Biotech week ahead, Feb. 10

Biotech stocks recovered last week along with the broader markets, which bounced back from a China coronavirus-induced sell-off.
Big pharma earnings took the spotlight, with Merck & Co., Inc. MRK 0.66%, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co BMY 1.3%, Gilead Sciences, Inc. GILD 0.97% and AbbVie Inc ABBV 5.77% among the notable ones reporting in the week. Merck surprised the markets by announcing plans to spin-off its slow-growing Women’s Health, Legacy Brands and Biosimilars business.
Here’re the key biotech catalysts for the unfolding week.

Conferences

Bio CEO & Investor Conference: Feb. 10-11 in New York
16th Annual WORLDSymposium: Feb. 10-13 in Orlando, Florida
Guggenheim Healthcare Talks/Oncology Day: Feb. 13 in New York
ASCO 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium: Feb. 13-15 in San Francisco, California

Adcom Meeting

FDA’s Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee is scheduled to meet Friday to discuss the modified risk tobacco product applications submitted by 22nd Century Group Inc XXII 1.38% for VLN King and VLN Menthol King combusted, filtered cigarettes. The company projects these tobacco products to be “very low nicotine content” cigarettes.

Clinical Readouts

Avrobio Inc AVRO 2.45% will present at the 2020 WORLDSymposium updates for its investigational programs in Fabry disease and cystinosis as well as data from the first clinical use of its plato gene therapy platform. At an analyst and investor event scheduled for Monday, the company will present updates on Phase 1/2 clinical trial of AVR-RD-04, an investigational gene therapy for cystinosis, and Phase 2 study of AVR-RD-01 in Fabry disease.
Regenxbio Inc RGNX 1.45% will make poster presentation of interim data from the Phase 1/2 trial of its investigational gene therapy RGX-121 for the treatment of Mucopolysaccharidosis Type II. The presentation is scheduled for Wednesday.
ASCO 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium Presentations
Exelixis, Inc. EXEL 2.09%: Phase 1b data for cabozantinib and Roche Holdings AG Basel ADR Common Stock’s RHHBY 0.26% Tecentriq in solid tumors (Thursday)
Advaxis, Inc. ADXS 6.59%: Phase 1/2 data for ADXS-PSA and Merck’s Keytruda from the KEYNOTE-046 study in castrate-resistant prostate cancer (Thursday)
TrovaGene Inc TROV 0.55%: new Phase 2 data for onvansertib and zytiga in prostate cancer (Thursday)
Corvus Pharmaceuticals Inc CRVS 6.7%: updated Phase 1b/2 data for CPI-444 in solid tumors

Earnings

Monday

• Allergan plc AGN 2.27% (before the market open)
• Aethlon Medical, Inc. AEMD (after the close)

Tuesday

• EXACT Sciences Corporation EXAS 0.35% (after the close)
• Wednesday
• Kala Pharmaceuticals Inc KALA 4.51% (before the market open)
• Veru Inc VERU 1.17% (before the market open)

Thursday

• Alkermes Plc ALKS 0.89% (before the market open)
• Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc AGIO 0.35% (before the market open)
• Acorda Therapeutics Inc ACOR 3.35% (before the market open)
• Blueprint Medicines Corp BPMC 0.5% (before the market open)
• Evelo Biosciences Inc EVLO 4.57% (before the market open)
• Genocea Biosciences Inc GNCA 3.64% (before the market open)
• Incyte Corporation INCY 2.2% (before the market open)
• Zoetis Inc ZTS 0.13% (before the market open)
• West Pharmaceutical Services Inc. WST 0.84% (before the market open)
• Karyopharm Therapeutics Inc KPTI 0.29% (before the market open)
• Ironwood Pharmaceuticals, Inc. IRWD 2.36% (before the market open)
• DexCom, Inc. DXCM 0.51% (after the close)
• Urovant Sciences Ltd UROV 7.25% (after the close)
• Shockwave Medical Inc SWAV 0.02% (after the close)
• Ultragenyx Pharmaceutical Inc RARE 0.17% (after the close)

Friday

• ImmunoGen, Inc. IMGN 5.11% (before the market open)

• IPOs

Revolution Medicines, a biotech developing targeted cancer therapies using RAS pathway inhibitors, has filed to offer 10 million shares in an IPO, which is expected to be priced between $14 and $16. The company expects its shares to be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “RVMD.”
IPO Quiet Period Expiry
I-Mab IMAB 0.46%
https://www.benzinga.com/general/biotech/20/02/15280585/the-week-ahead-in-biotech-smid-cap-earnings-in-the-spotlight

How Congress Can Make Real Progress on Drug Prices

Summary

The Lower Drug Costs Now Act (H.R. 3) would impose federal price controls on prescription medicines. The bill would limit Americans’ access to lifesaving therapies, impede the development of new treatments for deadly and debilitating diseases, and inflict harm that vastly exceeds the budgetary savings it promises. Congress should reject the policies of H.R. 3 and pursue drug-pricing reforms that encourage innovation. Specifically, Congress should reform Medicare prescription drug payment programs and practices that prevent affordable generic medicines from coming to market.

Key Takeaways

To combat rising prescription drug costs, Congress should address flawed government policies and provide relief for patients and taxpayers.

Congress can start by rejecting H.R. 3, which would limit access to life-saving medicines, impede development of new cures, and inflict harm on Americans.

Congress should reform Medicare prescription drug programs and ban anti-competitive practices that prevent affordable generic medicines from coming to market.

The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote this week on H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act, which would impose federal price controls on prescription medicines. The bill would limit Americans’ access to lifesaving therapies, impede the development of new treatments for deadly and debilitating diseases, and inflict harm that vastly exceeds the budgetary savings it promises.
Congress should reject the policies of H.R. 3 and pursue drug-pricing reforms that encourage innovation. Specifically, Congress should reform Medicare prescription drug payment programs and practices that prevent affordable generic medicines from coming to market. Such reforms include restructuring the Medicare Part D program to protect seniors from high out-of-pocket drug spending and refining federal laws that brand-name manufacturers are exploiting to prevent competition from generics.
These proposals enjoy overwhelming support among both parties in the House and Senate and could be signed into law by the President. All proposals are included in an alternative bill (H.R. 19) released by House Republicans on December 6.1

H.R. 19, The Lower Costs, More Cures Act, section-by-section summary released by House Republicans, December 6, 2019. H.R. 19, as outlined in this document, contains many proposals approved with bipartisan votes by the Senate HELP Committee (S. 1895, The Lower Health Care Costs Act) and the Senate Finance Committee (S. 2543, The Prescription Drug Pricing Reduction Act).

Acting on these reforms would provide relief from high prescription drug prices, while fostering continued medical innovation that will cure diseases, lengthen life expectancy, and improve quality of life. [MORE]
https://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/how-congress-can-make-real-progress-drug-prices

Surprise Medical Bill Legislation Opens Door to Medicare for All

It sounds good, eliminating “surprise” medical bills that patients sometimes receive from hospitals and providers when their services aren’t covered by insurance. This happens sometimes when patients go to a hospital or emergency room and receive services from a doctor who is out of network.
But what if it’s the government stepping in to stop the surprise bills? Government usually messes things up when it gets involved. And even worse, this would open the door to Medicare for All. This is government price controls or rate-setting. One doctor fully admits Medicare for All is the way to fix surprise medical billing. Left-wing billionaire John Arnold, who established the Laura and John Arnold Foundation to support left-wing causes, is pushing this congressional fix.
Several conservative groups oppose the legislation, including FreedomWorks and Club for Growth. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance and the National Taxpayers Union are spending money on ads opposing the bill. Big insurance companies favor the bill.
Doctors oppose it too. Nearly 900 doctors and smaller practices said the proposal could have “devastating unintended consequences” on physicians. In a strongly worded letter to leaders in Congress, they warn that the heavy-handed solution would “severely impact small practices by eliminating what few incentives remain for insurers to negotiate fairly with us, therefore driving further consolidation within health care, and triggering ensuing cost increases.” If this consolidation happens, “health care costs could increase by as much as 30 percent.” It would allow insurers to shift more costs over to patients by using higher deductibles and other cost-sharing measures. CEO William Thorwarth of the American College of Radiology points out that the bill does not prevent insurers from simply keeping any monetary savings to themselves, rather than passing them along to patients. The Federation of American Hospitals says the bill takes two steps forward and three steps back.

According to Beau Rothschild, former outreach director for the Committee on House Administration, doctors and patients are the victims of surprise medical billing. “The insurance companies purposely draw narrow coverage plans and do everything they can to not pay out claims.” Additionally, “patients are given very confusing contracts about coverage that the insurers purposely make very difficult to get reimbursed for care out of coverage.” He says patients shouldn’t have to become experts in coverage in order to figure out what will be paid. Doctors are victims because they get blamed for insurance’s deliberately confusing language.
The legislation is offered by one of the most left-leaning members of the Senate, Patty Murray (D-Wash.). Other co-sponsors include Senate HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.).
Rep. Kevin Brady (Texas), the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, and Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, released a competing bill favored by doctors and hospitals. It would ban surprise medical bills, but would let a neutral third party in an independent dispute resolution process determine how much the insurer should pay the doctor if an agreement can’t be made. Some of the conservative groups suppose this alternative legislation, as does the American College of Radiology.
Out of the Middle, a coalition of physicians, says the independent dispute resolution process is working in New York where it has been implemented. According to the New York State Department of Financial Services, IDR has successfully saved consumers $400 million and reduced out-of-network billing 34 percent.

Surprise medical bills are a problem. A study published in the journal Health Affairs found that anesthesiologists, pathologists, radiologists and assistant surgeons at in-network hospitals billed out of network in about 10% of cases. Another study found that over 1 in 5 patients who went to in-network emergency departments were treated by out-of-network emergency physicians.

Unfortunately, the media is not reporting the full picture. Articles like this don’t bother to mention that health care costs for consumers will increase if this type of legislation is passed. That patient who was forced to file bankruptcy due to a surprise medical bill? Now they’ll merely have to file bankruptcy due to costs being increased in other areas. The article explains how Washington state just passed a law ending surprise medical billing. Even if Congress doesn’t pass legislation, some individual states are implementing it. The bill is likely to make it to President Trump. With bipartisan support, there is a real concern that it will make it into law.

https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2020/02/03/surprise-medical-bill-legislation-opens-door-to-medicare-for-all-n2560579

Relatively painless way to curb retiree health care costs: Look to North Carolina

It’s often reported that underfunded public employee pension systems create barriers to state and local governments’ ability to provide ample public services like education, parks, and libraries. Too often overlooked, however, is another looming fiscal challenge: the rising costs of paying for health insurance for America’s retired public employees.
The Federal Reserve estimates that the long-term liability for providing medical coverage (technically called Other Post-Employment Benefits, or OPEB) for retired public workers is over $1 trillion. These retirement benefits vary widely across the country but can cover early retirees who are ineligible for Medicare as well as older retirees on Medicare. The costs of this coverage constrain what governments can do to address pressing problems and have even contributed to a few cities filing for bankruptcy.
The good news is that a few states have tackled the OPEB problem—and they provide lessons for others. Consider North Carolina. The state had run up a staggering OPEB liability of $34.4 billion—or $3,200 per resident. In 2017, the State Treasurer’s office found that pensions and retiree health care were approaching 20% of the state’s general fund budget—effectively “crowding out” other critical services. Since the General Accounting Standards Board (GASB) now requires state and local governments to report these liabilities in their annual financial reports, officials were worried about the impression this gave about the state’s fiscal health.
Rather than wait for a crisis, North Carolina took steps to phase out its retiree medical costs in an orderly and predictable fashion. First, in 2006, it raised the required years of service to qualify for retiree health care from five to 20 years. Second, in 2017, the state eliminated health insurance benefits for retirees hired after Jan. 1, 2021.
The result will be a steady decline in the number of workers qualifying for OPEB over the next two decades until it reaches zero in 2041. The state will begin to realize budget savings over the next decade and can then either spend those savings productively or return them to taxpayers. Either bodes well for North Carolina’s fiscal sustainability and economic climate.
North Carolina demonstrates that the politics of reforming retiree medical coverage can be overcome. The problem is that to reform OPEB and the fiscal drain it represents, governments or workers must make greater financial contributions to the plans, or benefits must be cut. Yet neither governments nor workers want to pay more—and of course workers don’t want their benefits cut. Reform has thus proved intractable in many states.

North Carolina’s approach was especially effective because it eliminated benefits only for new hires. Current workers are not losing anything that was promised to them when they were hired, which helped the state avoid a confrontation with public employee unions.
Furthermore, cutting retiree health benefits is hardly as draconian as it sounds. First, few workers actually stay on the job long enough to qualify for these benefits. In other words, retiree health care is a promised benefit that few workers ever enjoy. Second, many employees who retire before they are eligible for Medicare now have alternatives through the Obamacare exchanges—and some may be able to secure coverage through their spouse or new employment in the private sector.
Third, alternatives to government health care plans exist to allow employees to keep their benefits. Public employees or their unions could create Retiree Medical Trusts (RMTs), which are defined-contribution plans for medical benefits. These trusts would be run by and for their beneficiaries, thus offering greater autonomy and control. Police and firefighters in several West Coast states have already initiated such programs.
North Carolina’s experiment can serve as a model for other states in similar fiscal and political circumstances. States that are home to high retiree medical liabilities and relatively weak public sector unions are especially well-positioned to emulate North Carolina’s OPEB reforms. These include Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas.
State and local governments should consider the trade-off of retiree health care. Only a small slice of employees spend their entire careers in public service in the same state to qualify for benefits, and there is limited evidence that these benefits help governments attract and retain a high-quality workforce. Meanwhile, by reducing and ultimately eliminating these benefits, states and localities will be able to provide better services to their residents, improve their bond ratings, and enhance their business climate. The benefits of OPEB are clearly outweighed by its outsize cost. Other states should look to North Carolina and stop putting off this critical reform.
Daniel DiSalvo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, and a professor of political science at the City College of New York-CUNY. He is the author of the recent report “North Carolina’s OPEB Experiment: Defusing the State Debt Bomb.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/want-a-relatively-painless-way-to-curb-retiree-health-care-costs-look-to-north-carolina-2020-02-06

January price increases confirm slowing drug inflation

• Big pharmaceutical companies raised list prices an average of 5% in their annual January adjustments, the smallest increase since at least 2014, according to analysts from the investment bank Raymond James. The analysis comes ahead of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, where he is expected to announce a new drug-price control initiative.
• The bank’s analysis, based on data from IQVIA and Wolters Kluwers, found big pharma is raising prices of more drugs than they were in the era of double-digit price hikes, with 2,227 having gone up in January.
• The U.S. government’s measures show drug prices overall have been flat or even in decline. While the bank’s analysis doesn’t back up that finding, it does confirm a picture of moderating price inflation, likely due to payer and public pressure.

Raymond James analyst Elliot Wilbur’s note covers wholesale acquisition cost, or WAC, increases, the list prices set by drugmakers. It is not the price actually paid by most customers, which are big insurers that negotiate discounts and rebates to establish a “net price.”
However, it is a useful indicator of the expected level of net price increases. While drugmakers increase prices throughout the year, a declining number are being announced after January, making the early-year hikes the key barometer.
Since 2014, January price increases from 25 big companies have declined steadily from 12% to 5.2% in 2019. The declining trend has coincided with a rising concern about drug prices first triggered by the launch of hepatitis C cures at $1,000 per pill. It has been carried on by expensive life-extending cancer cell therapies and gene therapies whose price tags exceed $1 million.
“Given the transparency the public and the government is continually seeking from the industry, combined with administration initiatives to slow the rate of list price increase levels, WAC list price increases should continue to trend toward the low to mid-single digits with longer-term potential to reach levels consistent with changes in overall inflation metrics,” Wilbur wrote.

Big pharma January price increases by year.

Year	Mean price increase	Total number of price increases
2014	12%	1,579
2015	11%	1,872
2016	9%	2,025
2017	8%	2,132
2018	8%	2,383
2019	6%	2,103
2020	5%	2,227

SOURCE: Raymond James, IQVIA, Wolters Kluwers

In January, the company with the biggest average price increase was, surprisingly, generics giant Teva Pharmaceuticals, at 6.4% over 36 products. The smallest was AstraZeneca at 2.8% over 31 drugs.
Pfizer raised prices on the most drugs, 226, yielding a mean increase of 5.1%. Subsidiary Hospira was counted as a separate line item in this analysis — it raised prices on 26 products. Spanish blood-products specialist Grifols raised on the least, with a 3.4% increase.
The Trump administration has promised to bring drug price inflation down even more, although it has struggled to implement initiatives like banning drug price rebates in Medicare and Medicaid and forcing pharmaceutical manufacturers to show list prices in direct-to-consumer advertisements.
In Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, Trump is expected to announce a regulation to bring physician-administered injectable drugs more in line with international prices through a Medicare competitive bidding program.
https://www.biopharmadive.com/news/january-drug-price-increase-trump-state-union/571676/

Bright idea in dentist’s office leads to innovative smoking cessation project

While sitting in the dentist’s office, Hollings Cancer Center researcher Matthew Carpenter, Ph.D., of the Medical University of South Carolina, had a bright idea.
As he received his goody bag with dental hygiene products, he wondered why not conduct a study and have primary care providers do the same thing for their patients who use tobacco. The bags would contain educational material, free lozenges and tobacco cessation medications to encourage people to stop smoking.

Results from the study, recently published online in Addiction, weren’t surprising to Carpenter. He and colleagues found providing smokers with a free, two?week starter kit of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) increased quit attempts, use of stop smoking medications, and smoking abstinence as compared with standard care in a primary care setting.
“Not a day went by in this study when I was not excited by it because I knew that we were having an impact on real patients in the real world with their doctors,” Carpenter said. “This gets the patients to know that their doctor cares, and they have something they can use right now.”
Carpenter believes a smoker’s annual visit to the doctor creates the perfect window of opportunity for a physician to provide a quick intervention, while providing tools to help smokers begin the process of quitting. Along with advice on why and how a patient should stop smoking, a person should be able to walk away with a product they can use immediately to try and stop their dependence on nicotine.
“About 70 percent of smokers will see their primary care providers on a yearly basis,” Carpenter said. “It’s a clinical encounter to do something, but I think we can offer them tools other than words.”
In the U.S., 34 million adults currently smoke cigarettes and nearly 70 percent of U.S. adults who smoke say they want to quit, according to the 2020 Surgeon General’s Report.
The $2 million study, Tobacco Intervention in Primary Care: Treatment Opportunities for Providers, also known as Tip Top, included 22 clinics throughout South Carolina and was conducted in collaboration with the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). A total of 1,245 patients participated in the study.
The study included 652 patients from 12 of the clinics who only received advice on the importance of quitting smoking. The remaining 593 patients at 10 clinics were provided with samples of medication to use including nicotine patches and lozenges. During the study, all smokers were advised to quit through a regular conversation with their physician.
They also received information and resources to help them quit smoking and information about Quitline, a tobacco cessation service available through a toll-free telephone number.
Carpenter said that the study was well-received by primary care providers, who welcomed the goody bag as a conversation starter. “The doctors are giving something that is concrete and immediately actionable,” Carpenter said. “The patient can go home and use the products that day.”
During this study, 26 percent of patients who received the NRT samples achieved at least one week without smoking. “If you can achieve seven days in a row of not smoking, I’m going to call that success,” Carpenter said.
The study also found that 12 percent of patients were quit at final follow-up (six months). While this may seem a modest amount, it’s more than 150 patients who potentially will save thousands in medical costs if they are able to quit smoking, all for just the cost of a $70 intervention. “That has to be cost-effective no matter you slice it,” says Carpenter.
On average, it takes a patient seven to 10 attempts of trying to quit smoking before becoming successful, so interventions such as this can be helpful in the process. Even for the smokers who didn’t use the products, it planted a seed, he said.
An interesting finding during this study showed that the smoking cessation bags with information and medication were more beneficial to patients who had a lower income, lower education or if they were in the more rural areas of the state. The finding on income, education, and rurality is an area Carpenter would like to study more in the future.
“It’s about access,” Carpenter said. “We’re helping people who are struggling out there to find and succeed in treatment.”
Given the toll of smoking-related health conditions, Carpenter said he hopes insurance companies will see the value and provide funding in the future so that primary care physicians could offer this to their patients. The concept also could be used for smokers who are leaving the hospital, or even those who have been incarcerated.
“These samples can be given out almost universally – even to smokers who may not want to quit and who may not yet be ready to try medications,” Carpenter said. “It’s a pragmatic and brief intervention that takes minutes to deliver and is scalable as an intervention to be used a variety of settings.”
Smoking cessation reduces the risk of twelve cancers, including cancers of the lung; larynx; oral cavity and pharynx; esophagus; pancreas; bladder; stomach; colon and rectum; liver; cervix; kidney; and acute myeloid leukemia.
Carpenter said the intervention provides patients a starting point to their journey of becoming smoke-free and it’s simple to use for primary care providers, who don’t feel pressured to have a long lecture. They can just offer their patients support.
“This is about cancer prevention. Smoking cessation is cancer prevention,” Carpenter said.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/muos-bii020720.php

First-of-kind hydrogel platform allows on-demand production of meds, chemicals

A team of chemical engineers has developed a new way to produce medicines and chemicals on demand and preserve them using portable “biofactories” embedded in water-based gels called hydrogels. The approach could help people in remote villages or on military missions, where the absence of pharmacies, doctor’s offices or even basic refrigeration makes it hard to access critical medicines, daily use chemicals and other small-molecule compounds.
Led by Hal Alper, professor at The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering, in collaboration with chemist Alshakim Nelson and his research group at the University of Washington, this first-of-its-kind system effectively embeds microbial biofactories — cells bioengineered to overproduce a product — into the solid support of a hydrogel, allowing for portability and optimized production. It is the first hydrogel-based system to organize both individual microbes and consortia for in-the-moment production of high-value chemical feedstocks, used for processes such as fuel production, and pharmaceuticals. Products can be produced within a couple of hours to a couple of days.

The team describes their new approach in the Feb. 4 issue of Nature Communications.
“We have taken a completely different angle for fermentation by utilizing hydrogels,” said Alper, whose research expertise is focused in biotechnology and cellular engineering. “Many of the chemicals, fuels, nutraceuticals and pharmaceuticals we use rely on traditional fermentation technology. Our technology addresses a strong limitation in the fields of synthetic biology and bioprocessing, namely the ability to provide a means for both on-demand and repeated-use production of chemicals and antibiotics from both mono- and co-cultures.”
As a crosslinked polymer, the hydrogel used in this work can be 3D printed or manually extruded. The gel material, along with the cells inside, can flow like a liquid and then harden upon exposure to UV light. Molecularly, the resulting polymer network is large enough for molecules and proteins to move through it, but the space is too small for cells to leak out.
The team also found that by lyophilizing, or freeze-drying, the hydrogel system, it can effectively preserve the fermentation capacity of the biofactories until needed in the future. The result of the freeze-drying somewhat resembles an ancient mummy, shriveled up but well-preserved. To revive the hydrogel and enable the production of the chemical or pharmaceutical, one would simply add water, sugar and/or some other basic nutrients, and the cells will then convert into the product just as effectively as before the preservation process.
One of the novel aspects enabled by this platform is the ability to combine multiple different organisms, called consortia, together in a way that outperforms traditional, large-scale bioreactors. In particular, this system enables a plug-and-play approach to combining and optimizing chemical production. For example, if one set of enzymes works best in the bacteria E. coli, while the other works best in the yeast S. cerevisiae, the two organisms can work together to more efficiently go straight to the product. The research team tested both of these organisms.
This platform has the added benefit of multitasking, keeping different types of cells separated while they grow, preventing one from taking over and killing off the others. Likewise, by testing a range of temperatures, the team was able to control the dynamics of the system, keeping the growth of multiple cell types balanced.
Finally, the team was able to show continuous, repeated use of the system (with yeast cells) over the course of an entire year without a decrease in yields, indicating the sustainability of the process over time.
Medicines such as antibiotics have a certain shelf life and require particular storage conditions. The portability of the biofactory to make these molecules makes the hydrogel system especially useful in remote places, without access to refrigeration to store medications. It would also be a small and compact way to maintain access to several medications and other essential chemicals when there is no access to a pharmacy or a store, like during a military mission or a mission to Mars. Although not quite there yet, the possibilities are promising.
“This technology can be applied to a wide range of products and cell types. We see engineers and scientists being able to plug and play with different consortia of cells to produce diverse products that are needed for a specific scenario,” Alper said. “That’s part of what makes this technology so exciting.”

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The research was funded by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation, University of Washington CoMotion and the Royalty Research Fund.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/uota-fhp020320.php