PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES

8:52

September 2026: Biotech & Pharma NEWS Roundup

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/10/01

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to your essential overview of the global biotech and pharmaceutical landscape for September 2026! This month was defined by blockbuster dealmaking, historic FDA approvals, and a growing recognition that pharmaceutical innovation is shifting east. AstraZeneca made a $2 billion strategic bet on Summit Therapeutics and its ivonescimab program, Novo Nordisk paid up to $2.6 billion for a once-weekly oral GLP-1 from China's Hengrui, and Eli Lilly continued its relentless de...

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21:26

Episode 75: Hengrui

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/10/01

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals, the Chinese pharma giant that started as a state-owned generic drug factory in 1970 and quietly became one of the most important drug companies in the world. Over $15 billion in deals with GSK and Novo Nordisk. The world's top clinical trial sponsor. One of the top five drug pipelines globally. All from a city most people can't find on a map. We break down how Hengrui made the pivot from g...

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39:53

Episode 74: Dr. John Murphy on Building an Audience

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/09/24

Send us Fan Mail After years of running a school on the rigid rhythm of bells, Dr. John Murphy walked away from K-12 education and into something he never trained for: performing history at bars. In this episode, John unpacks how a credentialed academic builds an audience outside the walls of a traditional institution, why humor and analogies are the secret weapons of great storytelling, and what it actually takes to turn expertise into something people will pay a bar tab to hear. Quick note:...

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22:01

Episode 73: Anew Labs

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/09/17

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore Anew Labs, the AI drug discovery company that emerged from one of the most unexpected places in biotech: ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok. Fresh off a $290 million raise at a $1.5 billion valuation, Anew is betting that artificial intelligence can fundamentally change how we discover medicines, not by making existing drug development slightly faster, but by rethinking the entire discovery process from the ground up...

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38:56

Episode 72: Dr. Elliot Justin on S3xual Wearable...

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/09/10

Send us Fan Mail After a career spent racing against the clock in emergency rooms, Dr. Elliot Justin found himself chasing a very different kind of vital sign, one most men never think to track. Before FirmTech, he built and exited a telemedicine company and a physician staffing group. But it's the wearable ring, designed to quietly monitor erectile function, that's turning heads for an unexpected reason: the data may predict cardiovascular risk years before symptoms ever show up. In this epi...

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22:24

Episode 71: Fate of Pharma M&A

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/09/03

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we take a step back from individual companies to examine one of the most powerful forces shaping the pharmaceutical industry: M&A, licensing, and the global competition for innovation. We explore how today's pharmaceutical giants were built through decades of consolidation, from Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis to some of the industry's biggest modern transactions and why dealmaking has increasingly become essential for com...

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11:29

August 2026: Biotech & Pharma NEWS Roundup

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/09/01

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to your essential overview of the global biotech and pharmaceutical landscape for August 2026! This month was defined by major dealmaking, a resurgence in biotech financing, and growing questions about where the global biotech industry is headed. Roche made a $2.5 billion bet on Hanmi, McKesson acquired Precision Medicine Group for $2.25 billion, and the investors behind Metsera quickly returned with Sentivera and a licensing deal worth up to $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, ...

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21:43

Episode 70: Cellares

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/08/27

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore Cellares, the biotech company trying to solve one of the biggest and least discussed challenges in cell therapy: how do you manufacture these complex, personalized medicines at commercial scale? From CAR-T to gene-edited cell therapies, the science may be advancing rapidly, but manufacturing remains labor-intensive, expensive, and difficult to scale. Cellares believes the answer is automation. We’ll break down the origins...

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21:51

Episode 69: Summit Therapeutics

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/08/20

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore the remarkable rise of Summit Therapeutics, a biotech that transformed itself from an infectious-disease company into one of the most closely watched oncology companies in the world. At the center of the story is ivonescimab, a next-generation bispecific antibody targeting both PD-1 and VEGF and a drug that could potentially challenge Merck’s blockbuster Keytruda. We’ll dive into Summit’s origins, the company’s dramatic p...

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23:24

Episode 68: Guardant Health

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/08/13

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore the story of Guardant Health, one of the companies leading the shift toward blood-based cancer detection and precision oncology. Founded by genomic scientists Helmy Eltoukhy and AmirAli Talasaz, Guardant is betting that a simple blood draw can reveal critical information about the biology of a tumor, from identifying mutations and guiding treatment to monitoring residual disease and potentially detecting cancer earlier. W...

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23:08

Episode 67: Epic Systems

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/08/06

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore the story of Epic Systems, the privately held healthcare technology company that has quietly built much of the digital infrastructure behind American healthcare. From Judy Faulkner founding Epic in a Wisconsin basement to becoming the dominant electronic health record platform, Epic has transformed how hospitals, physicians, and patients interact with medical information. We'll dive into Epic's founding story, the evoluti...

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9:27

July 2026: Biotech & Pharma NEWS Roundup

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/08/01

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to your essential overview of the global biotech and pharmaceutical landscape for June 2026! This month was dominated by AI cementing itself as a core part of drug discovery, with partnerships spanning Anthropic, NVIDIA, Insilico Medicine, and major pharmaceutical companies. At the same time, billion-dollar licensing deals and acquisitions showed that large pharma is aggressively buying innovation rather than building everything internally, particularly in obesity, on...

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23:51

Episode 66: Scribe Therapeutics

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/07/30

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore the story of Scribe Therapeutics, one of genome editing's most ambitious companies aiming to move beyond first-generation CRISPR. Rather than accepting the size, delivery, and precision limitations of traditional Cas9, Scribe is redesigning the molecular machinery itself, building smaller, faster, and more versatile X-Editors and pioneering the future of epigenetic regulation. We'll dive into the origins of CRISPR from ba...

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23:29

Episode 65: Apogee Therapeutics

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/07/23

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore the story of Apogee Therapeutics, one of biotech's newest immunology companies aiming to redefine autoimmune disease through next-generation antibody engineering. Rather than chasing entirely new biological targets, Apogee is focused on improving what already works, developing longer-lasting biologics that could reduce injections from every few weeks to every few months. We'll dive into the evolution of modern immunology,...

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23:16

Episode 64: Conception Bio

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/07/16

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore the story of Conception Bio, one of the most ambitious biotechnology companies working at the intersection of stem cell biology, reproductive medicine, and regenerative science. Their mission? To make eggs from ordinary cells through in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), a breakthrough that could fundamentally change how we think about infertility, fertility preservation, and human reproduction. We'll dive into the science behind...

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23:47

Episode 63: Enveda Biosciences

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/07/09

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore the story of Enveda Biosciences, one of the most exciting AI-native biotech companies redefining how drugs are discovered. While most pharmaceutical companies build vast synthetic chemical libraries, Enveda is using artificial intelligence, metabolomics, and mass spectrometry to unlock the world's largest and largely untapped chemical library: nature. We'll trace the history of natural product drug discovery, from penicil...

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24:09

Episode 62: Isomorphic Labs

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/07/02

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore the story of Isomorphic Labs, Alphabet's ambitious drug discovery company born out of DeepMind's groundbreaking work on AlphaFold. From solving one of biology's greatest mysteries, protein folding, to building an AI-native pharmaceutical company, Isomorphic Labs is attempting to fundamentally change how medicines are discovered. We'll dive into the origins of AlphaFold, the scientific vision of Nobel Prize-winning CEO Dem...

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10:00

June 2026: Biotech & Pharma NEWS Roundup

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/06/30

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to your essential overview of the global biotech and pharmaceutical landscape for June 2026! This month was dominated by a relentless wave of strategic consolidation and "barbell" deal-making, as Big Pharma aggressively swapped capital for late-stage security while doubling down on early-stage, high-tech innovation. From AbbVie’s multi-billion-dollar immunology power play to a flurry of high-stakes partnerships involving AI-native drug discovery and novel protein-degr...

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23:54

Episode 61: Danaher

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/06/25

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we explore how two brothers transformed a small industrial holding company into one of the most influential life sciences organizations in history. We dive into the origins of the Danaher Business System (DBS), the acquisition strategy that reshaped biotechnology, the landmark purchases of Beckman Coulter, Pall, and Cytiva, and why Danaher became one of the biggest winners of the COVID-19 era. While biotech headlines focus on breakt...

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25:55

Episode 60: Hims & Hers

PETRI DISH PERSPECTIVES ·

2026/06/18

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Petri Dish Perspectives, we dive into the rise of Hims & Hers Health, the telehealth company that transformed direct-to-consumer healthcare and challenged traditional medicine. Founded in 2017 by Andrew Dudum, Hims & Hers built a billion-dollar business by removing the stigma around men's and women's health, using digital-first care, subscription medicine, and aggressive branding to reach millions of patients. We explore the company's founding story...

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