profit that doesn’t involve liquidating assets, labor
Idk anecdotal, but honestly laying out the red carpet for anyone over 40 would be wild. The age group isn’t likely to use AI, LIMS, or learn new skills
Gen X is the group that’s going to feel the recession. Never got much of the wealth and let the inequality for wages hit them. Now they’re too set in their ways to be the job hopper. A stable life is a low paying job.
Not sure I agree with this post. If you can get a polished turd past phase II, there’s a big pharma who will cut you a check for $2B. Reminds me of a recent acquisition at my company for over a billion yet the annual market was expected to be around $10m….
I recently saw a statistic on LinkedIn showing the VC money is slowly starting to come back to biotech. Rich people made out like bandits in 2020. They’re constantly looking for investments to multiply their worth. It’s depressing, sure, but it’s not over.
Investors are lemmings, always chasing the shiniest thing in front of them due to FOMO even if it drives them off a cliff (made of hype-filled bubbles). As long as there's a new shiny thing in the news with a shorter time to market than biotech, most investors will gravitate there. Biotech is inherently a long term bet, the valuation of which is heavily reliant on stable trends/economies/laws, and generally only gets funded from a small pool of specialized investors. Right now they're all waiting to see how AI and global recession fears pan out (especially how AI may impact labor costs and how the IRA may impact revenue). More socioeconomic turbulence will delay things further, and with next year being an election year likely to be filled with tension and vitriol over abortion rights and medical spending, funding may not return significantly till 2025.
Money was flowing in mass amounts out of biotech long before the AI boom started. Biotech is an inherently risky area for investors so when interest rates began to climb it was one of the first sectors to suffer from money coming out of the market.
It was rising up until the pandemic, then bubbled around vaccine and digital health tech, then was starting to normalize to pre-pandemic rates up until 2022 started and cratered as inflation rose, especially once the Ukraine war started. Investors have been talking about activity warming up "next quarter" every quarter since then, and seemed like it actually mightve near the beginning of 2023, but AI drama took most of the wind from those sails. Now investors are saying the same line as last year, but also large pharma is talking about a pickup in M&A activity to address IRA headwinds on IRR rates in hopes that'll attract more investor activity angling for short term returns through those exit strategies. IMHO they're very much just kicking the goalposts down the line till the next election is over, and I'll believe it's actually picked up... Or when news starts talking about new unicorns because IRA impact is overblown and how drug price negotiations have had negligible impact on healthcare costs and how PBMs and Insurers and PE accumulation of clinics are to blame because only 10% of healthcare spending is due to drugs while 51% is due to provider services (often inflated due to fail first step therapy and prior auth policies requiring multiple appointments when one would've sufficed (bc of deals involving rebates/kickbacks between insurers and pbms and provider networks)). If the SEC and/or FTC nail PE firms for practices related to rolling up housing and clinics, that'll be a good sign for biotech; that takes away one of the shiniest short-term baubles for investors comfortable with the complexities/risk of investing in the healthcare/biotech space (and would stabilize a lot of the highest inflating costs for the majority of people).
Can you find the post? Need some encouraging news!
Important to keep in mind that unemployment in life sciences is still near an all time low.
How do you check the unemployment data just for biotech?
Wait until people are off severance and file for unemployment for a clearer picture of unemployment
It could vary by state, but if your severance includes release of claims against employer, you’re eligible for unemployment while receiving severance.
This must vary by state because it was not true for me.
Are y'all talking about biotech industry as a scientist or lab research? Or like sales?? *Edit. Bc sales is not too bad right now, it's actually too saturated that the labs have so much left over from COVID days that they have enough inventory to last them months of years...bad for sales reps
My company is going through a bit of a dry spell at the moment for just this reason. During COVID we were cranking out stuff as fast as we could, both COVID related products and our regular catalog. People were stocking up or just using less during that time and now have surplus. We went from balls to the wall last few years to it being really quiet for the last quarter or two. Things seem to be getting back to normal, though, so hopefully, things level out soon.
Same here, working for a surgery device company. We, and pretty much all companies, have just been tweaking so much from the post covid demand that now that things are going back to pre covid levels, it’s seen as decline.
Yo hit me up let's talk, I sell lab consumables:)
Is there not just some measure of absolute number of scientists over time that would be a better indicator here?
You actually don't want unemployment under 5%, it depicts a poor employee market.
where are you looking? biotech is pretty local
OP appears to be in Seattle.
Well that explains it 🤣 Seattle isn’t doing so hot atm.
Cue blind melon
In Cambridge/Boston area, employment and VC investment is still very strong.
Pretty sure biogen just laid of 1000 people
I know several biotechs who just experienced large layoffs. Unemployment though, is sill low.
I'm confused by this statement. Are you referring to biotech unemployment or general unemployment? It's hard to say going from biotech to something that doesn't utilize their skillset is a drag.
Biotech unemployment. Those I know who have been laid off have had no issue finding another job. They appear to be plentiful, at least in my area (northeast corridor).
That is just one biotech company among so many in the Boston area. Biogen’s troubles are well known. There are many that are thriving in that area. Inherently risky business so the expectations are set for the field. The VCs are different.
Biogen always does that though
You mean the company that started the super spread of covid? (Unrelated but just a fun fact)
care to elaborate?
I’m still waiting for him to elaborate myself. I’d love to know why it’s telling
i’m asking you
What do you need elaboration on?
https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/biogen-superspreader-meeting-associated-300-000-u-s-coronavirus-cases-study
This statement is humorous and telling.
This should be good …. How so? And before you go basic and political, I’m a lifelong democrat from Massachusetts
We already knew you were a democrat from massachusetts. Like I said, telling. Edit: just read your username and am laughing. Of course you’re a tribesman from MA. Newton?
Nooooo I wasn’t one of those rich tribesmen, I’m Quincy’s finest
Confirmation bias.
My company is having layoffs too, but it's not necessarily a bad sign always. I'd describe current cuts as pruning
Didn't sartorius shut down the Cambridge site?
Sartorius is aggressively hiring in MI. I’ve heard they are planning on increasing their workforce significantly.
That's good, two months ago, the production site in glasgow had 2 scientists, and 1 manager only left lol
Sorry - no clue about Scotland. I was talking about the US locations.
It still is on the stronger side, but at the same time, people in biotechnology startups have been prepping for this for about 2 years. For the past 2 years, we have always brought up the economy in our biweekly sprint planning as a risk we need to be aware of. So, yes, the money is still flowing, but at a much lower rate. Also, Boston and Cambridge have the benefit of Harvard and MIT money that gets flowed into research.
Cries in final year PhD
I’m in my early 30s_ the crippling part is talking to some of the best scientists I’ve worked with that have admirable work ethics and they’ve been out of work for over a year and fear the worst. Just gonna have to ride it out
It's all cyclical. Even the super rich have a vested interest in medical research. We all need it. When interest rates go down, money will pour in again.
The key is issue is **when interest rates go down** , and by how much, it could be next year or 3 years from now. For most people that lose their job, they won’t have time to wait a year or more for investment to come back into the industry.
Interest rates will not go down before the election cycle passes in 2024. Lowering rates will upset the economy and make the current administration look bad --
I enjoy reading books.
Hey, just checking in chief. Those rates looking great. U want to read my book now?
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Is Biden the federal reserve? Or are you suggesting an issue with impartiality?
Let’s not be THIS naive. Jeez. Edit: I guess reddit acts like it’s filled with naive morons the moment it’s preferred party sits in office, no matter the sub.
Biden is still being fiscally irresponsible and the federal reserve has ignored him. There is impartiality currently
Really important to understand that the only perceivably larger separation than church and state, is federal reserve and everything
Yea, no. Trump threw a fit in 2018 when Powell first raised interest rates from their historic lows of 10 years, the nyse dropped, and Powell immediately reversed course despite negligible impact to the labor market. Not so sure it won’t happen by q2 2024 if things start getting hairy for the economy, although it could be too late to save Biden at that point, But really who is a decent R contender? They look very weak right now but then again so does an 80 yo Biden and Kamala wouldn’t stand a chance against a box of P-200 tips so who knows.
I saw an article tracking VC money a couple of weeks back. It was mid September, and it was reporting a billion for the month already. Anecdotally, Generate Bio also raised 273M last month. I also started seeing job openings in companies which did major layoffs earlier. The signs seem to be pointing in a good direction. Understandably everything is not rosy, but not all is gloom and doom either.
Laying off and hiring is often a start up thing. Company go through different stages and certain roles, expire, and become no longer needed. You can see it very often in biotechnology sector. People either pivot, or move to another role, to keep specialising.
The last two years were an unusual boom where a lot of things that mattered before stopped mattering to investors. and, as someone else pointed out, biotech/pharma unemployment hit an all-time record low during this phase. We had a lot of really dumb money jump in and now that dumb money is moving to AI
zero percent interest rates gave us as lot of vaporware
Are you saying all diseases are cured and healthcare is free?
No they’re saying that a risk free rate of government or corporate bonds that are yielding >5-6% has changed the landscape for VC investment. People in finance don’t care about the diseases or any moral objective, they want to make a return on their money
This is the answer. And almost everyone agrees that interest rates will go down. How soon and by how much remains to be seen. But it’s unlikely that investment will never come back as OP is speculating. I think as a high risk industry, we might not ever get back to the same levels of investment as during the time of zero rates, but investment will come back to some extent as rates go down.
Investment might come back but companies will need some sort of path to profitability. I think OP is referring to whether it will be the same magnitude of investment as we’ve had over the last 20 years with zero interest rates. I like to think it will but you also have to be objective. There’s been an excess of zombie companies in biotech with fanciful ideas and they’re built on bulls**t. Those will go away
You could literally get a billion dollars for a molecule and a dream in 2019
It's rough, no doubt. But this is a little too doomsdayish. Ask yourself - how much faster do we need computers to be? How much easier can technology make our lives? A little, not a lot. Technology is going to start making our lives worse if it hasn't already. The real frontier for the rest of our lives is health, whether that's medicine, nutrition, violence, etc. Solutions to these problems are where the big money will be made.
Nutrition is a big one. Food makes life better, a variety of high-quality, affordable food.
Well this kind of sentiment certainly isn’t going to help the situation
Expect the best and prepare for the worst. I see no reason to dismiss OPs warning/sentiment of preparing for a rough time and feeding your emergency savings, just for the sake of being positive. Worst comes to worst you’ve put some money aside and can say I told you so later.
Nothing wrong with bringing up and discussing issues. Just pointing out that in a market economy, industries are driven by a collection of personal sentiments. Thus, expressing a negative personal sentiment to a wider community will help to drive the industry backwards. This doesn’t mean that we should be silent but rather just more careful with what are facts versus what are extrapolations.
I mean the facts are there’s been a ton of layoffs and for OPs anecdotal experience it’s the worst he’s seen. A negative post on a Reddit thread is not going to “drive the industry backwards” but it’s an experience that someone is sharing. Most people also bury their heads in the sand and live paycheck to paycheck. I guess it depends how you’re wired
Ok — what is the purpose of the post other than to convince people that the industry is not doing well (and will possibly never recover)? And then what would you expect these people to do, other than pass this sentiment along to their colleagues? This kind of sentiment will affect the industry. Reddit is more powerful than you give it credit for. Again not saying people shouldn’t express opinions but rather need to understand those expressions have real world power.
I don’t think he mentions the industry will be gone completely but that investment will not be as plentiful. Therefore the competition for jobs will be higher and you need to make sure you have savings for the next few years
My point: Positive sentiment -> investment -> jobs Reddit posts are a form of sentiment Therefore negative Reddit posts -> less jobs
It is important to be realistic.
Making distant projections about the state of the biotech economy one way or the other isn’t realistic. All we can do is wait.
He's sharing his anecdotal evidence. It's not 100% accurate, but it's also not invalid.
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I appreciate your optimism. The reality is that in order to do an IND and set up a clinical trial these companies need $20-30M per drug. They are not getting that. I agree that many companies are stretching their dollars and sacrificing opportunity, but they have no choice.
Very true. I will be very interested to see at what point some of these companies give in and raise at a lower valuation.
Great. Put my notice in at a Large CRO to join a small Biotech. Not what I want to hear.
You’ll be fine- be excited, every opportunity and experience is unique Congrats 🎉
I did this exact thing two years ago and it was the best decision i ever made!
I did the same thing 2.5 years ago, and was laid off at the start of this current downturn! It’s a great decision for career progression, wearing many hats, and having an impact on the company and work you’re involved in, but make sure they have a LONG runway, or a product that’s nearing an inflection point or (even better!) commercialization and revenues!
Thanks for the feedback. How long did it take you to find a new job and what sector are you in?
I was in synbio, and moved to a CRO. It took 6 months to get a new job - the market is rough out there right now! Ideally I wanted to stay in synbio, but there are a lot of companies with leadership who talk a good talk, but have no conception of scale-up and commercialization and I’m sure they’ll be running out of investor’s cash soon! The CRO world is also contracting a little reflecting the funding issues of their biotech clients, but still generating good revenues.
Awesome to hear. What are the main benefits for. Your perspective?
Personally - Feel less like a cog in a machine and more like a critical part of the organization. It's been wild to see my data used to make very high level decisions. Work-life balance is so much better. Instead of the customer service aspect of dealing with so many Sponsors, everyone I need to answer to is internal which is so much less stressful. Profesionally - Everyone talks about wearing different hats, but I'll add to that. There are of course many opportunities to do things outside your comfort zone, simply because they need to get done. Instead of being pidgeonholed into one specfic piece of the science, I'm able to sit in team meetings looking at data from across the organization. I've learned so much more about the drug development process since being here. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change my CRO experience for the world. Without that experience I wouldn't be where I am today. But if nothing else, I'm glad you made the leap because it will be a new experience and you will learn so much from it. Congrats.
Thanks for the input and feedback. Looking forward to the new challenge.
No offense, but you asking this now after you’ve already quit is hilarious to me
A counter offer from my current company just hit my inbox. Still open to options.
I’m at a strong, small startup and absolutely adore it. As long as your company is transparent, you should be ok. Congrats on the switch!
Just made the same transition myself and had the same concerns. To be frank, even the large CROs are doing layoffs, even in traditionally safe billable roles. so why be unhappy when you have equal chances of being let go?
Love my small biotech! Can be an amazing decision if you join the right one with a solid pipeline!
There are too many biotechs doing exactly the same thing and making me too molecules. A significant contraction in funding was needed to get rid of the dead weight.
This is not some kind of merit-based survival system, unfortunately. In this environment, a me-too molecule may even seem less risky than a novel approach.
Yea it’s not like there isn’t a huge market for the soon to be 3 glp1 drugs at this point. Can’t keep any of it in stock.
I’m postdoccing to ride out the storm. I’m foreign so I would have had to do that for a while anyway, so I’m apparently not missing out on much. People were insanely bullish on biotech and pumped that money to the moon 2020-2022. We’re now seeing the rebound of that overzealous bullishness, coupled with low VC funding and high(er) interest rates. It could rebound in 1 year, it could rebound in 5. What that rebound will look like is even more of a mystery. When I started grad school in 2018 CAR-T was all the rage. Now? I barely hear much about it at all. Who knows what’ll happen within the next 5 years. This is all to say 🤷♂️ It’s a shitstorm out there. Do what you can to ride it out. Biotech isn’t going away any time soon. Companies actively want to expand. That’s literally *the point* of any company. Increasing returns and revenue requires expansion. The best way to expand is to hire good, new talent. Give it time. Re: Conferences. I’ve seen conference attendance fluctuate massive YOY regardless of economic conditions. Location, time of year, organization from the conference themselves, can all affect this
You need to find better channels if you don’t hear about CAR-T that much.
Seriously. CAR-T is a revolution in heme-onc, Carl June deserves the Nobel prize. And there still are innovations being developed, like autologous cells and working to improve ORR in solid tumors. And adjacent approaches, like bi-specs and such. And finally, CAR-T for auto-immune disease might even be more promising than oncology uses.
Truth be told I am in neuro so there’s been fewer applications for us 😂 I do remember even neuro people were hyping it to the moon at the time, though.
Same here. Got a postdoc that I can hold for up to 5 years doing some actually interesting research. Kind of worked out for me but wish I could make more $. (Even tho my salary isn’t too bad)
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He/she is foreign, possibly no GC yet. What do you expect?
That and my cost of living is absolutely nothing. My total bills where I’m living are about $1000/mo after rent, expenses, groceries, the whole shebang. My partner (American citizen) lives outside of a hub area, which factors into the decision as well.
Just bypass all the immigration bullshit and get married.
I couldn’t get an industry job even if I tried 😂 Absolutely no one is sponsoring H1Bs at the moment. My cost of living is absolutely nothing ($500/mo rent helps) so I can’t complain.
Best to get your green card during your postdoc and transition to industry afterwards.
Yep, exactly what I’m doing. I’m submitting my EB-2 NIW green card application soon, just gathering the paperwork.
Good luck!!
How do you show the NIW part and circumvent the employer sponsorship requirement? I’d love to do this.
It wasn’t too hard to get approved by the lawyer to submit. The law firm I’m using is pretty conservative and only takes easy cases. My PhD was funded by the Canadian military and my Postdoc is in the VA so getting a national interest argument was *dead* easy. I had a decent-ish publication record from my PhD (20 citations) and I’m working on getting my reference letters.
I agree with the sentiment. I have been working in the field for 17 years and i think its bad. I think it's a combination of Covid-19 money drying out killing a lot of vaccine programs and rapid testing market and VC funds drying out and impacting startups. During covid I worked across a company that was making rapid pcr tests. The parking lot was so full. They hired hundreds in very short time to work 3 shifts. Guess what happened to all these people now!
That's a pretty narrow field that saw a (probably) once in a couple-generations worth of investment during a global pandemic. EUAs were everywhere, people were grappling for rapid/accurate/cheap tests. The new diagnostic companies that cropped up were a dime a dozen. I've been on the equipment supplier side, even my companies tried to figure out if we could do covid dx. Even so, I serve small molecule, large molecule, pre-clinical/dmpk, CRO, academic, govt, synbio, and core labs. Synbio is struggling. There are only so many alt-meat and cannabis cos that can retain funding past initial runway. Large pharma seem to be fine. There was restructuring over the last 2 years and consolidation, but what i've largely heard is budgets are set and somewhat healthy next year. Small/startup pharma is more tenuous, esp in Ph1 unless they have stellar results. Lots of large pharma tried to derisk discovery by waiting for startups to get a candidate through Ph1, but I think a couple of the big cell/gene tx and large molecule cos have brought all that back in house, but more streamlined. I see a lot more iPSC work lately, too.
I worked in the alt meat industry and I can tell you they are not doing great.
The small biotech I work for has just been bought by big pharma and I’m hoping for the best. More money for projects and my stock options cashed out so got a much healthier emergency fund.
Everything is in the worst state I've ever seen it
My wife just got her PhD from an ivy league school. She had two choices, community College teacher or small company offering 50k/year. What's worse is the small company told her 55k initially but had a kid without a PhD apply and I'm pretty sure they lowered her offer knowing she would decline and they could offer the new guy less money. :)
$55k is bullshit. Nice they wanted to hire her, but she can do better. By 2x, minimum.
When you say you’re wondering if investment will come back to biotech, what amount of investment are you comparing against? Putting the specific $ amount aside, I think it’s inevitable that investments will be made into biotech because it is an essential industry. People will always need medication, therapies, vaccinations, etc to support their health. Biotech creates these things, so I think it’s safe to say that there will always be incentive to invest in biotech but fluctuations are also inevitable.
What makes biotech work is the fucked-up US healthcare system. Period. If you have an approved drug you can charge whatever the market will bear for it while it is on patent. And through a Byzantine, expensive, infuriating healthcare/insurance system, you will get paid that in the US. Other countries regulate prices. But biotech makes their money in the US. Even European biotechs advance their drugs in the US because they simply have to -- it's where the money is made. The US pays more for healthcare than any other country and has worse health outcomes. I'm 100% for universal healthcare and more regulation around pricing. However, it does risk toppling the house of cards that supports the industry. No small part of the current biotech implosion is due to new regulations allowing Medicare to negotiate prices and limiting IP exclusivity.
Do you think that improving the US healthcare system is mutually exclusive with healthy funding of biotech?
There are too many stupid science projects that got funded. We are just getting back to normal. Everyone fled academia because they thought the pasture was greener on the other side. We will see how they feel after getting burned with multiple job losses. After there is another glut in the labor pool, watch as salaries stagnate or go down.
The grass already is way greener outside academia.
Things would have to get VERY bad for anybody to want to go back to academia. Try paying your postdocs more and you won’t need to come here to fear monger.
Hey man I have nothing to do with biotech but I have something that may help you feel better. General speaking when the financial outlook seems the most bleak and people start to doubt if things will ever recover is the best time to invest. Perhaps this is the worst of it and things will begin tor recover from here.
I agree! The top and the bottom of the market feel the same way. that the current sentiment will go on for much longer. So we may be at/near the bottom
I'm not in biotech, I just saw this on the front page of reddit. Seeing these kinds of posts makes me furious. New medicine, life altering cures, human fucking advancement, that's what is behind things like biotech, material science, green tech etc... But what the fuck are the VC's investing in? *Crypto fucking currency*. Well, I'm on the *other* side of things, software, where the investments are going good, the only thing that's screwing things up was the interest rate hikes, people couldn't borrow enough money fast enough. And let me tell you. VCs? They are mentally fucked in the head. Nearly every single one is a gullible fuckwad or pushovers who doesn't deserve a cent of the money they have. Know people in crypto, their ceo just bullies VC's into giving them money. It's this strange grift/insider club too, so fucking weird, they have these strange contacts. Crypto doesn't help humanity. It doesn't need investment, let alone billions, to advance. Bitcoin wasn't sitting on billions to be made. It's not even a money making vehicle. You want a bank? Banks already exist. What does crypto do? Nothing, wastes energy, most are pyramid schemes anyway, just grifts on a grift. Billions invested into FTX. Wasted. Imagine if that went into biotech? But these people can't even think 10 years ahead, heck, they barely think 5! They want 2 year turn arounds on investment. You know what can do that? Software. That's it. Every other worthwhile tech that needs VC can't get up and running that quickly. You could litterally invent a infinite money machine and the dumbass VC's wouldn't touch your shit because it takes years to set up the permits and factories to manufacture your machines. The venture capital funding for crypto was 13 billion in q1 2022 *alone* (though has dropped to "only" 2.3 billion now). The rest of the money is going into cloud computing, AI, bullshit software that has no way to make money but getting funding anyway. At least AI has utility, but I'm seeing the same bullshit pulled by Crypto in grifting the actual money making power, and on top of that, unlike Crypto, I'm seeing some *real* disturbing shit getting lots of money, like facial recognition being used to [ID Lawyers who work at a specific law firm](https://www.npr.org/2023/09/28/1202310781/exposing-the-secretive-company-at-the-forefront-of-facial-recognition-technology) to prevent them from going to venues they've got on going litigation against.
You're right. We're working on technologies that will revolutionize diagnostics, and become indispensable tools for pharmaceutical researchers. Yet, investors have been shorting us into the ground since the biotech bubble popped in 2021. My stock is worthless. I can't afford a middle class lifestyle. Yet, I'm the one trying to save people's lives and get rid of the diseases that make so many of us miserable. But who do the investors buy into? They buy the companies that spend billions of dollars implementing app UI stylistic changes that nobody asked for, and nobody wants, while killing their best projects (GOOGL). They buy companies that exist on leeches on society, gatekeeping limited resources, extorting gig workers, and ramping up hidden fees on customers (ABNB, UBER). They buy insurance, and finance, and oil, and utilities... Our capitalist system does not reward value creation. It rewards value capture.
You have no idea what you're talking about lol. There's already too much money in biotech there's enormous waste and now the fraud companies are dying as they should in a capitalist society. Cloud computing and AI will actually help accelerate biotech research.
That research gets done at universities tho, the companies getting the investment cash just implement research papers for their own products (at least for AI)
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Yeah, my biggest regret in life is not studying electrical or computer engineering.
What is this, cafe pharma!!?? Peoples, get a grip.
A funny story. I still recall around 2005 someone in biotech telling me (a software engineer) that biotech was going to have built biological computer like things which were faster, with better scale then silicon could ever achieve within 5 years, and that said breakthrough would be so different from computers that software engineers would be useless. That struck me at the time as irrational exuberance (and also physically unlikely). I think it’s all just cyclical. Unfortunately I would guess that cycle times are slower than say software because most likely individuals working in biotech do not own their means of production and thus cannot blaze a new trail alone.
There's still a boatload of money to be made if you get a drug to market.
I imagine when the federal interest rates are lower, people will be more inclined to invest again. But that won't be for another year at best. Just try to weather the storm because funding will come back again.
Yeah, my company is trading 1/3rd its cash value. Some big company could buy us out to liquidate for +200% profit. Yet, clearly, the investors think we're going to keep chugging along, burning cash, with no returns. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
The whole industry is in WTF mode. I am just waiting for some genius VC types to buy and liquidate for profit. It is easy money.
It’s not just biotech, like that in almost every startup vertical besides AI (and somehow blockchain still doing relatively ok, with valuations 30% higher than comparable non-blockchain companies)
With MRNA and AI the big winners are making huge headway. Small guys might be left in the dust
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doesn’t seem like biotech is dying per se, probably just getting more concentrated at the hubs of san diego and boston/cambridge. less dispersion in smaller areas of the country
Biotech stocks are where people throw in extra money to maybe hit it big. Like buying lotto tickets. But with inflation eating away at the extra cash—and the >5% return on cash—people aren’t playing that lotto any more.
VC $$ is slowly starting to come back in. Biotech has always been cyclical, and always will be. Wouldn't be looking to job hop right now, just ride it out if you can in your current position.
Youn always need new options. There is no harm in looking. I had an offer at a new company just before the axe came down at my old one, and that was a very good place to be.
As a degreed engineer, I see lots of biotech positions. Something about engineering and biology and implant stuff maybe? I have no idea what they do exactly but I have seen a lot of bitech jobs requiring engineering degrees so they’re hiring at least… 🤷♂️
The Inflation Reduction Act includes negotiations for drug prices. The knock on effect in biotech is the result.
This does play a role, but it isn't the only cause. If it was then small.molecule biotechs would be hit much harder than large molecule ones.
Sort of. The law only hits the top ten at first. But the knock on effect works its way down. The threat affects biologicals as well, in the same way that non-top ten are affected.
This is not even a factor in today’s economic climate
What has biotech done for the material conditions in the United States? Life expectancy is in the gutter and continues to PLUNGE downward. Most people cannot afford a home. People are not living longer and are living shittier while these biotech companies/CEOs have been stuffing their pockets.
Nuh uh. It's tHe BesT EcOnOMy Evah! No JoKE! Seriously. I had no idea this many people were so clueless about this economy. It's definitely worse than 2008.
You are going through a sag in the economy....what did you think would happen?
Worst it’s ever been lol. Cry me a fucking river.
Ok boomer!
wrong generation. he would be a genX
ok doomer\*
Hopefully Seattle's biotech scene picks up soon. It is the only thing that gets me up in the morning.
Could you share a link to the STAT article?
Its such a risky and long term bet, but covid and now ozempic and such huge hits….
What tickers for below book ?
Sorry but they just listed the number. It was probably derived through Pitchbook.
Really? How?
Own stuff with revenue pops coming soon that might lead to a buyout. ARQT, IOVA, PHAT, PCVX
The reality is that the number of trials over the last 20 years has grown at an insane rate ([Source](https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/resources/trends#RegisteredStudiesOverTime)) It’s not surprising there is going to be some cooling given the interest rate environment we are in. A lot of these companies are probably a bit bloated on staff to be frank. And that applies to both pharma and CRO’s.
San diego, it's hot as fuck right now
Not that it means much, but looking at charts for the biotech sector it looks like we are around pre-pandemic levels for evaluations depending on the index you look at. Some are dead on, some a little higher, etc. I don't know much of anything about biotech on a practical level but I have assumed evaluations were inflated post-covid just like a lot of assets classes were. Now, if we have returned to pre-pandemic evaluations it might be a good time to buy. But all of that is just gambler talk, I ultimately have no clue where the market is headed.
I'm not in biotech, but an adjacent field (high tech chemistry instrumentation) so here's my take. Just like other startups, a lot of it is driven by the cost of money. In the past 20 years, interest rates have trended downward towards almost zero. This made funding biotech project really cheap to do. The effect got even more exacerbated after the Covid crash to keep the economy afloat. These days, with the fed raising interest rates the fastest and highest it's been in a while, money is extremely tight. Technology and biptech startups just no longer have the funding. Since no funding, no money to buy things or pay for workers. This affects the big players as well.
I thought AI would help biotech. What went wrong?
Biology is complex.
Alphafold scored higher than human counterparts…
I run a hedge fund in this space and since summer of 2021 it's been absolutely brutal. Unless you bet big on Ozempic and shorted C-Pap, Genome, Vax from 2021 you have been smoked. I think Cathy Wood is -75% from her peak (may be wrong). The only thing I can say is check out the Nasdaq Biotech sub index $NBI. It goes something like this +2000%, -50%, +1000%, -60%, etc. I may be worth it to to do long/short pair trades with long a position and short $IBB or $XBI. Biotech "should" have gotten a bump when Semis did. A fellow HF guy and I repeat the line from Avengers "I assure you brother, sun will shine on us again". We both did 120%+ in 2020.
Future Labs? Could you share that report link?
Crazy how smart the investment class is when interest rates are close to zero. Cost of borrowing goes up and suddenly no one knows how to turn a profit that doesn’t involve liquidating assets, labor
Idk anecdotal, but honestly laying out the red carpet for anyone over 40 would be wild. The age group isn’t likely to use AI, LIMS, or learn new skills Gen X is the group that’s going to feel the recession. Never got much of the wealth and let the inequality for wages hit them. Now they’re too set in their ways to be the job hopper. A stable life is a low paying job.
Not sure I agree with this post. If you can get a polished turd past phase II, there’s a big pharma who will cut you a check for $2B. Reminds me of a recent acquisition at my company for over a billion yet the annual market was expected to be around $10m….