Welcome to Biotech Readout!

Highlighting biotech innovation every week.

This is a newsletter designed for enthusiasts of science and medicine.

Please consider subscribing if one of our content categories piques your interest (see below).

Thank you for your time, and happy reading.

Please feel free to contact us at biotechreadout@gmail.com

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Frontiers in Medicine

Exploring the frontiers of our understanding and treatments for disease.

These include…

Obesity

• Part 1 - Societal perception, recognition as a disease, and the discovery of its hormonal & genetic drivers

• Part 2 - Evolution of treatments: from dark age to golden age

CAR-T

• Part 1 - Immunology Civil War, the discovery of T-cells, and their rebirth as medicines

• Part 2 - Beyond autologous CAR-T: allogeneic, in vivo, and T-cell engagers (TCE)

• Part 3 - How Dr. Georg Schett sparked renaissance in autoimmune disease

China Biotech: Feast or Famine?, examining biotech’s newest innovation engine

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Medical History

Recovering forgotten relics in the history of medicine.

These include…

• Listerine to Lipitor, a 173-year pharmaceutical odyssey of Warner-Lambert

Some non-medical history too:

• AI and the Decline of Artisanal Labor, Part 1, What the 1st and 2nd Industrial Revolutions tell us about the future of artificial intelligence (AI)

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Acquisitions

Exploring the innovation behind acquired companies.

These include…

Science-driven companies, which start with a novel research finding or biological thesis:

• Eli Lilly to Acquire 4E Therapeutics, Ted Price’s hunt for non-opioid painkillers pays off

• J&J to Acquire Firefly Bio, an ADC degrader play with a Nobel and rock & roll twist

• Incyte to Acquire Vega, a bold bet on novel discoveries in a rare bleeding disorder pays off

• GSK to Acquire Nuvalent, bolting on a three-headed hydra of targeted lung cancer drugs

• Eli Lilly to Acquire Engage Bio, a founder-led startup aiming to solve gene therapy’s “last mile” problem

• Bayer to Acquire Perfuse, a long-acting diabetic eye disease play

• Chiesi to Acquire KalVista, an oral HAE play

• Eli Lilly to Acquire Ajax, a differentiated JAK play

• Eli Lilly to Acquire Kelonia, digging into the in vivo CAR-T gold rush

• Eli Lilly to Acquire Vaccine with a Neurological Twist, re-entering the vaccine market with multiple sclerosis upside

Me-better companies, which involve experienced management teams (often serial entrepreneurs) building a pipeline of drugs that are potentially better versions of successful drugs (sometimes but not always in-licensed drugs):

• Biogen to Acquire RayThera, Qing Dong and Gene Hung pull off a third act with oral immunology me-betters

• UCB to Acquire Candid, scooping a reverse merger for a TCE pipeline

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Weekly Readout

A digest of new clinical data from the past week.

These include…

Landmark events in medine:

• GLP-1 Obesity medicines

  • 1st obesity medicine with weight loss similar to bariatric surgery

  • 1st clinical trial of obesity drug semaglutide in alcohol use disorder

  • Real-world data showing GLP-1 use is associated with less aggressive cancer

• 1st FDA-approval of an aldosterone synthase inhibitor for hypertension

• 1st FDA-approval of a PROTAC

• 1st FDA-approval for genetic hearing loss

Potentially first-in-disease medicines, based on positive clinical data:

• In alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency (AATD)

• In non-obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (nHCM)

• In primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC)

• in vivo CRISPR gene-editing therapy

• Oral non-hormonal treatment for hair loss in nearly 30 year

• Dueling datasets in gene therapies for potentially long-lasting cholesterol reduction

Potentially best-in-disease or best-in-class medicines, based on positive clinical data:

• For difficult-to-treat rheumatoid arthritis

• For second-line HR+ HER2- metastatic breast cancer regardless of PIK3CA mutation status

• For hidradenitis huppurativa (HS)

• For inactive thyroid eye disease (TED)

• For plaque psoriasis

• For 1st line non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)

• For Hepatitis B

• For atopic dermatitis

Exciting data from medical conferences:

• ADA 2026, summer’s hottest obesity & diabetes conference

• EULAR 2026, reviewing innovation from Europe’s largest immunology conference

• ASCO 2026 Awards, major survival wins in pancreatic, breast, and skin cancer

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