Speaker 1: How's San Francisco.
Speaker 2: It's uh, it's great.
Speaker 3: You know, like I think that a lot of people
Speaker 3: told me it was going to be a dystopian healscape
Speaker 3: and it's not.
Speaker 1: Wait, it's the first time you've actually gone right to
Speaker 1: the JP Morgan healthcare conference.
Speaker 2: To this one. Yeah, the specific conference, And what's.
Speaker 1: Your first impression of it? I guess is there anything
Speaker 1: that surprised you.
Speaker 2: I guess what really surprised me was the security.
Speaker 3: Like I've been to conferences before where it's kind of
Speaker 3: like you can't even go into the hotel without like
Speaker 3: your past and they're really strict about it. So I
Speaker 3: guess that was the most surprising thing. But other than that,
Speaker 3: it's you know, the meetings are cool. Conference, It's still
Speaker 3: a conference, right, Like, it's not I'm not going to
Speaker 3: be like, oh god, this is you know, the coolest
Speaker 3: thing I've ever seen in my life, although that did
Speaker 3: kind of happen here with there was a company that
Speaker 3: was presenting that has I guess like you can call
Speaker 3: it like drug GPT, right, it's like artificial intelligence but
Speaker 3: used to like find new drugs, and that was really cool.
Speaker 4: I did a left one.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Okay, Simony up barges, this isn't After School Special,
Speaker 1: except I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality
Speaker 1: going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in
Speaker 1: the US.
Speaker 4: Where's the best with imposta?
Speaker 1: These are the important question? Is that robots taking over
Speaker 1: the world. No.
Speaker 4: I think that like in a couple of years, the
Speaker 4: AI will do a really good job of making the
Speaker 4: odd Lots podcast and people to say, I don't really
Speaker 4: need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore.
Speaker 2: We do have.
Speaker 1: Perfect You're listening to lots More where we catch up
Speaker 1: with friends about what's going on right now, because.
Speaker 4: Even when odd Lots is over, there's always lots more.
Speaker 1: And we really do have the perfect guest. We're talking
Speaker 1: to James Van Gelan of saitriniresearch dot com, also known
Speaker 1: as Satrini on Twitter. You might remember him. We had
Speaker 1: him on odd Thloughts back in August to talk about
Speaker 1: weight loss drugs, including ozembic and how they were going
Speaker 1: to chat everything. That was kind of a prescient conversation,
Speaker 1: I think because since then we've seen even more excitement
Speaker 1: for a lot of these drugs and the stocks have
Speaker 1: taken off even more, James, is that what everyone's talking
Speaker 1: about at that conference?
Speaker 3: I think it's it's split kind of fifty to fifty
Speaker 3: between the GLP one drugs and then the ADC cancer
Speaker 3: stuff because of the side of Kinetics acquisition that was announced.
Speaker 4: I don't like going to conferences. Typically, you know, everyone
Speaker 4: licet in a while, they're okay, But what is like,
Speaker 4: I know, like the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. I know
Speaker 4: it's a big deal. Why is it such a big deal?
Speaker 4: What is it exactly? And like why this one in particular,
Speaker 4: how did it become like such an important event for
Speaker 4: healthcare investors.
Speaker 2: I don't know the history of the conference, but when
Speaker 2: you look at the agenda speaking here, it's you know,
Speaker 2: everyone that's a big deal. Everyone that you would want
Speaker 2: to know what they're doing, they're kind of here. I
Speaker 2: think that there's even more value in just sitting in
Speaker 2: some of the hotel bars, like over hearing how.
Speaker 3: People are talking, you know, like people seem pretty optimistic
Speaker 3: on like med tech in the funding environment, and that's
Speaker 3: almost more valuable to me than the conference itself.
Speaker 4: So, by the way, we're recording this January tenth, Novo
Speaker 4: Nordisk hitting yet another all time high right now. It's
Speaker 4: kind of crazy, Tracy, Like, for all of the hype
Speaker 4: about the GLP one drugs, A, the stocks keep going
Speaker 4: higher and B. I feel like every day there's some
Speaker 4: other article or thing about here's another thing that they
Speaker 4: do well, or another area that we're researching that shows
Speaker 4: promise where it's not just about weight less, you know,
Speaker 4: like compulsion or other things. Like it's pretty wild how
Speaker 4: this is not slowing down.
Speaker 1: This is my opportunity to reject the idea of the
Speaker 1: all thoughts curse. Oh and that we top tech a
Speaker 1: lot of these things. We did not top tick Nova
Speaker 1: Nordisk stock. Okay, we were a.
Speaker 4: Launch that we haven't top ticked.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Actually, I actually I actually when I got the invite
Speaker 3: to come back, I remember everyone that was like, if
Speaker 3: you go on a podcast and you talk about this trend,
Speaker 3: like that's it, it's over, you know. So when I
Speaker 3: got the invite to come back, I went and I
Speaker 3: looked at like Lily and Novo and yeah, so I
Speaker 3: think it's like eighty one percent of the time they
Speaker 3: have been at all time highs since. Yeah, since that's so,
Speaker 3: I think we can put the odlus course rum or two.
Speaker 4: We're not trying to time the market. We're not here
Speaker 4: to make recommendations, but we are just trying to establish
Speaker 4: that not every time we talk about a trend it's
Speaker 4: at the top. And I'll just say the other one.
Speaker 4: We've done multiple episodes over the years, over the last
Speaker 4: year relating to in Nvidia and semiconductors and Tracy and
Speaker 4: Nvidia at another all time high today. So we're just
Speaker 4: getting these on the record.
Speaker 1: We're just journalists who want to be timely.
Speaker 4: We're just journalists who want to be We just we
Speaker 4: just want to be timely. Okay, So within the GLP
Speaker 4: one world, what's hot? What are people talking about? What's
Speaker 4: interesting within GLP ones?
Speaker 2: Well, there's there's two main things. Right.
Speaker 3: You got the oral drugs, and like Lily's CEO had
Speaker 3: a fireside chat type thing, and.
Speaker 2: I have this big realization.
Speaker 3: I don't know if this was like common knowledge among
Speaker 3: people that are healthcare specialists, but I had a big
Speaker 3: realization that basically, with these oral drugs, it's not so
Speaker 3: much about the fact that like patients don't want to
Speaker 3: use these auto injectors, because as we've seen, people are
Speaker 3: pretty much fine with the auto injectors. The thing is,
Speaker 3: the auto injectors are super expensive and like very fight constrained,
Speaker 3: so it's kind of like the oral drug, right, Like
Speaker 3: it's very easy to make a pill, and the high.
Speaker 2: Chain is like not the same as the auto injector.
Speaker 3: So it turns out the way that he was speaking,
Speaker 3: it really gave me the idea that like these oral drugs, right,
Speaker 3: like Lily has orf and Novo has one too that's
Speaker 3: in the in the works, and they seem to be
Speaker 3: kind of like the rate limitter.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: He had something that he said about how he sees
Speaker 3: supply for these drugs being a constraint for you know,
Speaker 3: the next ten years, and then he said, that's not
Speaker 3: a bad thing, right, because we have you know, half
Speaker 3: of we have I don't know, five hundred thousand people
Speaker 3: in the US that are on these drugs and one
Speaker 3: hundred and ten million.
Speaker 2: People that theoretically could or should take them.
Speaker 3: And that doesn't even count in Brazil or China or India.
Speaker 2: Right, that's the main thing.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that lives rent free in
Speaker 1: my head ever since we first spoke to you was
Speaker 1: Titan Stapler. Do you remember that, like this this company
Speaker 1: that makes Titan stomach staplers, and I'm wondering, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously people are talking about the sort of positive impact
Speaker 1: of weight loss drugs GLP one on their bottom lines,
Speaker 1: but is there anyone at the conference that you've heard
Speaker 1: or seen talking about negative impact?
Speaker 3: Honestly, I think that ever since right around the first
Speaker 3: time we spoke, there was a wave of some people
Speaker 3: that fell on the soul, so to speak, kind of
Speaker 3: like how CHEG did with artificial intelligence. I think that
Speaker 3: once they saw the stock reactions, once you come out
Speaker 3: and you say, you know, GLP one drugs are killing us,
Speaker 3: and then your stock goes down ten percent a day,
Speaker 3: I think they're a little more careful about it now,
Speaker 3: they're not readily offering that information. But also at the
Speaker 3: same time, some obviously I had a very like high
Speaker 3: conviction thesis on the idea that you know, sepath machines
Speaker 3: and the Titan stapler and all these things would actively affected.
Speaker 3: But it got so priced in so quickly, and some
Speaker 3: of that was not GLP one stuff, right, Some of
Speaker 3: that was basically just rates, Like don't attribute to GLP
Speaker 3: one's what you can attribute to interest rates. I guess
Speaker 3: and so I think with Medtech where it is, it's
Speaker 3: kind of even with the impact there, they can kind
Speaker 3: of say, okay, you know, but it's a little bit
Speaker 3: better than you've heared.
Speaker 4: Res Med a big maker of CPAP machines that's bounced
Speaker 4: a little bit over the last few months. Those still
Speaker 4: down from where it was a year ago.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I was walking back to the office from lunch today
Speaker 4: and I saw a sign for weight Watchers about like
Speaker 4: get on their GLP one program. So obviously they're trying
Speaker 4: to like pivot to being a GLP one player, show
Speaker 4: how they can fit in. But that's stock not doing
Speaker 4: so well.
Speaker 2: It's down.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Brown Trip went up like one hundred and fifty percent
Speaker 3: then went all the way down. And the thing if
Speaker 3: you're in the GLP one space at all and Eli
Speaker 3: Lilly starts doing what you're doing, it's not great.
Speaker 2: Tracy, Tracy.
Speaker 4: I feel like investors, you know, they love to get
Speaker 4: cute with things like I missed the Eli Lily trace
Speaker 4: by this other company, and then you see, like you know,
Speaker 4: in videos, the winners so far been the winner, Novo's
Speaker 4: the winner Lily, and then all these other like secondary
Speaker 4: tertiary plays. It's like kind of dice here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, James, you mentioned something else that I think is
Speaker 1: kind of like a big factor here, which is just
Speaker 1: interest rates and the move we've seen there. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned everyone being sort of enthusiastic about funding availability for
Speaker 1: pharma going into twenty twenty four. How much is some
Speaker 1: of this excitement just a pure rates play on the
Speaker 1: cost of funding for you know, these companies that spend
Speaker 1: a lot of money on research and development actually coming down.
Speaker 3: I think it's like a rate of change thing, right.
Speaker 3: It got so bad that even an incremental improvement is
Speaker 3: going to be met with overwhelming kind of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm
Speaker 3: because the regional bank stuff, you know, Silicon Valley Bank
Speaker 3: collapsing hurt the biopharma and biotech industry significantly. And I
Speaker 3: think that it's kind of been so long where rates
Speaker 3: were just going up and everything's going to stay higher
Speaker 3: for longer, and now you know, there's a glimmer of
Speaker 3: hope on the horizon. And it's very easy if you're
Speaker 3: in this industry and you've just been hearing no for
Speaker 3: the past you know, year and a half, to say, oh, finally, you.
Speaker 4: Know, wait, can we go back? I think you said
Speaker 4: there were like two things in the GLP one space.
Speaker 4: You mentioned auto injectors, and so I was curious what
Speaker 4: the other one was.
Speaker 3: The other thing is that we're kind of finding out, right,
Speaker 3: I guess we already knew. But the thing with the
Speaker 3: GLP one drugs is that they will make you lose weight, right,
Speaker 3: and if you are morbidly obese, that's great. Now, the
Speaker 3: problem is you are going to lose some muscle too.
Speaker 3: Right when you say you lose weight, it's not necessarily
Speaker 3: that all that weight is fat, and that can be
Speaker 3: a problem just because kind of common sense, right, it's
Speaker 3: better to have muscle mass. Muscle mass is great, especially
Speaker 3: if you're diabetic, and also from like a cosmetic aesthetics perspective.
Speaker 3: So now kind of the thing that everyone is focusing
Speaker 3: on is finding a combination drug to be used alongside
Speaker 3: these GLP WANs that makes it so that you either
Speaker 3: do not lose muscle when you are losing fat, or
Speaker 3: that you actually gain muscle. So there was some data
Speaker 3: from Regeneron that was, in my opinion, just like everything
Speaker 3: else that happens, very bullish. For Lily, they had an acquisition.
Speaker 3: They bought Versatus for four billion dollars and Versatus has
Speaker 3: a drug called the migramat and when you combine the
Speaker 3: migramat with you.
Speaker 2: Know, semaglue tide or another GLP one drug.
Speaker 3: The phase one trial was showing that you will lose
Speaker 3: twelve percent of your body weight, but you will also
Speaker 3: increase your lean muscle mass by six percent, which is
Speaker 3: a cheap code, right, Like there is nobody doesn't want
Speaker 3: to lose ten percent of their body weight and then
Speaker 3: also gain lean muscle mass. It's also very important with
Speaker 3: like the elderly population, you know, because they if they
Speaker 3: get weaker, then they're more at risk for falls or injuries,
Speaker 3: and you know, making sure that like bone mineral density
Speaker 3: stays high, so you know, but at the same time,
Speaker 3: it's also if you make the drug that seems like
Speaker 3: a money printer to me.
Speaker 1: Well, so I think muscle building drugs already exist in
Speaker 1: the form of anabolic steroids, although I doubt anyone's recommending
Speaker 1: recommending that you go on a zempic and then take
Speaker 1: steroids as well. But James, you mentioned at the very
Speaker 1: beginning of this conversation that you saw something cool and
Speaker 1: you sent me a little video of this and when
Speaker 1: you send me the video, I had a sort of
Speaker 1: realization that we are truly in the future in some
Speaker 1: respects because you sent me a video of a presentation
Speaker 1: of basically like an AI for drug development, so drug GPT,
Speaker 1: and you recorded the video using your meta sunglasses.
Speaker 3: I'm speaking to you guys right now on them. It
Speaker 3: was definitely future coded for sure. I mean the thing was,
Speaker 3: this was Recursion Pharma's presentation and theirs was at you know,
Speaker 3: seven fifteen in the morning, so it wasn't very crowded,
Speaker 3: and then Nvidio presented later, but Recursion was the one
Speaker 3: that had the demo. They did it right in front
Speaker 3: of you. It's like if you loaded up Chatgypt and
Speaker 3: started asking you questions, but they where they It's called
Speaker 3: low I call it drug GPT just because it's funny.
Speaker 3: But they opened up this program and then started they said,
Speaker 3: you know, give us a list of molecules that are
Speaker 3: gonna target RAF one or and it just gave him
Speaker 3: fifty new drugs and then they can refine it down
Speaker 3: based on how likely it is to have this side
Speaker 3: effect or that side effect, or where the structural activity
Speaker 3: relationship is or you know, the dose response curve just
Speaker 3: based on you know, this predictive.
Speaker 2: AI and how do we know well, I mean, how
Speaker 2: do we know that the problem?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean like so like they like they give
Speaker 4: you some molecules and stuff, but like, how does anyone
Speaker 4: know that ultimately this is where does it go from there?
Speaker 4: What's the evidence that this is uh, you know, produce
Speaker 4: as drugs or find new combinations of molecules faster than
Speaker 4: traditional routes.
Speaker 2: Well, when he was doing it, yeah, kind of in
Speaker 2: the audience, you have to assume that there are some
Speaker 2: people that know biochemistry, and they got.
Speaker 3: Into some stuff that you know, I couldn't really follow,
Speaker 3: but he was talking about how, oh you know, if
Speaker 3: there are any chemists in the audience, you'll recognize this
Speaker 3: drug looks a lot like this drug. And basically they
Speaker 3: went through the whole I mean, the thing is I
Speaker 3: dropped out of at school, right, so, like I could
Speaker 3: find very limited amount of time. But I think the
Speaker 3: main point that they were getting across was that in
Speaker 3: biotech and biopharmat they spend so much time and money
Speaker 3: on things that might just not work. And if you
Speaker 3: have a program that can basically make you faster to fail.
Speaker 2: Right, where you're.
Speaker 3: Kind of figuring out what's going to be a waste
Speaker 3: of time and what might not be more effectively.
Speaker 2: That's huge, right.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe it's not that this is going to find
Speaker 3: the cure for cancer, but the company that you know
Speaker 3: eventually does find the cure for cancer, they're going to
Speaker 3: be a lot more efficient with it because they're not
Speaker 3: going to be wasting their time on stuff that you know,
Speaker 3: maybe this program can tell them obviously won't work.
Speaker 1: Often are people mentioning AI in general at that conference?
Speaker 1: I'm curious if it's sort of like infiltrating to the
Speaker 1: degree that it seems to be in financials conferences for instance.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it was a ton I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: Lily didn't mention AI. Nova didn't mention AI. They had
Speaker 3: their own thing. But then you know you had Sonofi
Speaker 3: and Jen both talking about their new AI platforms, and
Speaker 3: then Video was here. Right then Video presented here and
Speaker 3: had a whole thing about their predictive analytics platform and
Speaker 3: Boonemo and it was I mean, you guys should have
Speaker 3: seen when the presenter from Nvidia concluded her speech, it
Speaker 3: was like Night of the Walking Debt. Literally, the entire
Speaker 3: audience just like shambling up, like just trying to get
Speaker 3: a little bit of the in Vidia magic on speak.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's always the most awkward moment at conferences when
Speaker 1: the speakers get off stage and everyone kind of like
Speaker 1: awkwardly stands around waiting for their chance to introduce themselves
Speaker 1: in network.
Speaker 4: Hand them MACR about their company. Yes, totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was worried it was going to get violent,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: And like the other thing, the ratio is at these conferences,
Speaker 3: like finance conferences not great and like this is like
Speaker 3: a woman with ninety men and two women just send
Speaker 3: That was like it was like not the coolest scene.
Speaker 4: By the way, Tracy, you know what stock is at
Speaker 4: basically the same level it was ten years ago.
Speaker 1: I have no idea Pfizer.
Speaker 4: Oh that's one company that my understanding is is not
Speaker 4: in the game at all. On GOLP one. Of course,
Speaker 4: it went nuts in twenty twenty one. Yeah, the hot
Speaker 4: thing was COVID injections. But obviously I think many fewer
Speaker 4: people these days are getting boosters than may people may
Speaker 4: have expected two years ago. And that stock is literally
Speaker 4: where it was. No, maybe it's paid dividend and stuff
Speaker 4: since then. That's not literally where it was in twenty fourteen,
Speaker 4: So don't miss the golp one.
Speaker 2: Pfizer had an oral g g golp one and you know,
Speaker 2: ditched it. The side effects were just too bad.
Speaker 3: And that's that's gonna be like a serious risk to
Speaker 3: look out for, right because you know, with the oral
Speaker 3: preparations of these like peptides or like any really like
Speaker 3: endocrine drug, there's always it seems at least, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't have science to back this up, but it
Speaker 3: seems like when you have an endocrine drug and you're
Speaker 3: trying to turn it into an oral instead of you know,
Speaker 3: an injectable, the side effects get really crazy. And that's
Speaker 3: definitely I think the biggest risk to like lily Novo
Speaker 3: would be one of them gets the oral and the
Speaker 3: other one has side effects that are way too bad,
Speaker 3: right because, like I said in the beginning, right that
Speaker 3: the oral drug will make it so that they can
Speaker 3: take advantage of this huge demand right there. They're constrained
Speaker 3: by supply, but the supply.
Speaker 2: Of the oral drug would you know, kind of alleviate that.
Speaker 3: And if one of them has it then the other
Speaker 3: one doesn't, that could really change the landscape.
Speaker 1: So James, in addition to bringing us dispatches from the
Speaker 1: JPM healthcare conference and being our sort of eyes on
Speaker 1: the ground or sunglasses on the ground. Maybe what else
Speaker 1: are you going to do in San Francisco? Like, who
Speaker 1: are you talking to while you're there?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: You know, I I message all the people that I
Speaker 3: know that have a kind of venture capital healthcare vibe.
Speaker 3: And I'm not really super involved, Like I just like
Speaker 3: trade and you know, I'm in my own office and
Speaker 3: trading and I'm not super linked up with all the
Speaker 3: finance people. So I didn't get invited to any of
Speaker 3: the like events or anything. But you know, I can
Speaker 3: still have a good time in San Francisco myself.
Speaker 1: James, I think that's it. Oh yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2: I just want to say, Joe, well you are a
Speaker 2: really musician.
Speaker 4: Finally, finally a little respector on here. No, I appreciate
Speaker 4: that I met James in person at our concert in December.
Speaker 4: Very kind of you to say, on are thank you
Speaker 4: so much.
Speaker 2: I was surprised. Was I kind of expected it was
Speaker 2: a joke, but you are.
Speaker 4: Very very nice of you to say. Great, let's leave
Speaker 4: it here. This is a great place to end it
Speaker 4: on this note I love let's leave it here. There's
Speaker 4: a great place to end. He kind of broke up
Speaker 4: there at the end, so I don't know if we
Speaker 4: got that on audio. I think I heard it.
Speaker 2: I heard it, I heard it.
Speaker 4: Lots More is produced by Carmen Rodriguez and Dashel Bennett,
Speaker 4: with help from Moses Ondam and kil Brooks. Our sound
Speaker 4: engineer is Blake Maples. Sage Bauman is the head of
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review, and subscribe to Odd, Lots and Lots
Speaker 1: More on your favorite podcast platforms, and remember that Bloomberg
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Speaker 1: connecting through Apple Podcasts. Thanks for listening. It's drug GPT
Speaker 1: Joe Oh