The Bio Report

Prescription digital therapies, the use of software to treat disease, are growing in number. Already there have been 140 prescription digital therapies that have been granted market access through national regulatory and reimbursement pathways. That represents a five-fold increase in the since 2021, according to the IQVIA Digital Health Trends 2024 report. We spoke to Murray Aitken, executive director of the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, about the report, why digital health companies faced challenging times in recent years, and why your next prescription may be in the form of an app. 

There has been growing interest in the potential of psychedelics to treat a variety of mental health conditions. While some focus has been put on synthesizing compounds that can target the receptors psychedelics bind to without inducing their hallucinatory effects, Filament Health is taking a notably different approach. The company, co-founded by Ben Lightburn who previously ran a firm specializing in natural extraction technologies, is focusing on developing pharmaceutical grade botanical drugs that may benefit from multiple active compounds rather than an isolated active ingredient. We spoke to Ben Lightburn, founder and CEO of Filament Health, about the company’s approach to psychedelic medicine, the case for natural botanical extracts rather than synthetic compounds, and its lead experimental therapy that targets methamphetamine use disorder. 

Gain Therapeutics' platform technology Magellan leverages AI, structural biology, and physics-based models to identify novel binding sites on otherwise undruggable proteins implicated in diseases. The company’s experimental Parkinson’s disease therapy has the potential to slow or stop progression of the neurodegenerative condition by stabilizing a lysosomal enzyme implicated in the disease. We spoke to Gene Mack, interim CEO of Gain, about the company’s platform technology, how its experimental therapy for Parkinson’s disease works, and what other conditions might be good candidates for its platform technology to target.

We continue our holiday tradition by welcoming STAT News Senior Biotech Writer Adam Feuerstein for our annual look back at the year that was in biotech and what’s ahead for the industry with the JPMorgan Healthcare conference and beyond in 2025. Feuerstein offers his view on finance and dealmaking in 2024, new drug approvals, and his annual take on the best and worst CEOs of the year. We also discuss what Trump 2.0 may look like for the industry, changes coming to the FDA and other agencies, and what hot technologies to watch in the year ahead.