Trou­bled poop-test­ing start­up uBio­me an­nounces plans for liq­ui­da­tion

Your fa­vorite, fun-lov­ing, poop-test­ing, bac­te­ria-div­ing, un­der fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion, bank­rupt start­up with the pos­si­bly fun­da­men­tal­ly flawed sci­ence is — alas — shut­ting down.

uBio­me has filed to con­vert its Chap­ter 11 bank­rupt­cy in­to a Chap­ter 7 liq­ui­da­tion, all but spelling the end for a once soar­ing com­pa­ny that part­nered with re­searchers at Har­vard and Stan­ford and wooed Sil­i­con Val­ley in­vestors, but ul­ti­mate­ly found it­self ow­ing po­ten­tial­ly hun­dreds of mil­lions to health­care com­pa­nies, lay­ing off half of its staff and un­der fed­er­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion for its billing prac­tices.

The news comes bare­ly a year af­ter the com­pa­ny an­nounced an $83 mil­lion fund­ing round and the hir­ing of for­mer No­var­tis CEO Joe Jimenez to head a new R&D arm in Cam­bridge, MA.

What went wrong?

From their 2012 crowd-sourced found­ing un­til the first lay­offs came this Jan­u­ary, it seemed Ubio­me could do no wrong. They were 23andMe for your gut, a young com­pa­ny with young, telegenic founders of­fer­ing a warm face to a hot new sci­ence. They promised to map your mi­cro­bio­me, the 3-pound bac­te­r­i­al ecosys­tem sci­en­tists on­ly re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered had wide im­pacts on your health, from di­ges­tion to men­tal health. Their web­site home page sent “A warm wel­come to you. And your 39 tril­lion bac­te­ria.”

Their pre­mier ser­vice was Ex­plor­er. Orig­i­nal­ly priced at $400, it of­fered to test your stool sam­ple and give back all sorts of health-re­lat­ed ad­vice. Since then, they’ve widened their fo­cus to in­clude vagi­nal health and STDs women face.

But while their blog of­fered fun tips about di­et, sleep and “could your sum­mer fling change your mi­cro­bio­me?” some re­searchers were sound­ing alarms. They of­fered the same warn­ing re­searchers gave about 23andMe’s first for­ays in­to health-re­lat­ed ad­vice: It’s too soon and the sci­ence isn’t there. (23andMe has since gained FDA ap­proval for sev­er­al health-re­lat­ed ser­vices).

Ian Lip­kin Co­lum­bia

“I don’t think we know enough yet about the mi­cro­bio­me to be able to ad­vice peo­ple as to how they should mod­i­fy their di­et or change their lifestyles based on a kit of this sort,” Co­lum­bia epi­demi­ol­o­gist Ian Lip­kin told The At­lantic’s James Ham­blin in a 2016 video, of­fer­ing a 10-year time­frame for when the sci­ence will be ready.

In that video, uBio­me told the quite svelte Ham­blin that based on his test that he had the mi­cro­bio­me of an over­weight, de­pressed man. He did not con­firm the de­pres­sion sug­ges­tion.

The first sign of trou­ble came in Jan­u­ary, when the start­up cut 55 jobs out of its 300-per­son work­force, re­port­ed­ly to fo­cus on drugs and part­ner­ships. In May, founders Jes­si­ca Rich­man and Zac Apte were placed on leave as the FBI be­gan an in­quiry in­to the com­pa­ny’s billing process. This sum­mer, Busi­ness In­sid­er re­port­ed the com­pa­ny had laid off half its staff and that its sci­ence may have been flawed from the start.

They filled for Chap­ter 11 at the be­gin­ning of Sep­tem­ber. Court doc­u­ments re­vealed they may owe hun­dreds of mil­lions to health­care com­pa­nies, BI re­port­ed.

Has the mo­ment fi­nal­ly ar­rived for val­ue-based health­care?

RBC Capital Markets’ Healthcare Technology Analyst, Sean Dodge, spotlights a new breed of tech-enabled providers who are rapidly transforming the way clinicians deliver healthcare, and explores the key question: can this accelerating revolution overturn the US healthcare system?

Key points

Tech-enabled healthcare providers are poised to help the US transition to value, not volume, as the basis for reward.
The move to value-based care has policy momentum, but is risky and complex for clinicians.
Outsourced tech specialists are emerging to provide the required expertise, while healthcare and tech are also converging through M&A.
Value-based care remains in its early stages, but the transition is accelerating and represents a huge addressable market.

FDA ad­vi­sors unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval for Bio­gen's ALS drug

A panel of outside advisors to the FDA unanimously recommended that the agency grant accelerated approval to Biogen’s ALS drug tofersen despite the drug failing the primary goal of its Phase III study, an endorsement that could pave a path forward for the treatment.

By a 9-0 vote, members of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Drugs Advisory Committee said there was sufficient evidence that tofersen’s effect on a certain protein associated with ALS is reasonably likely to predict a benefit for patients. But panelists stopped short of advocating for a full approval, voting 3-5 against (with one abstention) and largely citing the failed pivotal study.

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Alaa Halawa, executive director at Mubadala’s US venture group

The ven­ture crew at Mubadala are up­ping their biotech cre­ation game, tak­ing care­ful aim at a new fron­tier in drug de­vel­op­ment

It started with a cup of coffee and a slow burning desire to go early and long in the biotech creation business.

Wrapping up a 15-year discovery stint at Genentech back in the summer of 2021, Rami Hannoush was treated to a caffeine-fueled review of the latest work UCSF’s Jim Wells had been doing on protein degradation — one of the hottest fields in drug development.

“Jim and I have known each other for the past 15 years through Genentech collaborations. We met over coffee, and he was telling me about this concept of the company that he was thinking of,” says Hannoush. “And I got immediately intrigued by it because I knew that this could open up a big space in terms of adding a new modality in drug discovery that is desperately needed in pharma.”

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Sanofi, Re­gen­eron boast PhI­II win with Dupix­ent in COPD, clear­ing first bar for ex­pan­sion

Dupixent, the blockbuster anti-inflammatory drug from Sanofi and Regeneron, has cleared a high-stakes Phase III study in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the companies announced Thursday morning.

If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

Chat­G­PT with phar­ma da­ta de­buts for med­ical meet­ings, be­gin­ning with AACR

What do you get when you combine ChatGPT generative AI technology with specific pharma and clinical datasets? A time-saving tool that can answer questions about medical conference abstracts and clinical findings in seconds in one new application from ZoomRx called FermaGPT.

ZoomRx is debuting a public version of its generative AI product specifically for medical conferences beginning this week for the upcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting that runs April 14-19.

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Vas Narasimhan, Novartis CEO (Gian Ehrenzeller/Keystone via AP)

No­var­tis pulls the plug on UK-based car­dio­vas­cu­lar study

Novartis is calling off a UK-based trial for Leqvio in the primary prevention of cardiovascular events in patients with high cholesterol, the company confirmed on Wednesday.

The Swiss pharma giant made the decision after “careful evaluation,” a spokesperson told Endpoints News via email. The trial, dubbed ORION-17, was planned in partnership with England’s National Health Service (NHS) and was part of the company’s strategy to establish Leqvio as a standard of care in cardiovascular disease management.

FDA re­jects Ab­b­Vie's in­fu­sion ther­a­py for Parkin­son's, re­quests more in­fo on pump de­vice

The FDA rejected AbbVie’s 24-hour infusion therapy for Parkinson’s, saying it needs more information on a device used to administer the treatment before it can clear it.

The Chicago-area drugmaker said in a press release that the complete response letter from the agency didn’t include any requests for more efficacy or safety trials related to the drug, known as ABBV-951. The company said it aims to “resubmit the NDA as soon as possible.”

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Quince Ther­a­peu­tics faces takeover bid from share­hold­er Echo Lake Cap­i­tal

A bid to take over the biotech Quince Therapeutics has been put forward by one of its shareholders.

On Tuesday, Echo Lake Capital sent a letter to Quince’s board of directors putting forth a proposal to acquire all the biotech’s stock for $1.60 per share, which would value a takeover at around $58 million.

In the letter, Echo Lake said that it believes Quince’s stock is severely undervalued and that no drugs are being actively marketed or developed that require cash expenditures. It’s trading below the value of its assets, Echo Lake said.

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Rohan Palekar, 89bio CEO

89bio’s PhII da­ta add to quick suc­ces­sion of NASH read­outs as field seeks turn­around

89bio said its drug was better than placebo at lessening fibrosis without worsening nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, in two of three dose groups.

The San Francisco biotech said it thinks the Phase IIb data pave the way for a potential Phase III, following in the footsteps of another biotech in its drug class, Akero Therapeutics. To fund a late-stage study, CEO Rohan Palekar told Endpoints News 89bio “would need to raise additional capital,” with the company having about $188 million at the end of last year.