Episode 184 - May 29, 2026

You're listening to BioTech Hangout, a live and unedited weekly discussion of all the latest news in our industry with a group of biotech leaders and experts. I'm Chris Garabedian, and my cohost today are Brian Skorney, Greg Suwanaway, and our special guest, the, cofounder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, Jason Kelly, and, really glad to have you. For more information about our hosts and guest speakers or to listen to the most recent episode, please go to biotechhangout.com. So first, we always like to touch on kinda market overview. I'll just mention we saw another IPO filing, Cardigan. This was following last week's, Parabolas, you know, IPO, and, Cardigan is the latest filing. It's about the eleventh biotech filing this year, already beating or matching the total number that we saw in 2,025. Cardigan is led by the former CEO and management team of MyoKardia. So Tasos, Gianakakos, is the CEO. He brought on his former CMO and CSO from MyoKardia, which was acquired by BMS for 13,000,000,000. So they've assembled, acquired several clinical stage products. They have three, unique products with different mechanisms in phase two b studies, going after genetic cardiomyopathy and severe, hypertension, and aortic valve, after sclerosis, etcetera. So, they've got, you know, a late stage pipeline. And, again, they've raised, more than half 1,000,000,000, in their series a and series b just in less than the last eighteen months. And so going public, this will be a, you know, one of those, record setting, amounts raised for, and tracked to IPO, you know, within eighteen months, that we've seen. So, you know, again, I think, we're all watching. So far, the IPOs have held pretty well. And just wanted to, you know, ask, Greg and Brian, you know, as we sit here about to enter June, the sixth month of the year, 11 IPOs. How are you guys reading this in terms of we were all looking at the beginning of the year with an eye toward IPOs as a marker of how healthy the the current states of biotech are? How do you guys see it where we are, today at the end of May? I'll jump in first, and and Greg, feel free to correct me with your thoughts. Look. I mean, I I think it's I think it's good. You know, certainly, capital markets is a is a big driver at these companies. All consume a lot of cash. So, you know, being able to raise a decent valuations, raise a lot of money, have an IPO window open, you know, that that kinda makes everyone happy. Right? I think, you know, IPOs and as as things move earlier and earlier, right, that's also somewhat of a signal of, you know, moving into bubble territory. I don't really think it's there yet, but, you know, there's certainly been an acceleration. I think earlier in the year, maybe January, we we we talked about this a lot, I think, on one of …