BioCentury This Week

2025 marked the end of a four-year slide in series A financings for biotechs, with 144 biotechs raising an aggregate of $8 billion, up $1 billion from the prior two years. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s Danielle Golovin assesses which companies VCs backed last year and what their investments say about where technology is headed.
Washington Editor Steve Usdin offers a perspective on why compounded Wegovy is an assault on the biopharma industry and also explains how the spending bill signed into law last week is a rebuke to proposed White House biomedical cuts.
And Executive Editor Selina Koch unpacks her interview on The BioCentury Show podcast with neuroscientist and Seaport Chair Steven Paul, noting that while serendipity drives drug discovery in psychiatry, it’s engineering that gets it across the finish line.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658367

#BiotechFinancing #SeriesAFunding #VentureCapital #DrugDiscovery #BiopharmaPolicy

00:00 - Introduction
02:15 - Start-up Spotlight
11:03 - Compounded Wegovy
18:10 - Congress Rebuffs Trump Cuts
23:50 - Steve Paul on Neuropsychiatry

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RNAi and exon-skipping therapies headline the list of regulatory and pivotal data catalysts in 2026, while new lipid-lowering mechanisms, modalities, and precision medicines define cardiovascular disease catalysts this year. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s analysts discuss the most important milestones of the year in new modalities, CV and renal diseases.
The analysts also discuss a new regulation in China introducing orphan drug exclusivity that could incentivize development of rare disease therapies.

Dig into the BioCentury’s catalyst picks and the new China policy below
• 2026 Catalysts: The rise of RNAi
• 2026 Cardiovascular Catalysts: Lp(a) on the Horizon
• 2026 Obesity Catalysts: Launches, readouts and challengers
• 2026 Catalysts: Breakthrough progress in renal disease
• AZ signals all-in on obesity via CSPC deal for $1.2B up front
• China’s orphan drug exclusivity could bolster market, incentivize development

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658286

00:00 - Introduction
02:28 - RNAi and Antisense Therapies
06:37 - Neuromuscular and Musculoskeletal
10:33 - Renal Disease Catalysts
22:26 - China's New Orphan Rules

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New rules in China will accelerate the country’s cell and gene therapy sector by reshaping how investigator-initiated trials are conducted and commercialized. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s analysts discuss the new framework and why it will create a powerful incentive for deploying new gene and cell therapies.
Executive Editor Selina Koch discusses which milestones she is watching in neurology in the year ahead, from psychedelics to Alzheimer's disease. Finally, Senior Biopharma Analyst Danielle Golovin discusses a pair of stories from BioCentury’s Emerging Company Profile series: one focused on Yale spinout Bexorg Inc., which is rethinking CNS drug discovery with a whole-human-brain model, and another on Elkedonia S.A.S., a French start-up aiming at ELK1 to reboot neuroplasticity in depression.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658189

00:00 - Introduction
03:14 - Speeding China's Innovation
10:36 - Neuro Catalysts
22:01 - Newcos

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The biotech bull is back, and buysiders believe this market has staying power for the first time in nearly five years. On a special episode of the BioCentury This Week podcast, Director of Biopharma Intelligence Stephen Hansen and colleagues discuss Hansen’s 2026 Public Markets Preview, which found interest rates, policy in Washington and fundamentals finally aligning and a wave of launches and M&A that could keep capital flowing into the sector.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658154

#BiotechBullMarket #PublicMarkets #BiotechMA #IPOOutlook #FDApolicy

00:00 - Introduction
00:41 - Market Sentiment
07:55 - Biotech's Next Wave
14:47 - Lingering Concerns
23:29 - IPOs
26:47 - M&A

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Next-generation induced proximity technologies are coming of age after a decade of industry focus on PROTACs. On the latest BioCentury This Week podcast, BioCentury’s analysts discuss Senior Biopharma Analyst Danielle Golovin’s four-part analysis of how next-generation targeting chimeras (TACs) are evolving. The analysts assess the $2.2 billion takeout of Rapt Therapeutics by GSK, which gave the pharma an allergy asset that the biotech sourced in China in 2024, and movement in Washington on priority review vouchers, NIH’s budget and the White House’s “most favored nation” drug pricing policy. The analysts also discuss takeaways from their meetings on the sidelines of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

View full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/658112

#InducedProximity #TargetingChimeras #BiotechMA #DrugPricingPolicy #JPMHealthcare

00:00 - Introduction 
03:17 - JPM Highlights
09:17 - GSK's Acquisition of RAPT
14:46 - Next-Generation Targeting Chimeras
21:41 - MFN and Pediatric PRVs
To submit a question to BioCentury’s editors, email the BioCentury This Week team at [email protected].
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