Biotech startups rarely fail all at once. They fail while everyone is still working hard. Experiments continue. Meetings happen. Progress is reported. Yet alignment fades and decisions lose clarity. This is not a motivation problem. It is structural. When complexity grows faster than strategy, biotech companies drift. Survival depends less on science and more on whether clarity scales with complexity.

👉 Why has intellectual property become a first-order fundraising signal? Biotech fundraising has undergone a subtle yet significant shift. Capital still exists, but investors are making decisions earlier and filtering more carefully . As a result, intellectual property is no longer something that comes up late in the process. 👉 It has become an early signal of whether a biotech company is fundable at all. This shift does not mean founders need more patents or heavier legal

Founders love the idea that a new year, or a new quarter, will reset the company. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: 👉 Your biotech is already running on an operating cadence you didn’t consciously design. And that cadence is shaping everything: timelines, decisions, investor calls, BD traction, internal focus. Most CEOs think they’re steering the strategy. 👉 In reality, their operating cadence is steering them. And until you see it, you can’t change it. Operating cadence

As scientists, we know curves don’t equal clarity. As 2025 comes to a close, this final edition of Weekly News focuses on how GPCR binding affinity experiments are interpreted—and how those interpretations quietly shape SAR, lead selection, and development timelines long before anyone notices. The goal isn’t more data. It’s cleaner interpretation. And that’s exactly what carries strong discovery programs into 2026.

The Quiet Drift You Don’t Feel Until It’s Too Late 👉 Every early-stage biotech reaches a moment where the science finally starts clicking… and the company quietly stops doing anything else. BD conversations stay warm but motionless. Investor updates become thinner. Internal meetings slowly morph into scientific colloquia instead of decision-making forums. 👉 The uncomfortable truth: your company is doing a lot of science and very little building. No drama. No blow-ups.Just

Binding affinity appears straightforward: add ligand, measure signal, fit a curve. Yet discovery teams routinely lose time and misallocate resources because the underlying biology behaves nothing like the idealized systems we learned in textbooks. GPCRs couple, decouple, isomerize, deplete tracers, and shift apparent affinity depending on stoichiometry and time. The result is a recurring pattern across programs—clean data that is not actually telling the truth. Orthosteric bi

Every scientist has stood in a crowded conference room rehearsing a question they’re too nervous to ask. The expert they admire is right there, but the fear of sounding unprepared wins.Yet one well-timed question can unlock clarity, accelerate a stalled project, or even spark a collaboration. In this episode, JB pulls the curtain back on the mindset and tactics he’s used for years—including the exact line that makes intimidating conversations surprisingly easy. It’s a

Before the islet lit up, the collaboration wasn’t even aimed at imaging. Johannes “JB” Broichhagen trained as a synthetic chemist — someone who trusted carbon–carbon bonds far more than live-cell behavior. Yet curiosity and chemistry pulled him into the world of GLP-1R, pancreatic β-cells, and the biological questions David Hodson had been exploring for years. The call from David — the glowing islet — created a pivot the team couldn’t ignore. A fluorescent peptide probe

The Gaps They Already See 👉 As a biotech founder, it’s easy to mistake volume for readiness . A solid preclinical package, promising safety data, and a consistent in vivo proof-of-concept, it feels like you’re ready for that pre-IND meeting. And yet, many founders walk out of their first FDA conversation with a quiet sense of confusion . 👉 No dramatic rejection. No loud red flags.Just a series of subtle but firm questions pointing to what’s missing . While you’re focused on

Live-cell high-content screening (HCS) offers an increasingly valuable alternative. By quantifying ligand–receptor interactions directly in intact cells, HCS allows researchers to observe binding events under near-physiological conditions while simultaneously generating image-based evidence to support numerical affinity estimates. For targets such as CB2, where nuanced shifts in receptor conformation affect signaling outcomes, a whole-cell environment can strengthen early-sta

Some breakthroughs don’t start with a grant or a roadmap — they start with a question no one expects to matter. For JB, that moment was a cold email from a biologist he’d never met, asking if he could synthesize a molecule “when you’re back in Munich.” That simple ask pulled a young chemist out of the fume hood and into the messy, electrifying world of live-cell biology. What followed — a trip to London, confocal imaging marathons, and a partnership built on trust and c

Most GPCR programs don’t fail because of weak molecules—they fail because biology behaves differently than the assay implied. This week’s feature goes straight to the foundation: how system-level GPCR thinking protects discovery teams from the costly misinterpretations that derail programs. If your work touches GPCR pharmacology, these insights aren’t optional—they’re essential.

The Cost of Confusion Let’s be honest. Most biotech pitches don’t fail because the science is weak. They fail because the story is unclear. 👉 A confusing pitch doesn’t just slow down progress. It silently shuts down opportunity. You might still get the meeting. You might still get a few questions. But behind the polite nods, your audience is checking out. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: 👉 People make up their minds in the first few seconds. If your pitch doesn’t immediately

Discovery programs rarely fail because a molecule “did nothing.” They fail because a molecule behaved exactly as the underlying system allowed—amplified, buffered, redirected, or reshaped by layers of receptor biology that weren’t accounted for. The October 30th AMA with Dr. Kenakin highlighted a fundamental truth: GPCR systems do not offer stable, proportional input–output relationships. Receptor density, constitutive activity, coupling efficiency, local signaling archit

Science used to reward the lone genius—the first author who “drove the project,” the PI whose name defined a field. But the problems we face today—metabolic disease, obesity, GPCR signaling complexity—are too layered, too multidimensional, too systemic for single-discipline solutions. As Hodson put it, the work he leads now would be impossible without partnerships. Whether it's human genetics, imaging platforms, peptide chemistry, or neural metabolic mapping—every piece re

Burning Cash Isn’t the Problem. Burning Alignment Is. Every biotech founder fears the day the cash runs out. You track the burn rate. You watch the runway shrink. You delay hires. You negotiate term sheets from a place of panic. But here’s what most founders miss. 👉 Cash isn’t your biggest problem. Misalignment is. Not the obvious kind either. We’re not talking about personality clashes or investor drama. 👉 We’re talking about the type of quiet misalignment that appears to

High-content screening (HCS) has become a cornerstone in GPCR and phenotypic drug discovery, enabling researchers to quantify cellular responses with spatial, temporal, and mechanistic depth. For GPCR-focused programs, the ability to visualize receptor localization, internalization kinetics, and ligand interactions in intact cells offers advantages that extend far beyond traditional biochemical or radioligand assays. Yet, despite remarkable progress, HCS workflows rema

When David Hodson’s lab teamed up with chemist Johannes Broichhagen aka JB (then a young researcher newly arrived during a home DIY moment), the goal was bold and elegant: Create a photo-switchable ligand to remotely control GPCR signaling with light. This was the moment when photopharmacology felt like the future. The literature was buzzing. Labs were competing. The idea was simple — turn signaling on or off with a flash of light.

Enter a long-term collaboration with chemist Dr. Johannes Broichhagen - aka JB — which, amusingly, began when Hodson opened the door wearing cleaning gloves mid home renovation.

Clean data can still mislead if the underlying assumptions aren’t tested. Schild analysis is one of the few tools that tells you whether your “competitive antagonist” is actually behaving competitively. This week, we help you tighten your interpretations and strengthen your decisions at the bench and in discovery. Breakthroughs this week: McGPCR multimodal model; Endocrine Metabolic GPCRs 2026; Pfizer–Metsera acquisition.

Your scientific thinking built the foundation, but leadership is what scales it. The Invisible Obstacle   👉 Brilliant science. Stalled progress. It’s a pattern we see far too often in early-stage biotech operations and startups. The experiments work. The data looks promising. But decisions lag, the team spins, and investors get nervous. Science isn’t the problem; scientific thinking is. What makes you excel in the lab can quietly sabotage your leadership in the boardroom. 👉

Drug discovery often assumes receptor inhibition follows simple rules—agonist binds, antagonist blocks, and data fit neatly into predictable curves. Yet, any pharmacologist who’s pushed beyond textbook theory knows: biology rarely plays fair. Schild analysis remains one of the few conceptual anchors that can tell us when “simple” truly is simple—and when deeper receptor dynamics are at play.

When you walk into a typical academic lab, the boundaries are obvious: this PI’s corner, that group’s benches, their grants, their silos. But in Melbourne, a quiet experiment challenged that model — and it worked.

The first time Michelle ran a cyclic AMP assay, she did it with a single-channel pipette, trays of melting ice, and the kind of focus that only comes from knowing one mistake could waste weeks of work.