The ups and downs of the biotech markets have kept the Fierce Biotech team incredibly busy over the past year. Behind the scenes, we have been working hard to bring you in-depth coverage of the industry beyond just the day-to-day breaking news.
While we recapped our top 10 most-read stories of the year Friday, I wanted to take a moment to recognize the stories that dug a little deeper, hit a little harder and gave just a little bit more context.
This is a tradition I started last year in the hopes of highlighting the people behind the news you read every day. You may know me from my ever-present byline on articles about Alzheimer’s disease or my snarky complaints about bad press releases. But I’m lucky to be backed by a talented team of writers and editors in the U.K. and U.S. who are never deterred by a news rush.
These are the stories that I think represent our best work in 2022. I don’t rank these, but rather list them chronologically as they were published over the year. I will never pick favorites, but you can read a little about how the stories came to be next to each entry.
I hope we can deliver more of this content in the New Year.
Happy holidays,
Annalee Armstrong
Senior Editor
The Top 10
We have achieved peak biotech formation. It's time for 'musical chairs'
I promise this story isn’t on the list just because I got to swear, but that was a particularly fun interview. The idea of too many biotechs had been on my list for awhile, as day after day we reported on new companies coming out of stealth. We kept thinking, how many biotechs do we need? This story tried to answer that question.
'Stay alive': Wave of layoffs crashes into biotech startup inferno
We were busy in the first quarter of the year writing about a spate of layoffs. This story took a look at the trend and the driving forces behind the cuts.
The layoff tracker was born out of an internal conversation lamenting the crush of news we were seeing about staff cuts. There were so many layoffs in March that we had to find a way to not only report the news but quantify it. This piece, which we have updated throughout the year, brings home the staggering number of people who have been impacted by biotech's downturn this year.
10 ways COVID-19 rocked biotech—plus an honorable mention for omicron
During the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, we knew COVID-19 was wreaking havoc on the biotech industry in more ways than just simply commandeering R&D efforts. As 2022 started, we began to see more official representations of those changes as trial results from that time period came to readouts, inspiring this special report.
Novavax executives' pay comes back down to Earth after 8-figure package in 2020
I’ll admit that Max Bayer and I spent more time on this story than we probably should have, because we love a good mystery. What started as a complex, unintelligible (to us, anyway) proxy statement ended with a nice explainer on executive pay.
To TIGIT or not to TIGIT? Roche's latest trial flop casts shadow on Big Pharma's $6B bet
What happens when pharmas spend billions on a drug class only to see their peers’ therapies fail? James Waldron shone a light on the TIGIT space in the wake of Roche’s tiragolumab failure. We compiled a list of the TIGIT therapies in the clinic and explored what happens next.
A BIO panelist trying to talk about diversity in biotech made a gaffe in describing women as “diversity candidates,” leading to this story from Max Bayer about how women are still navigating biotech's old boys club.
Will we ever land the Alzheimer's moonshot? Genentech's crenezumab partners reflect on failure
It’s not often that you get an invite for a press conference to discuss a significant drug failure. In Alzheimer’s disease, failures happen more often than not, so I was interested to see what Genentech had to say when crenezumab dropped a late-stage trial. What I found was a whole lot of soul searching and a reference to a moonshot we’re not sure is apt.
'Organize. Align': Women in biotech see Roe v. Wade ruling as a call to action
It’s not often that we get to delve so deeply into social issues here at Fierce Biotech, but this issue hit home. I wanted to know what biotech could do in this moment to help women and pregnant people. This was also a chance to learn more about the personal stories driving some of the leading female CEOs in biotech.
ASCO: Return to in-person 'zoo that it always was,' with added COVID challenges—and bad shoes
I loved Gabrielle Masson’s missive from ASCO that described the Band-Aid-clad heels of attendees as they adjusted to life back to in-person conferences. Her post about the social distancing buttons, pictured in the story’s top image, garnered a lot of attention. (Most of it was, shall we say, negative.)