“Phar­ma Bro” Mar­tin Shkre­li seems to be hav­ing a tough time man­ag­ing his cryp­to am­bi­tions. Shkre­li has ap­par­ent­ly sold off a huge share of his own cryp­tocur­ren­cy, caus­ing its val­ue to plum­met, ac­cord­ing to re­ports by Bloomberg News.

Shkre­li had been sen­tenced to sev­en years for his role in de­fraud­ing in­vestors in two of his funds. But it was his de­ci­sion to ac­quire Dara­prim and hike the price 5,000% that trig­gered a pub­lic out­rage.

Af­ter be­ing re­leased from the jail in May, Shkre­li cre­at­ed a Web3 ini­tia­tive called Drug­like, that us­es his own cryp­tocur­ren­cy, Mar­tin Shkre­li Inu. The com­pa­ny plans to of­fer a cloud-based, de­cen­tral­ized com­put­ing net­work for ear­ly-stage drug dis­cov­ery com­pa­nies. He went ahead with the ven­ture de­spite a life­time ban from the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try as well as run­ning a pub­lic com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to Bloomberg, it ap­pears that last week a cryp­to wal­let ac­count named 0xshkre­li.eth, which ap­pears to be­long to Shkre­li, trans­ferred more than 160 bil­lion cryp­to to­kens to an uniden­ti­fied wal­let, fol­low­ing which the to­ken’s val­ue dropped over 90%. When he was asked about the plunge on the so­cial me­dia site Dis­cord, an ac­count like­ly run by Shkre­li re­spond­ed: “I got hacked,” the Bloomberg re­port added.

“Drug­like is a plat­form for de­moc­ra­tiz­ing the ac­cess, costs, and re­wards of ear­ly-stage drug dis­cov­ery,” says the web­site.

Thou­sands of rare dis­eases which lack fund­ing and R&D work are one of the main fo­cus­es of Drug­like. Shkre­li’s com­pa­ny claims the costs will be low enough that it has made the soft­ware “free to use.”

Like most start­up founders claim­ing to dis­rupt an in­dus­try, Shkre­li’s com­pa­ny al­so claims it will “rev­o­lu­tion­ize drug dis­cov­ery.” He, in typ­i­cal Shkre­li fash­ion, goes up against Big Phar­ma in po­si­tion­ing his com­pa­ny’s am­bi­tions.

“We will dis­rupt the eco­nom­ics of the drug busi­ness by al­low­ing a wide pool of in­no­va­tors and con­trib­u­tors, rather than on­ly phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal gi­ants, to prof­it from drug dis­cov­ery,” Shkre­li had said in an ear­li­er state­ment.

Pre-pandemic, the life sciences industry had settled into a pattern. The average drug took 12 years and $2.9 billion to bring to market, and it was an acceptable mode of operations, according to Nimita Limaye, Research Vice President for Life Sciences R&D Strategy and Technology at IDC.

COVID-19 changed that, and served as a proof-of-concept for how technology can truly help life sciences companies succeed and grow, Limaye said. She recently spoke about industry trends at Egnyte’s Life Sciences Summit 2022. You should watch the entire session, free and on-demand, but here’s a brief recap of why she’s urging life sciences companies to embrace digital transformation.

James Sabry’s BD team at Roche has a long track record in hunting the globe for new biotech deals. But they’ve never journeyed into China before to ink a worldwide development and commercialization pact with a China-based biotech on an experimental med.

As Max Gelman reported yesterday, Roche fronted a new alliance with China’s Jemincare with $60 million in cash and $590 million in milestones for worldwide commercial rights to an oral androgen receptor degrader. The deal itself is fairly typical of an early-stage alliance around a promising treatment. The Shanghai-based biotech is largely unknown outside China, but this is a classic high-risk, modest upfront pact that Roche routinely inks.

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Martin Landray knows what controversy in clinical drug development feels like, from first-hand experience.

Landray was the chief architect of RECOVERY, a study that pitted a variety of drugs against Covid-19. And he offered some landmark data that would help push dexamethasone out into broader use as a cheap treatment, while helping ice hydroxy’s reputation as a clear misfire.

“Lots of people told us we shouldn’t use it,” Landray says about dexamethasone and Covid-19. “It was dangerous. We shouldn’t even do a trial. They also cared about hydroxychloroquine and lots of people said we shouldn’t do a trial because it must be used. I’ve got the letters from both sets of people.”

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Geoffrey Porges has ended his two-decade run as a biotech analyst, as the former SVB Securities vice chair began as CFO of Schrödinger on Thursday.

The long-running analyst, who previously headed up vaccines marketing at Merck before the turn of the millennium, will lead the financial operations of the 700-employee company as Schrödinger broadens its focus from a drug discovery partner to also building out an in-house pipeline, with clinical trial No. 1 set to begin next quarter.

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Roche’s Genentech is going high style next month for New York Fashion Week. The pharma is hosting its first-ever runway fashion show to raise disability visibility, featuring models from the spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) community.

“Double Take” will be held Sept. 8, the day before the official New York event begins, with models walking and rolling across the stage wearing stylish and functional adaptive clothing. Eleven people living with SMA and four advocates will show off the custom fashions created by Open Style Lab, a Brooklyn nonprofit and accessible clothing design collaborative.

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As Congress continues to mull whether and how to reform the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway, new research on the pathway continues to crop up, attempting to guide the way for new reforms.

Earlier this week, several prominent researchers from Harvard, UPenn and the Brookings Institution called for new financial incentives to encourage companies to finish the trials necessary to convert accelerated approvals to full approvals, or at least reform how companies are paid after winning an accelerated approval.

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It’s been just two days since Endo International filed for bankruptcy in an attempt to dig itself out of thousands of opioid lawsuits. Now one of its top sellers is in trouble.

A federal appeals court on Thursday affirmed a Delaware judge’s decision that Eagle Pharmaceuticals’ generic version of Endo’s vasopressin injection Vasostrict does not infringe on the company’s patents. Eagle’s version won approval back in December, and already, the generic and others like it have driven down Vasostrict sales.

Another Covid-19 vaccine will enter the fray as the EMA kicks off its conditional marketing authorization application for SK’s vaccine, dubbed Skycovion.

SK Chemicals GmbH submitted data to the EMA on how well the vaccine triggers the production of antibodies against the original strain of SARS-CoV-2, along with data on the safety and quality of the vaccine.

“The evaluation of Skycovion is one of the ongoing evaluations of data on Covid-19 vaccines. As the pandemic continues to evolve, it is important that the EU has a wide array of vaccines and treatments to enable the Member States to combat the pandemic effectively. EMA and its scientific committees are committed to ensuring a robust review of all data on COVID-19 vaccines and medicines,” the EMA said in a statement.

After a nearly 365-day delay, Axsome Therapeutics has secured its first drug approval with an FDA green light for Auvelity as a treatment for adults with major depressive disorder.

The biotech is keeping shy on the pricing for now and, on an investor call, CEO Herriot Tabuteau attributed the FDA’s yearlong delay mainly to the Covid-19 pandemic. The rapid-acting NMDA receptor antagonist is not a scheduled drug under the DEA, the CEO confirmed on the call.

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Bioscience & Technology Business Center The University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas

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