Episode 190 - July 24, 2026

You're listening to the biotech hangout, a live and unedited weekly discussion of all the latest news in our industry with a group of biotech insiders and experts. I'm Eric Schmidt, and my cohost today are Josh Shimmer, Brian Smorny, and Brad Lonecar. For more information about our our host and guest speakers please go to biotechhangout.com. Thanks everyone for joining. It will start with capital raising in biotech. In particular, we had one of the first early stage IPOs in in quite some time. We've also continued to see some, some companies go public via, maybe less traditional reverse merge merger route. And and and, Brian, I know you flagged a colossal, private potential offering in the space as well, which we'll we'll catch. Bunch of industry news this week, that, of course, will deserve more commentary including, some drama, I would say, and and and also some progress. We're gonna talk about the FDA environment and and as well, this in in advance of two very important ad comm meetings next week, and maybe we'll close with, the topic of whether the SEC is gonna begin to change, how companies are permitted or allowed to to do their quarterly into semiannual, filings for for queues. So lot to cover. Brian, I think it's just still you and I. Let's start with with the IPOs and the capital raising. We did just last night, price for this morning, see Scribe go public. This is probably the first very early stage company to go public, since the COVID era. I guess we can't quite call it a preclinical IPO because according to Scribe's, prospectus, they they are using their gene silencing technology, in the clinic now. They just recently got approval in Australia, I believe, to to, to begin to interrogate their lead candidate, which is a PCS canine, targeted therapy for hypercholesterolemia. But since that clearance of the, Australian TGA just just happened maybe less than two months ago, certainly, this is an early stage IPO. Again, maybe not a preclinical IPO, but something that we haven't really seen much about, from the last, you know, five four, five years now. It was a bit of a monetized deal priced at over a $100,000,000, but it it was upsized, and and we'll see how well received it is. So I guess the first question that we we'd like to, take on is what this means for the broader biotech sector. Are we slip sliding away into, an era where we're gonna start to see earlier and early stage companies go public? And what what do you make of that, Brian? Yeah. Look. I mean, I think and and we sort of address this multiple times. Right? There there's just a cycle, and I've never seen the cycle not at peak absorb very early stage things. But I think I've also commented I haven't really seen, the durability of the cycle allow for preclinical assets, preclinical companies to kind of …