Most genomics, combinatorial chemistry, and other biotech service businesses have been slow to provide clients the anticipated value, either in targets or compounds. Meanwhile, their competitors have caught up, commoditizing the technologies of even the industry leaders. With this lesson in mind, a new group of start-ups, pursuing "validated target discovery" technologies and the possibility of much faster timelines to targets and compounds, is racing to snare high-value partnerships while their technologies still have unique value. The partnerships won't leave all the chemistry and preclinical work to the clients--the low-risk strategy platform companies used to pursue--but will instead pay enough money so that the new start-ups, like Rigel and Arcaris, can create fully-integrated drug discovery platforms capable of producing IND-stage products. These start-ups need to take on the added risk in order to generate the required upside and create the only kind of enduring, high-value intellectual property in the drug industry: products themselves.
by Roger Longman
Scott Salka has had enough of the typical early-stage genomics company. Says the former CFO of positional cloner Sequana Therapeutics:...
Join thousands of industry professionals who rely on In Vivo for daily insights
Already a subscriber?
Against a backdrop of shifting trade policies, the end of multilateral market approaches and renewed focus on supply chain resilience, medtechs are doubling down on innovation in products and processes, and keeping unmet needs and outcomes in the center of the target.
While biopharma companies experiment with genAI, agentic AI is rapidly shifting the work paradigm towards one of autonomous digital workers that can handle entire process flows.
Biotech companies are pursuing diverse AI strategies beyond expensive custom data generation: foundation model fine-tuning, data-efficient computational methods and targeted proprietary datasets. In Vivo takes a look at some examples.
A look at Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly and other companies' late-stage clinical studies of GLP-1 drugs in indications ranging from neurodegeneration to oncology, and alcoholic liver disease to autoimmune conditions.
MedTech Forum 2025 was less MDR-focused than in previous years, as macro issues and exogenous threats were forced further into the center of medtech business thinking.
In a conversation with In Vivo, CEO Jon Congleton discusses Mineralys’s data-rich journey toward an NDA filing, the significance of recent trial wins and how its candidate may offer a dual benefit in blood pressure and renal protection.
Qubit Pharmaceuticals and Sorbonne University launched a quantum AI model that could slash drug synthesis requirements and enable exploration of previously undruggable targets.
