Biotech 101: Free Resources for learning about the Biopharma industry

Originally published here

As a follow-up to the series I published with Front Row Ventures, Canada’s largest run student venture fund, on investing in healthcare, I wanted to include a list of resources I’ve found extremely useful when trying to learn about the industry. Oftentimes as a new entrant, you may not know where to start. Being in the industry and learning from conferences, seminars and experts is the best but these are a good list of free resources.

Best Biotech Resources:

Scientific Journals

Pubmed — The first place where everyone goes to find scientific papers. It’s a gauntlet of info but they have a list of 1000 trending abstracts

Top journals: if you’ve been in academia, you probably already know the top journals and how to get the right information. But for the layperson, top journals have free updates you can sign up from Nature, Science, Cell, PNAS, NEJM, JAMA, BMJ, Lancet.

Sci-hub — people on the internet are really the best! This website gives you access to basically any journal article you want. Check it out and if you’re a student or in academia, thank me later.

News, Newsletters, & Podcasts

Endpoints newsletter — Endpoints is a free website that gives you all the latest info in biopharma. Also have a daily newsletter you can get to your inbox.

STAT and Readout Loud — probably my favourite healthcare media resource. Their reporters and coverage touch everything across the biopharma and healthcare industry. The paid articles can be pricey but most of the articles are totally free. Readout Loud is their weekly podcast tackling the latest in the industry and runs under half an hour.

Fierce Biotech, pharma, healthcare — Another fantastic resource that covers everything in the industry. All of their articles are free and they have a variety of newsletters depending on what you’re looking for.

Timmerman report — one of the premier reporters in the industry. He often has guests from the industry write opinion articles on what’s happening. Has a subscription if you’re looking for deeper dives on certain topics. He also runs the Long Run Podcast where he interviews various stakeholders to get their stories and how they see the industry evolving

Bioworld/Biocentury — Great resource for looking at older articles if you need to find info on old programs. Have a subscription service as well but it’s pricey.

Long Form Pieces

LifeSciVC (Bruce Booth) — Every single investor in biopharma basically reads Bruce’s posts. He’s been involved in the industry for a long time and often shares his thoughts on various topics

Pipeline from Science (Derek Lowe) — Derek is one of the best writers tackling the drug discovery and pharma industry. Really enlightening posts, especially in regards to understanding the latest data on vaccines and therapeutics against Covid-19.

Peter Kolchinsky Entrepreneur’s Guide to a Biotech Startup — this is a long report on how biotech companies work. Quite a long read but worth it if you want to better understand the complexities of biotech.

Social Media Voices

Twitter is one of the greatest resources out there to understand what people in the industry are working on and how they see the healthcare industry evolving. This list is a compilation of clinicians, reporters, and investors who have years of experience and ones from who I get a lot of info from.

Vinay Prashad — heme oncologist from UCSF that brings a fantastic perspective on better understanding oncology clinical trials from a clinician’s perspective. His opinions are sometimes ones that people in the industry don’t want to hear, but definitely necessary.

Scott Gottlieb — former commissioner of the FDA and partner at NEA. He’s on major news networks a lot these days but gives a super interesting perspective on the regulatory side, particularly as COVID has continued to unravel

Eric Topol — cardiologist from the Scripps Institute but very successful author. Brings a great clinical perspective to the Covid-19 pandemic and shares tons of resources

Natalie Dean — professor of biostatistics at UF. One of the best follows to better understand the epidemiological perspective of COVID and how to design vaccine trials.

Luke Timmerman — mentioned him above but shares a lot of great insights daily

Brad Loncar — famous public markets biotech investor. Vocal about the public markets side of biotech and great understanding of the Chinese biopharma industry

Matthew Herper/Adam Feuerstein/Helen Branswell — reporters for STAT. They share great resources on a variety of topics in the industry.

Derek Lowe — mentioned above but great at deciphering the latest scientific publications and putting them into a way that’s understandable.

Andy Biotech — famous biotwitter investor. No one really knows who he is but super resourceful and good insight into public markets side of things

Siddhartha Mukherjee — Cancer physician and writer of emperor of all maladies which won the Pulitzer prize in 2011. Great writer and shares a lot of interesting resources.

Meg Tirrell — CNBC’s senior health and science reporter. Solid understanding of the industry and communicates very well to the layperson

André Picard — health columnist at The Globe and Mail. If you want Canada’s perspective on what’s happening in science and healthcare in our country, he’s the guy to follow.

Ed Yong — Science writer at the Atlantic. You may have seen one of the many articles Ed has published in the last few months but his writing is outstanding. Does a great job of deconvoluting what we do for the layperson and his reporting on the coronavirus from the US perspective is top-notch. He might win a Pulitizer soon for the work he’s doing, just a fantastic follow.

These are just some of the people I enjoy following who give a variety of different perspectives on what’s happening in healthcare. I realized quite quickly after working in this industry that the scientific news you find in most major news networks is pretty terrible and you get way better information from following the sources themselves.

Biotech-Related Books

Bad Blood — the rise and fall of Theranos. Such an entertaining read about Elizabeth Holmes and how she built a $10B company that all went to 0.

The Billion-Dollar Molecule: The Quest for the Perfect Drug — the story of Vertex pharma and how they came to be a multi-billion dollar company.

Genentech: The Beginning of Biotech — How Genentech went from small biotech to global pharma giant.

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer — mentioned above but the ‘biography’ of cancer. Won the Pulitizer in 2011 and now has a documentary.

When Breath Becomes Air — one of the best books I’ve ever read. The story of a neurosurgeon and his own battle with cancer.

Malignant: How Bad Policy and Bad Evidence Harm People with Cancer — from Vinay Prashad (see above) about how the design of oncology trials and bad evidence harms people with cancer.

Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again — from Eric Topol (see above) on how AI is influencing healthcare and clinical practice. Interesting introduction to AI in healthcare for the layperson and lays out what the future could look like.

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End — from a practicing surgeon on the limitations and failures of end-of-life care. Really refreshing and honest look about what it is to die at an old age.

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