Biotech is one of the smartest, best ed­u­cat­ed in­dus­tries on the plan­et. PhDs abound. We’ve had a long enough track record to see a new gen­er­a­tion of savvy, ex­pe­ri­enced ex­ecs com­ing to­geth­er to run star­tups.

Bioreg­num Opin­ion Col­umn by John Car­roll

And in these times, they are be­ing test­ed as nev­er be­fore.

Biotech is go­ing through quite a rough patch right now. For 2 years, prac­ti­cal­ly any­one with a de­cent re­sume and some half-baked ideas on biotech could start a com­pa­ny and get it fund­ed. The pan­dem­ic made it easy in many ways to pull off an IPO, with tra­di­tion­al road shows shut down in ex­change for a se­ries of quick Zoom meet­ings. Gen­er­al­ist in­vestors flocked as the num­bers raised soared in­to the stratos­phere.

But it wasn’t all over the top. Some of these far out ideas are des­tined to change the prac­tice of med­i­cine and save lives. And they will make some peo­ple wealthy along the way. The num­bers, though, got to be too good to be true. And now it’s time to pay the piper as even good biotechs with strong prospects are be­ing cooked in the same boil­ing ket­tle as the bad.

So how do you re­spond to these ex­tra­or­di­nary times?

In a nut­shell, that’s what I’ll be ex­plor­ing dur­ing our up­com­ing live pan­el dis­cus­sion at the Mar­riott Mar­quis San Diego Ma­ri­na dur­ing BIO22 week in San Diego on June 14. The net­work­ing gets start­ed bright and ear­ly be­tween 6 and 7 am. And I’ve got a great pan­el lined up for the dis­cus­sion. I’ll be joined by:

— An­drew Lo, one of the orig­i­nal, out-of-the-box thinkers in biotech who’s been fas­ci­nat­ing au­di­ences on biotech fi­nanc­ing from his post at MIT for years.

— Neil Ku­mar, CEO of Bridge­Bio, will be on hand to dis­cuss his own ex­pe­ri­ences re­or­ga­niz­ing the com­pa­ny in the past cou­ple of months.

— Kristi­na Bur­row, the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at ARCH, who has fund­ed a slew of biotechs that have laid out ex­treme­ly am­bi­tious goals, will of­fer her in­sights on how she’s ad­vis­ing them through this dif­fi­cult pe­ri­od.

— The al­ways out­spo­ken Paul Hast­ings, CEO of Nkar­ta, has been rais­ing mon­ey and nav­i­gat­ing trou­bled wa­ters through the year. He’s got a lot of ideas on what CEOs should do now.

— And Fa­heem Has­nain, best known for sell­ing Re­cep­tos to Cel­gene for $7.2 bil­lion, rounds out the pan­el with his in­sights on push­ing the en­ve­lope in 2022 — biotech style — as he runs his lat­est cre­ation, Gos­samer.

We’ll get it start­ed with a fire­side chat with Se­bas­t­ian Guth, Bay­er’s pres­i­dent of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals for the Amer­i­c­as re­gion, with plen­ty of net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties built in­to the break­fast.

And of course, I’ll be there, mod­er­at­ing the dis­cus­sion, look­ing to you for some ques­tions. I hope you’ll come and join us for this live event in San Diego. I’ll be stay­ing on well past the end of the pan­el dis­cus­sion to chat with the au­di­ence. I hope you come by to say hel­lo. And let me know if there are any ques­tions you would like me to ask this group.

It should be fun. This is our first live event in more than 2 years, and I am re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to see­ing a biotech crowd come to­geth­er again.

• Lo­ca­tion: Mar­riott Mar­quis San Diego Ma­ri­na
  • San Diego Ball­room
    333 W Har­bor Dr­San Diego, CA 92101

You can buy tick­ets for the event here.

You should al­so check out the full slate of vir­tu­al pan­els and fire­sides we’re plan­ning for that week. Here’s the link.

Ireland has been on a roll in 2022, with several large pharma companies announcing multimillion-euro projects. Now AstraZeneca’s rare disease outfit Alexion is looking to get in on the action.

Alexion on Friday announced a €65 million ($68.8 million) investment in new and enhanced capabilities across two sites in the country, including at College Park in the Dublin suburb of Blanchardstown and the Monksland Industrial Park in the central Irish town of Athlone, according to the Industrial Development Agency of Ireland.

Another biotech standing on shaky financial legs has fallen victim to the bears.

Merck partner 4D Pharma has reported that a key lender, Oxford Finance, shoved the UK company into administration after calling in a $14 million loan they couldn’t immediately make good on. Trading in their stock was halted with a market cap that had fallen to a mere £30 million.

“Despite the very difficult prevailing market conditions,” 4D reported on Friday, the biotech had been making progress on finding some new financing and turned to Oxford with an alternative late on Thursday and then again Friday morning.

Amidst recently broader vaccine manufacturing initiatives from the EU and European companies, the G7 summit in the mountains of Bavaria has brought about some positive news for closing vaccine and medical product manufacturing gaps around the globe.

According to a statement from the White House, the G7 leaders have formally launched the partnership for global infrastructure, PGII. The effort will aim to mobilize hundreds of billions of dollars to deliver infrastructure projects in several sectors including the medical and pharmaceutical manufacturing space.

Some Celgene shareholders aren’t happy with how Bristol Myers Squibb’s takeover went down.

On Friday, a New York federal judge ruled that they have a case against the pharma giant, denying a request to dismiss allegations that it purposely slow-rolled Breyanzi’s approval to avoid paying out $6.4 billion in contingent value rights (CVR).

When Bristol Myers put down $74 billion to scoop up Celgene back in 2019, liso-cel — the CAR-T lymphoma treatment now marketed as Breyanzi — was supposedly one of the centerpieces of the deal. After going back and forth on negotiations for about six months, BMS put $6.4 billion into a CVR agreement that required an FDA approval for Zeposia, Breyanzi and Abecma, each by an established date.