iShares Biotechnology ETF

Chamath support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Medicare price negotiation compresses pharma pricing power and biotech returns E92 · 2022-08-20 ▶ 1:26:49

And, you know, they're in the midst right now of completing a massive facility. I think it's in Virginia where they'll be able to make as much insulin as is needed for the entirety of America for no more than 35 bucks a dose.

Sacks support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Medicare price negotiation compresses pharma pricing power and biotech returns E92 · 2022-08-20 ▶ 1:25:52

Well, I mean, you're saying that these drug companies are going to make a lot less money. Well, obviously, that's going to have a downstream impact in the willingness to fund new drugs, new investment, new R&D.

Friedberg support ×2 ▼ on 🏛️ Medicare price negotiation compresses pharma pricing power and biotech returns E92 · 2022-08-20 ▶ 1:22:34

And so I'm hopeful that this will actually provide a more effective market force in allowing the biggest customer in the market to negotiate prices and that the VCs, instead of making 48% IRR, they'll ultimately make 28% IRR on the investments that they're making in biotech startups.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on 🤖 AlphaFold's open proteome kickstarts a drug-discovery wave E85 · 2022-06-30 ▶ 1:32:47

And that opens up a whole new area of research in medicine, gene therapy, and new things that we can think about targeting to fix a lot of these underlying diseases. ... It's an incredible example of how AlphaFold has been used to solve this really misunderstood or never really well understood aspect of biology that is at the root cause of so much of disease and creates all this opportunity for medicine and therapeutics, research and discovery.

Friedberg reversal ×2 ▲ on 📈 FDA's loosened approval bar creates markets — capital floods the biotech complex E80 · 2022-05-13 ▶ 29:08

roughly one third of public biotech stocks are trading below cash. ... But because the capital markets are gone now for them, or the assumption is, hey, there's not going to be any capital left

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 📈 FDA's loosened approval bar creates markets — capital floods the biotech complex E59 · 2021-12-17 ▶ 1:09:02

they really kind of struggled for years to find the right footing of what's the right business model and the right product and the FDA kind of struggled with approving this stuff. And then boom, COVID hit. ... I think there's now a few, a handful of these RNA interference products that have been approved by the FDA. And we're now starting to see many more of these cancer and immunotherapy drugs start to get approved as RNA therapies.

Friedberg support ×3 ▲ on 🤖 AlphaFold's open proteome kickstarts a drug-discovery wave E41 · 2021-07-23 ▶ 50:02

They've unlocked it with software and they're making it freely available. And there will be hundreds of drug companies that will now start because of what's in that database.

Sacks support ×2 ▲ on 📈 FDA's loosened approval bar creates markets — capital floods the biotech complex E35 · 2021-06-13 ▶ 17:08

But going to the sort of larger issue of FDA approval, I would make it a little bit easier to get drugs approved. I mean, look, I think that double-blind test is the gold standard. If the drug clearly doesn't work, you don't approve it. But this is a case where the evidence is a little bit inconclusive.

Friedberg support ×2 ▲ on 📈 FDA's loosened approval bar creates markets — capital floods the biotech complex E35 · 2021-06-13 ▶ 23:27

Companies are going to rush in, they're going to try and get 10 things approved. Everyone's going to be taking an Alzheimer's drug in a couple of years because there's going to be so many available on the market. And none of them may actually be curing Alzheimer's.

Chamath support ×3 ▲ on 📈 FDA's loosened approval bar creates markets — capital floods the biotech complex E35 · 2021-06-13 ▶ 20:55

they applied an extremely aggressive free market approach to a market that has been completely bereft of solutions. ... And so if you can create a hundred billion dollar market overnight, I think it stands to reason that a lot of people will look at the increase in Biogen's market cap and the profits that Biogen can make over the next 10 or 15 years and say, I will attack that and do that cheaper, faster, better. It happens in every other market.