It’s clear from #ASCO22 that biopharma audiences are back, live, at the big conferences. That’s encouraging, as we return to more face-to-face meetings to advance the work at hand. But go behind the busy center stage, and you’ll see plenty of worrying signs that biotech — though not Big Pharma — is in for a rough ride. And just when it ends is anyone’s guess right now.

Sentiment is one thing, data another. And there’s no denying that the numbers have changed dramatically. We asked DealForma chief Chris Dokomajilar to crunch the numbers a little bit early for H1, in order to get a look at the trends in play here during a watershed year for the biotech industry.

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Right around the beginning of the year, we got a close-up look at what happens after a boom ripples through biotech. The crash of life sciences stocks in Q1 was heard around the world.

In the months since, we’ve seen the natural Darwinian down cycle take effect. Reverse mergers made a comeback, with more burned out shells to go public at a time IPOs and road shows are out of favor. And no doubt some of the more recent arrivals on the investing side of the business are finding greener pastures.

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The following Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

John Carroll:

We’ve had a chance to talk a little bit before here about some of the things that you’ve done. Just really remarkably, a lot of the things that you’ve done early in your career puts you in the path with some amazing science that has had an absolutely huge impact in terms of what we’re seeing now on drug development and some of the new technologies that are coming out here, and not only the new technologies, but also some of the most remarkable people ever.

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The first lab-made antibody medicine was approved in 1986 — it bound to an antigen known as CD3 on T cells and was meant to prevent kidney transplant rejection. While antibody technology improved, most antibodies were made as blocking agents, neutering clamps that attacked cells and proteins.

But then scientists got creative with their engineering. They made antibody-drug conjugates, or ADCs for short, which attached toxins or drugs to the antibodies, enabling them to kill cells. Then they made CAR-T therapies, which attached a patient’s T cell to the targeting fragment of an antibody, to destroy cancer cells.

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