Dear clients and friends: Given your interest in health and medicine, we would like to share with you our collection of the most interesting perspectives on our industry's trends and developments. We are happy to share them with you — and hope you share your thoughts with us.

1. Of Xenografts & Organoids

Last month, researchers announced that a “cancer-derived xenograft and organoid platform”—essentially, tumors grown in the lab—could predict how a patient’s cancer will respond to a treatment. Wired reports:

This is a big deal, particularly for the people battling the kinds of cancer this lab studies—the most lethal forms, which tend to recur and metastasize. Although these cancers remain incurable, there are drugs that can fight them, for example by stopping cancer cells from replicating, thereby slowing tumor growth. But it’s impractical—and toxic—to blow through all of [the drugs].

The new approach, called functional precision medicine, posits that you can find answers by growing organoids and xenografts as tools for trial-and-error drug testing.

2. Queasy Ventures

Payers and hospitals are diving into venture capital—to the tune of $2 billion across 300 companies. In Slate, a pair of doctors point out how these moves could create issues for ethics and care:

Let’s suppose you’re a patient and your doctor recognizes an abnormal rhythm when listening to your heart. You both discuss exploring this issue further with heart monitoring. Your insurance company, however, only covers one type of heart monitor, and it happens to be made by a company that the insurance company’s venture arm has invested a lot of money in. Maybe it’s not the best heart monitor for you—and, too bad, it’s your only option. But even if the heart monitor works perfectly fine, this setup creates the perception of self-enrichment on the part of the insurance company.

3. Trials on Trial

Health Affairs assesses an ambitious 2015 FDA plan to improve diversity in clinical trials. About that:

We failed to find evidence that the action plan improved representation of Black trial participants. Black patients remained inadequately represented in clinical trials for drugs, with a median of one-third the enrollment that would be required, whether the trials were started before, during, or after the action plan. Fewer than 20 percent of drugs had data regarding treatment benefits or side effects reported for Black patients; neither measure improved during the action plan period.

4. Staying Global

The succession of global crises does not mean pharma should abandon a global approach to clinical development, accordingto Timmerman Report. Just the opposite:

Rather than abandoning globalization, the biopharma industry should seek a more robust network of global service providers. Companies should partner with multiple service providers in diverse geographic regions to that if one company or one country shuts down, another service provider in another region will be able to pick up the slack. Companies should get contracts in place before they need them, and those contracts should allow services to flexibly expand and contract.

Biopharma companies should also assess their supply networks for weaknesses. Wherever possible, companies should avoid relying on a single supplier for a crucial service or material. In some cases, it may be necessary to maintain a stockpile of a material that is subject to shortages or that only one vendor can provide.

5. Surf’s Up?

COVID prompted a wave of biotech funding. Now the tide has receded. Axios wonders what's next:

Biotech flourished at the height of the pandemic, but investors are now returning to other sectors. The SPDR S&P Biotech ETF fund, which is often used as a proxy for the industry performance, is down more than 37% over the past 12 months, far underperforming the broader market. Biotech funding in February was down 59% year-over-year, with both public market transactions and venture capital funding falling off.

The big question: Will dealmaking pick up because the companies are cheap, or will big drug manufacturers like Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb build out their pipelines on their own?