#50 - Zombie brains, phage gains & Recursion pains
The coffee break biotech roundup, by SomX.
Hi there, you curious minds,
This week’s stories are firing on all cerebral cylinders: the UK unveils long-awaited guidance for phage therapies, Pfizer gets hands-on in China for its oncology portfolio, Recursion tightens its belt, Shift Bioscience claims to have found a single-gene switch for ageing, and a startup in Connecticut brings dead brains back online to advance drug development.
While the move away from animal trials is good news for clinical development, I won’t take our exclusion personally (even if birds are famously good at problem-solving).
Thanks for reading,
Dodo
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Discover 🔍
🧫 MHRA issues first UK guidance on phage therapies (European Pharmaceutical Review): The regulatory guidance for phage therapies has been developed alongside the Phage Innovation Network and industry players. This much-needed document tackles how to regulate these quirky bacterial-killing treatments that don't fit into existing categories. With no licensed phage medicines in the UK, the guidance supports the government's antimicrobial resistance action plan with clarity on clinical trial requirements, manufacturing standards and treatment development.
Our take: Phages aren't your typical off-the-shelf medicines – they're wonderfully adaptable, precise, and utterly finicky creatures that refuse to play by conventional rules. While this guidance won't solve every regulatory riddle, it hands developers something useful to help navigate the maze. With clearer pathways for trials and manufacturing, plus fewer bureaucratic tangles, the UK has just assembled the rulebook for these bacterial-hunting marvels.
📋 Pfizer CEO talks Chinese due diligence, ADC synergies to justify $6B bet on ‘fabulous’ bispecific (Fierce Biotech): Pfizer’s deal for SSGJ-707, a bispecific antibody, comes after hands-on due diligence in China. Teams reviewed individual scans, visited study sites, and interviewed clinicians to address prior concerns about data quality. Strategically, SSGJ-707 slots neatly alongside Pfizer’s Seagen-derived ADCs, which induce immunogenic cell death that may amplify checkpoint blockade. The deal reflects the risk, with payment tied to both clinical and commercial success.
Our take: Pfizer is treating oncology as an interconnected system rather than a collection of one-off assets. SSGJ-707 brings a mechanism that dovetails neatly with its ADC portfolio, particularly the immunogenic punch of those vedotin-based conjugates. Biotech programs may now be judged less on dazzling novelty and more on how deftly they slot into a cohesive, therapeutically nimble ecosystem.
📉 Recursion downsizes by 20% to boost cash position (BioSpace): Recursion is trimming roughly 160 employees to stretch its cash runway into Q4 2027. The pruning – costing $11M in one-time charges – should slash cash burn to under $450M in 2025 and below $390M in 2026. The company will also be axing several drug programs including REC-2282, REC-994, and REC-3964 as part of its streamlining blitz.
Our take: Is Recursion growing up from experimental engine to focused biotech? It seems so. Post Exscientia merger, they seem to be ditching proof-of-concept assets that perhaps lacked clear commercial logic, for programs with genuine differentiation instead. It seems Recursion has learned biotech's harsh reality: you simply can't scale like pure tech companies without a clear route to clinic. Sometimes doing less, more deliberately, beats casting the widest possible net.
👶 Shift Bioscience identifies novel single-gene target for safer cellular rejuvenation therapeutics (News Medical): SB000 is a single gene target that reverses cellular ageing across multiple cell types, at both methylome and transcriptome levels. Unlike existing Yamanaka Factor methods that risk tumour formation through pluripotency induction, SB000 delivers comparable rejuvenation effects without triggering dangerous cellular reprogramming pathways. The company plans to advance its in vivo proof-of-concept studies as a foundation for next-gen ageing therapeutics.
Our take: The beauty of SB000 lies in what it reveals about ageing's underlying architecture. If a single gene can orchestrate broad rejuvenation, ageing mechanisms might be far more centralised than we thought. This could move longevity therapeutics from complex multi-factor interventions to more precise ageing targets. It's the difference between rewiring an entire house versus simply flipping the right switch.
And finally…
🧟 Exclusive: Rebooting dead human brains, a biotech startup seeks to reinvent early drug testing work (Endpoints): New Haven's Bexorg is developing BrainEx, a rather extraordinary machine that restores molecular and cellular activity in deceased human brains. The system houses brains in buckets, using rhythmically pulsing plastic tubes to revive brain tissue for pharmaceutical research. This ghoulish-sounding setup aims to change early drug testing by providing researchers with actual human brain tissue that maintains its complex architecture and function for testing purposes.
Our take: CNS drug development is brutally inefficient, with <90% failure rates, because animal models struggle to capture the complexity of the human brain. Instead of simplifying biology to make it tractable, Bexorg is maintaining complexity and working around it, changing how we use preclinical models. Rather than asking "how can we mimic the brain?" the question is "how can we keep the brain functional long enough to learn from it?".
Tune in 🎧
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💪 UK turns to Nvidia to bolster 'AI talent pipeline': Sir Keir Starmer has opened London Tech Week, announcing a new artificial intelligence skills programme that will enable pupils to acquire the skills and tools necessary for AI-powered jobs.
🌍 AI Consolidation, Biotech Opportunities, and World Models: Learn about AI market consolidation, merger dynamics, world models, and how AI's novel approaches to complex systems may transform human discovery and problem-solving methods.
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🧪 Research Associate II, In Vivo, AskBio: Steady hands and a sharp eye? In this role, you’ll run high-throughput assays, fine-tune tissue work, and dive into rodent studies to support gene therapy from the ground up.
🧬 Senior Scientist I - Bioinformatician, Immunocore: Got a knack for turning data into meaning? Mine trial and public datasets to uncover immunological insights and guide next-gen TCR therapies.
⚗️ Associate Director, R&D - Process Chemistry, Jazz Pharmaceuticals: Find joy in molecules that behave? Steer early-stage drug substance development from concept to toxicology studies, balancing scientific flair with regulatory know-how.
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