Biocom California’s Global Life Science Partnering & Investor Conference kicked off with a panel discussion focused on artificial intelligence (AI) in drug discovery. While there’s been a lot of hype over how AI and machine learning have the potential to help companies speed up drug development, panelists hypothesized the largest opportunities are in developing new capabilities, potentially increasing the success rate going from discovery to regulatory approval.

Drug pricing is playing an outsized role in the dynamics of the November U.S. election, creating turbulence for drug companies and for patients that will extend years after the votes are counted. During a Feb. 27 morning session on drug pricing trends during an election year at the BIO CEO & Investor Conference in New York, key opinion leaders spoke about their concerns, including the need to explain drug-pricing rationale to voters and patients in plain terms.

Companies and investors, well aware of the natural up and down fluctuations of the market, keep expecting the current downturn to end. They’ve been expecting it to begin an upturn for the past two years. During a Feb. 26 session on venture capital trends at the BIO CEO & Investor Conference in New York, investors said the tough times might well extend further into 2024 than they would like.

The biological processes giving rise to the central nervous system symptoms of long COVID remain a mystery. But multiple studies suggest they do not appear to be a result of a direct viral infection of brain tissue. The latest such research, which appeared online in Nature Neuroscience on Feb. 16, 2024, demonstrated that local immune response in brain tissues persisted long after SARS-CoV-2 virus had disappeared.

4DMT Molecular Therapeutics Inc. is looking ahead to phase III as positive data continue to roll out for gene therapy candidate 4D-150 in wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), with the results from the phase II portion of the phase I/II Prism trial showing the single-shot treatment significantly reduced the need for chronic anti-VEGF injections. Presented over the weekend at the Angiogenesis, Exudation, and Degeneration 2024 Conference, results from the 24-week dose-expansion cohort, which comprised wet AMD patients with severe disease and high treatment burdens, showed patients receiving the high dose (3E10 vg/eye) had a 90% reduction in annualized anti-VEGF injection rates.

Shares of Corbus Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:CRBP) doubled on opening Jan. 26 and ended the day up a whopping 249% as investors got a look at data from a first-in-human study testing next-generation Nectin-4-targeted antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) CRB-701. Licensed from CSPC Pharmaceutical Group for $7.5 million up front in February 2023, CRB-701 has IND clearance from the U.S. FDA, and Corbus plans to start its own clinical testing in the first quarter of 2024.

Setting the tone for the biopharma industry as it enters a new year, the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference (JPM) held each January has once again led to reflections, projections and earnest hopes for improving financial and M&A markets. Despite concerns over valuations, raising money and pricing issues, industry leaders are generally upbeat as the industry moves into 2024. JPM’s Sophie Jones, managing director of health care investment banking, noted in a Jan. 18 webinar sponsored by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization that the conference included more than 700 companies. “It’s morphing now into really the kickoff into everybody’s year.”