Ep. 348 - Biotech's 2026 Catalysts. Plus: China's New Orphan Rules

RNAI and Exxon skipping therapies headline the list of regulatory and pivotal data catalysts in 2026. Meanwhile, new lipid lowering mechanisms, modalities, and precision medicines will define the year in cardiovascular disease. Part two of our discussion of the catalyst that will drive biotech this year is on the plate for this week's BioCentury This Week podcast. And we'll also discuss a new regulation in China introducing orphan drug exclusivity, a move that could bolster the market for rare disease drugs and incentivize their development. I'm Jeff Cranmer, host of the BioCentury this week podcast. And joining me today are my colleagues. Simone Fishburne, editor in chief. Selena Koch, executive editor. Lauren Martz, executive director of Biopharma Intelligence. And Steve Austin, Washington editor. Alright. We'll be jumping into the second part of our discussion of the key catalysts in the biotech sector in just a moment. Of course, you'll remember, or if you didn't remember and you are interested in neuro catalyst, check out last week's podcast. Selena gave us a little preview of, her her deck and story that she, cooked up for us. But first, bioequity Europe. It's coming up in May. This year's theme, the need for speed, how Europe can compete in the new era. It's the first time we're taking our long standing conference. This will be the twenty six year to Prague. Advanced pricing is in effect through April 2, and that's no joke. Limited presenting company presentation slots and sponsorship opportunities remain. Don't wait. This meeting always sells out. If you're interested in being a presenting company, reach out to me directly. And our sponsorship team can be reached at conferences@biocentury.com, and you can go to bioequityeurope.com. Alright. RNAi. Lauren, great deep dive here. Where do you wanna start? Thanks, Jeff. When we're talking about the RNAi catalyst RNAi and antisense catalyst for 2026, I think the big one that we're hearing a lot about sort of covers that new modality theme, and it also covers the cardiovascular disease theme that is the highlight of another one of the stories that that we ran last week. And that is the first phase three data for an LP little a program. This half, we expect to see phase three data from the horizon study of pellocarcin. And this is from Ionis and Novartis, and this is a cardiovascular outcomes trial. So this will be the first time that the hypothesis is tested. The hypothesis of whether reducing l p little a actually translates to cardiovascular benefits for the patients who have high levels of this target. So that's about thirty percent up to thirty percent of cardiovascular disease patients. So it could possibly be a a pretty important contributor to, you know, residual risk in patients who are treated with other mechanisms. I think this is a big deal for the RNA field and the cardiovascular disease field just because well, first of all, it's a big deal for the target because it's a …