How's San Francisco.
It's uh, it's great.
You know, like I think that a lot of people told me it was going to be a dystopian healscape and it's not.
Wait, it's the first time you've actually gone right to the JP Morgan healthcare conference.
To this one. Yeah, the specific conference, And what's.
Your first impression of it? I guess is there anything that surprised you.
I guess what really surprised me was the security.
Like I've been to conferences before where it's kind of like you can't even go into the hotel without like your past and they're really strict about it. So I guess that was the most surprising thing. But other than that,
it's you know, the meetings are cool. Conference, It's still a conference, right, Like, it's not I'm not going to be like, oh god, this is you know, the coolest thing I've ever seen in my life, although that did kind of happen here with there was a company that was presenting that has I guess like you can call it like drug GPT, right, it's like artificial intelligence but used to like find new drugs, and that was really cool.
I did a left one.
Jimmy Okay, Simony up barges, this isn't After School Special, except I've decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.
Where's the best with imposta?
These are the important question? Is that robots taking over the world. No.
I think that like in a couple of years, the AI will do a really good job of making the odd Lots podcast and people to say, I don't really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore.
We do have.
Perfect You're listening to lots More where we catch up with friends about what's going on right now, because.
Even when odd Lots is over, there's always lots more.
And we really do have the perfect guest. We're talking to James Van Gelan of saitriniresearch dot com, also known as Satrini on Twitter. You might remember him. We had him on odd Thloughts back in August to talk about weight loss drugs, including ozembic and how they were going
to chat everything. That was kind of a prescient conversation, I think because since then we've seen even more excitement for a lot of these drugs and the stocks have taken off even more, James, is that what everyone's talking about at that conference?
I think it's it's split kind of fifty to fifty between the GLP one drugs and then the ADC cancer stuff because of the side of Kinetics acquisition that was announced.
I don't like going to conferences. Typically, you know, everyone licet in a while, they're okay, But what is like, I know, like the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference. I know it's a big deal. Why is it such a big deal? What is it exactly? And like why this one in particular, how did it become like such an important event for healthcare investors.
I don't know the history of the conference, but when you look at the agenda speaking here, it's you know, everyone that's a big deal. Everyone that you would want to know what they're doing, they're kind of here. I think that there's even more value in just sitting in some of the hotel bars, like over hearing how.
People are talking, you know, like people seem pretty optimistic on like med tech in the funding environment, and that's almost more valuable to me than the conference itself.
So, by the way, we're recording this January tenth, Novo Nordisk hitting yet another all time high right now. It's kind of crazy, Tracy, Like, for all of the hype about the GLP one drugs, A, the stocks keep going higher and B. I feel like every day there's some other article or thing about here's another thing that they do well, or another area that we're researching that shows promise where it's not just about weight less, you know,
like compulsion or other things. Like it's pretty wild how this is not slowing down.
This is my opportunity to reject the idea of the all thoughts curse. Oh and that we top tech a lot of these things. We did not top tick Nova Nordisk stock. Okay, we were a.
Launch that we haven't top ticked.
Yeah.
Actually, I actually I actually when I got the invite to come back, I remember everyone that was like, if you go on a podcast and you talk about this trend, like that's it, it's over, you know. So when I got the invite to come back, I went and I looked at like Lily and Novo and yeah, so I think it's like eighty one percent of the time they have been at all time highs since. Yeah, since that's so, I think we can put the odlus course rum or two.
We're not trying to time the market. We're not here to make recommendations, but we are just trying to establish that not every time we talk about a trend it's at the top. And I'll just say the other one. We've done multiple episodes over the years, over the last year relating to in Nvidia and semiconductors and Tracy and Nvidia at another all time high today. So we're just getting these on the record.
We're just journalists who want to be timely.
We're just journalists who want to be We just we just want to be timely. Okay, So within the GLP one world, what's hot? What are people talking about? What's interesting within GLP ones?
Well, there's there's two main things. Right.
You got the oral drugs, and like Lily's CEO had a fireside chat type thing, and.
I have this big realization.
I don't know if this was like common knowledge among people that are healthcare specialists, but I had a big realization that basically, with these oral drugs, it's not so much about the fact that like patients don't want to use these auto injectors, because as we've seen, people are
pretty much fine with the auto injectors. The thing is, the auto injectors are super expensive and like very fight constrained, so it's kind of like the oral drug, right, Like it's very easy to make a pill, and the high.
Chain is like not the same as the auto injector.
So it turns out the way that he was speaking, it really gave me the idea that like these oral drugs, right, like Lily has orf and Novo has one too that's in the in the works, and they seem to be kind of like the rate limitter.
Right.
He had something that he said about how he sees supply for these drugs being a constraint for you know, the next ten years, and then he said, that's not a bad thing, right, because we have you know, half of we have I don't know, five hundred thousand people in the US that are on these drugs and one hundred and ten million.
People that theoretically could or should take them.
And that doesn't even count in Brazil or China or India.
Right, that's the main thing.
So one of the things that lives rent free in my head ever since we first spoke to you was Titan Stapler. Do you remember that, like this this company that makes Titan stomach staplers, and I'm wondering, you know, obviously people are talking about the sort of positive impact of weight loss drugs GLP one on their bottom lines, but is there anyone at the conference that you've heard or seen talking about negative impact?
Honestly, I think that ever since right around the first time we spoke, there was a wave of some people that fell on the soul, so to speak, kind of like how CHEG did with artificial intelligence. I think that once they saw the stock reactions, once you come out and you say, you know, GLP one drugs are killing us, and then your stock goes down ten percent a day, I think they're a little more careful about it now,
they're not readily offering that information. But also at the same time, some obviously I had a very like high conviction thesis on the idea that you know, sepath machines and the Titan stapler and all these things would actively affected. But it got so priced in so quickly, and some of that was not GLP one stuff, right, Some of that was basically just rates, Like don't attribute to GLP
one's what you can attribute to interest rates. I guess and so I think with Medtech where it is, it's kind of even with the impact there, they can kind of say, okay, you know, but it's a little bit better than you've heared.
Res Med a big maker of CPAP machines that's bounced a little bit over the last few months. Those still down from where it was a year ago.
You know.
I was walking back to the office from lunch today and I saw a sign for weight Watchers about like get on their GLP one program. So obviously they're trying to like pivot to being a GLP one player, show how they can fit in. But that's stock not doing so well.
It's down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brown Trip went up like one hundred and fifty percent then went all the way down. And the thing if you're in the GLP one space at all and Eli Lilly starts doing what you're doing, it's not great.
Tracy, Tracy.
I feel like investors, you know, they love to get cute with things like I missed the Eli Lily trace by this other company, and then you see, like you know, in videos, the winners so far been the winner, Novo's the winner Lily, and then all these other like secondary tertiary plays. It's like kind of dice here.
Yeah, James, you mentioned something else that I think is kind of like a big factor here, which is just interest rates and the move we've seen there. And you mentioned everyone being sort of enthusiastic about funding availability for pharma going into twenty twenty four. How much is some of this excitement just a pure rates play on the cost of funding for you know, these companies that spend a lot of money on research and development actually coming down.
I think it's like a rate of change thing, right. It got so bad that even an incremental improvement is going to be met with overwhelming kind of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm because the regional bank stuff, you know, Silicon Valley Bank collapsing hurt the biopharma and biotech industry significantly. And I think that it's kind of been so long where rates were just going up and everything's going to stay higher for longer, and now you know, there's a glimmer of
hope on the horizon. And it's very easy if you're in this industry and you've just been hearing no for the past you know, year and a half, to say, oh, finally, you.
Know, wait, can we go back? I think you said there were like two things in the GLP one space. You mentioned auto injectors, and so I was curious what the other one was.
The other thing is that we're kind of finding out, right, I guess we already knew. But the thing with the GLP one drugs is that they will make you lose weight, right, and if you are morbidly obese, that's great. Now, the problem is you are going to lose some muscle too. Right when you say you lose weight, it's not necessarily that all that weight is fat, and that can be a problem just because kind of common sense, right, it's
better to have muscle mass. Muscle mass is great, especially if you're diabetic, and also from like a cosmetic aesthetics perspective. So now kind of the thing that everyone is focusing on is finding a combination drug to be used alongside these GLP WANs that makes it so that you either do not lose muscle when you are losing fat, or that you actually gain muscle. So there was some data from Regeneron that was, in my opinion, just like everything
else that happens, very bullish. For Lily, they had an acquisition. They bought Versatus for four billion dollars and Versatus has a drug called the migramat and when you combine the migramat with you.
Know, semaglue tide or another GLP one drug.
The phase one trial was showing that you will lose twelve percent of your body weight, but you will also increase your lean muscle mass by six percent, which is a cheap code, right, Like there is nobody doesn't want to lose ten percent of their body weight and then
also gain lean muscle mass. It's also very important with like the elderly population, you know, because they if they get weaker, then they're more at risk for falls or injuries, and you know, making sure that like bone mineral density stays high, so you know, but at the same time, it's also if you make the drug that seems like a money printer to me.
Well, so I think muscle building drugs already exist in the form of anabolic steroids, although I doubt anyone's recommending recommending that you go on a zempic and then take
steroids as well. But James, you mentioned at the very beginning of this conversation that you saw something cool and you sent me a little video of this and when you send me the video, I had a sort of realization that we are truly in the future in some respects because you sent me a video of a presentation of basically like an AI for drug development, so drug GPT, and you recorded the video using your meta sunglasses.
I'm speaking to you guys right now on them. It was definitely future coded for sure. I mean the thing was, this was Recursion Pharma's presentation and theirs was at you know, seven fifteen in the morning, so it wasn't very crowded, and then Nvidio presented later, but Recursion was the one that had the demo. They did it right in front of you. It's like if you loaded up Chatgypt and started asking you questions, but they where they It's called low I call it drug GPT just because it's funny.
But they opened up this program and then started they said, you know, give us a list of molecules that are gonna target RAF one or and it just gave him fifty new drugs and then they can refine it down based on how likely it is to have this side effect or that side effect, or where the structural activity relationship is or you know, the dose response curve just based on you know, this predictive.
AI and how do we know well, I mean, how do we know that the problem?
Yeah, I mean like so like they like they give you some molecules and stuff, but like, how does anyone know that ultimately this is where does it go from there? What's the evidence that this is uh, you know, produce as drugs or find new combinations of molecules faster than traditional routes.
Well, when he was doing it, yeah, kind of in the audience, you have to assume that there are some people that know biochemistry, and they got.
Into some stuff that you know, I couldn't really follow, but he was talking about how, oh you know, if there are any chemists in the audience, you'll recognize this drug looks a lot like this drug. And basically they went through the whole I mean, the thing is I dropped out of at school, right, so, like I could find very limited amount of time. But I think the main point that they were getting across was that in biotech and biopharmat they spend so much time and money
on things that might just not work. And if you have a program that can basically make you faster to fail.
Right, where you're.
Kind of figuring out what's going to be a waste of time and what might not be more effectively.
That's huge, right.
Maybe maybe it's not that this is going to find the cure for cancer, but the company that you know eventually does find the cure for cancer, they're going to be a lot more efficient with it because they're not going to be wasting their time on stuff that you know, maybe this program can tell them obviously won't work.
Often are people mentioning AI in general at that conference? I'm curious if it's sort of like infiltrating to the degree that it seems to be in financials conferences for instance.
Oh yeah, it was a ton I mean, you know, Lily didn't mention AI. Nova didn't mention AI. They had their own thing. But then you know you had Sonofi and Jen both talking about their new AI platforms, and then Video was here. Right then Video presented here and had a whole thing about their predictive analytics platform and Boonemo and it was I mean, you guys should have seen when the presenter from Nvidia concluded her speech, it
was like Night of the Walking Debt. Literally, the entire audience just like shambling up, like just trying to get a little bit of the in Vidia magic on speak.
Oh, that's always the most awkward moment at conferences when the speakers get off stage and everyone kind of like awkwardly stands around waiting for their chance to introduce themselves in network.
Hand them MACR about their company. Yes, totally.
Yeah, I was worried it was going to get violent, you know.
And like the other thing, the ratio is at these conferences, like finance conferences not great and like this is like a woman with ninety men and two women just send That was like it was like not the coolest scene.
By the way, Tracy, you know what stock is at basically the same level it was ten years ago.
I have no idea Pfizer.
Oh that's one company that my understanding is is not in the game at all. On GOLP one. Of course, it went nuts in twenty twenty one. Yeah, the hot thing was COVID injections. But obviously I think many fewer people these days are getting boosters than may people may have expected two years ago. And that stock is literally where it was. No, maybe it's paid dividend and stuff since then. That's not literally where it was in twenty fourteen, So don't miss the golp one.
Pfizer had an oral g g golp one and you know, ditched it. The side effects were just too bad.
And that's that's gonna be like a serious risk to look out for, right because you know, with the oral preparations of these like peptides or like any really like endocrine drug, there's always it seems at least, you know, I don't have science to back this up, but it seems like when you have an endocrine drug and you're trying to turn it into an oral instead of you know,
an injectable, the side effects get really crazy. And that's definitely I think the biggest risk to like lily Novo would be one of them gets the oral and the other one has side effects that are way too bad, right because, like I said in the beginning, right that the oral drug will make it so that they can take advantage of this huge demand right there. They're constrained by supply, but the supply.
Of the oral drug would you know, kind of alleviate that.
And if one of them has it then the other one doesn't, that could really change the landscape.
So James, in addition to bringing us dispatches from the JPM healthcare conference and being our sort of eyes on the ground or sunglasses on the ground. Maybe what else are you going to do in San Francisco? Like, who are you talking to while you're there?
Oh?
You know, I I message all the people that I know that have a kind of venture capital healthcare vibe. And I'm not really super involved, Like I just like trade and you know, I'm in my own office and trading and I'm not super linked up with all the finance people. So I didn't get invited to any of the like events or anything. But you know, I can still have a good time in San Francisco myself.
James, I think that's it. Oh yeah, go ahead.
I just want to say, Joe, well you are a really musician.
Finally, finally a little respector on here. No, I appreciate that I met James in person at our concert in December. Very kind of you to say, on are thank you so much.
I was surprised. Was I kind of expected it was a joke, but you are.
Very very nice of you to say. Great, let's leave it here. This is a great place to end it on this note I love let's leave it here. There's a great place to end. He kind of broke up there at the end, so I don't know if we got that on audio. I think I heard it.
I heard it, I heard it.
Lots More is produced by Carmen Rodriguez and Dashel Bennett, with help from Moses Ondam and kil Brooks. Our sound engineer is Blake Maples. Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
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