Biopharma Operator & Strategic Advisor | Founder, Katogen | Board Member | PubCo CEO | M&A, Capital Strategy | Read My Newsletter: https://xitter.cf/t.co/CISSuxuCBe
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I am excited to share that @BetterLifeBio has closed a US$100 million financing, today.
For people living with cluster headache, this is significant. Attacks can last up to three hours and recur several times a day, while many current treatments were adapted from other conditions. Many migraine patients face a similar challenge, moving from one therapy to the next without sufficient relief.
The financing supports the clinical plan for BETR-001: Phase 1A in healthy volunteers, parallel Phase 1B studies in cluster headache and migraine, and then Phase 2 trials in both indications. Running the studies in parallel helps move the program to patients faster.
The round was led by Deep Track Capital, with significant investments from Coastlands Capital, Marshall Wace, RA Capital Management, Perceptive Advisors, and other specialist healthcare funds. Support of this scale from investors of this caliber is unusual for a preclinical company, and I’m grateful they took the time to understand the program and its potential.
Thank you to the BetterLife team and to the shareholders who stayed with the company to reach this important milestone.
The full release: newsfilecorp.com/release/314…
Doug Drysdale retweeted
Another win for psilocybin
In 9 Parkinson's patients...
GDF15 fell
> 17.4% after 10 mg
> 13.9% after 25 mg
High GDF15 signals mitochondrial failure and neurodegeneration.
Inflammation also declined:
> IL-6: −17%
> IL-8: −20%
> hsCRP: −9.6%
> IL-10: +2.7% (anti-inflammatory)
Roughly 1.1 billion people live with migraine. For most it's an occasional bad day, but for some patients it takes more than half the month, even after the older preventives and the newer CGRP drugs. Many of these patients keep having frequent attacks after several preventives and need new options.
Here's why I think BETR-001 deserves a serious test in those patients.
First, the targets have a track record. BETR-001 is an agonist at 5-HT1B, 1D and 1F, the receptors triptans and lasmiditan already act on. We know that biology works for migraine. We aren't betting on an unproven pathway.
Second, it adds something those drugs don't. It's also an agonist at 5-HT2A, the receptor linked to neural plasticity as seen with psychedelics.
Third, the practical profile is designed for real life. It's an oral capsule, taken at home. Preclinical work shows it doesn't agonize 5-HT2B, the receptor that has caused cardiac safety trouble for some other drugs, and it isn't hallucinogenic.
Fourth, there's an early human signal. A 2010 pilot by Karst and colleagues gave a racemic version of this compound to patients with cluster headache.
We're targeting the IND for Q1 2027, and then into the clinic.
🤖 Made with AI
Doug Drysdale retweeted
Across Europe, psychedelics are entering a new chapter, one defined less by proof-of-concept studies and more by implementation and early-access schemes that don’t rely on conventional drug approvals.
On 8–9 October, more than 270 clinicians, researchers, policymakers, advocates and members of the public gathered at the National Library of Estonia in Tallinn for TAIP 2026, Estonia’s first international scientific conference on psychedelic-assisted therapy. There, they discussed various innovative models of regulated psychedelics access.
Ryan Khan was on-site for Psychedelic Alpha. Today, we share his 5,000+ word Dispatch.
Read more on our website: psychedelicalpha.com/news/be…
Treasury published its proposed COINS Act rule yesterday. Pharma’s first reaction will be relief, because pure licensing deals sit outside the rule as drafted.
A lot of recent China in-licensing deals carry something extra. Usually it’s an equity kicker or warrants. Sometimes it’s a co-development JV, or a NewCo where the licensor holds a stake. Those pieces are covered. Expect term sheets to get simpler, and expect upfronts to be repriced to make up for what gets stripped out.
US biotech funds take a harder hit than big pharma does. A private round in a Chinese biotech working in a covered area would be prohibited outright. There’s no option to notify Treasury and go ahead. Crossover funds can still buy listed shares in Hong Kong or Shanghai, because those are excepted.
What goes away is the pre-IPO round that made those positions pay. US partners at offshore funds should know the rule also covers a US person directing a foreign entity’s investment. US LPs with more than $2 million committed to a non-US fund that backs covered companies are also caught, unless they hold a binding contractual assurance.
The US-incorporated NewCo, licensing in a Chinese asset, starts to look like the default structure.
The COINS rules are out and they are EXTREMELY broad on pharma. The focus had been whether certain kinds of China biotech transactions would be limited. As currently written, the rule limits deals for any pharma compounds. Public comments til Dec. 7.
endpoints.news/treasury-prop…
In August, a positive Phase 3 readout at $MRNA knocked 10 to 15% off biotech stocks that had nothing to do with it. Today data from the same trial leaked, Moderna closed down nearly 18%, and those stocks got nothing back.
The mechanism was positioning. Going into the August readout, close to 14% of Moderna's float was sold short, and S3 Partners put short sellers' paper losses at about $5.5 billion on the first day. The specialist long-short funds holding those shorts tend to run close to fully invested. To cover, they sold whatever they could sell fastest, which meant liquid, widely held names with no news of their own.
I tracked nine of those commercial-stage names through today. Six are still below their August 18 close, with a median decline of about 11%. Several kept falling through October with no company-specific news. Today three of the nine rose, and two of those had their own reasons.
So the trade only ran one way. The funds that sold took their losses when they covered, near the top. A lower Moderna price today helps whoever is still short it, and those aren't the funds that sold your stock in September.
That has a practical consequence. For roughly ten weeks, much of the cost of capital for mid-cap biotech was set by one crowded short. Any company that priced a raise, a partnership or an option grant in that window priced it off that positioning.
What a messed up couple of months!
Doug Drysdale retweeted
not eating for 16 hours to trigger cellular repair sounds like a wellness trend masquerading as science until you read that the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Yoshinori Ohsumi specifically for his discovery of the mechanisms of autophagy, the process that fasting activates, where your cells literally digest and recycle their own damaged components. then it sounds like the Nobel committee confirmed that not eating activates a repair system so important it won the highest award in medicine
intermittent fasting (typically 16 hours fasted, 8 hours eating) has been practiced in virtually every human civilization. every major religion includes fasting: Ramadan (Islam), Yom Kippur (Judaism), Lent (Christianity), Ekadashi (Hinduism). the religions encoded the practice because the practitioners felt better. modern science explains why: the body switches from growth mode to repair mode when food stops arriving
the mechanism: when you eat, insulin rises and mTOR (the growth pathway) activates. cells grow and divide. when you fast, insulin drops and AMPK (the repair pathway) activates. cells stop growing and start cleaning: damaged proteins are digested, dysfunctional mitochondria are recycled (mitophagy), and misfolded proteins that would otherwise accumulate into disease are cleared. the body can't build AND clean at the same time. eating activates building. fasting activates cleaning. the modern human who eats from 7am to 11pm gives the body zero cleaning hours. the damage accumulates
- the 2016 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for the discovery of autophagy mechanisms. the prize committee considered the cellular recycling system activated by fasting important enough to give the highest honor in science
- reduces insulin by 20 to 31% during the fasting window, which sensitizes cells to insulin and reduces the insulin resistance that drives type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and abdominal fat storage
- activates AMPK, the same metabolic master switch that berberine, metformin, and exercise activate. fasting is the oldest and most powerful AMPK activator. it's also free
- increases growth hormone by up to 300 to 500% during the fasting window. the growth hormone increase preserves muscle mass, burns fat, and repairs tissue during the period when food is absent. the body is not cannibalizing muscle during a 16 hour fast. it is protecting it with growth hormone
- reduces inflammation markers (CRP, IL6, TNF alpha) by 20 to 40% in studies of 16:8 intermittent fasting. the inflammation reduction occurs because the NF kB pathway (master inflammatory switch) is suppressed during the fasting window
- brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) increases during fasting, stimulating new neural connections and protecting existing ones. the mental clarity that fasters report by day 3 to 5 is BDNF mediated, not placebo
the diet industry generates $72 billion annually selling food: meal plans, shakes, bars, supplements. fasting sells no food. the industry that profits from you eating cannot promote the intervention that requires you to stop eating. the conflict of interest is structural and permanent. the most effective metabolic intervention available is the one with zero revenue attached to it
start with 14:10 (14 hours fasted, 10 hour eating window) for week 1. progress to 16:8 by week 2 to 3. eat your last meal by 8pm. don't eat until noon the next day. coffee and water during the fast are fine (no calories). the hunger peaks at day 2 to 3 and then decreases permanently as ghrelin (hunger hormone) resets to the new schedule. effects on energy and clarity within 5 to 7 days. body composition changes at 4 to 8 weeks. cost: $0. equipment: a clock
a Nobel Prize was awarded for the mechanism your body activates when you stop eating for 16 hours. the $72 billion diet industry cannot sell you fasting because fasting is the absence of their product. the most powerful metabolic intervention in human history costs nothing, requires nothing, and was practiced by every civilization that ever existed. $0. a clock. and the cellular repair system that won the highest award in medicine activates the moment you stop reaching for the snack drawer.
Doug Drysdale retweeted
My @scrippsresearch colleague @xinjin and her team are doing amazing brain biology discovery work with 2,000 agents, PerturbAI, in collaboration with @OpenAI
prnewswire.com/news-releases…
Some of the most important cluster headache research of the last 20 years started with patients themselves.
People in agony found that certain lysergic-acid compounds seemed to break their cycles, and they told their doctors.
A small pilot study in 2010 followed up with a non-hallucinogenic version, and the signal was strong enough to get our attention at @BetterLifeBio.
When patients are that much in need and that observant, the least the industry can do is listen and run proper trials.
$BETR.CN $BETRF
Cluster headache is one of the most painful conditions in medicine. Patients call it "suicide headache," and that's not a figure of speech.
Yet try to name a drug developed specifically for it. Almost everything in use was borrowed from migraine, or comes from oxygen tanks and steroids. For decades the industry has treated it as too small to bother with.
I think that's a mistake, scientifically and commercially. When a condition is this severe and this poorly served, even a modest advance changes lives.
$BETR.CN $BETRF #BETR001
A first-in-human study is a small trial, but it shapes every study that follows it. We've spent the past two months putting people around BETR-001 who know how to get that first step right.
Yesterday we announced a Scientific Advisory Board for the headache program, and Professor Peter Goadsby agreed to co-chair it. Few people have shaped modern headache medicine as much as he has.
The board will advise management and our directors on clinical strategy, on the design and conduct of our planned studies in chronic cluster headache and chronic migraine, and on the science behind our discussions with regulators.
This morning we announced that Sheila Leitzinger joined as Head of Clinical Operations. Her first job is the healthy-volunteer study, running it carefully and building the clinical infrastructure we'll need once the program moves into patients. She joins Dr. Mahan Chehrenama, who became our Chief Medical Officer in August.
BETR-001 is an investigational oral therapy targeting an IND filing in the first quarter of 2027. Between now and then, the work is getting the design, the operations and the scientific judgment right before the first participant is dosed.
Welcome Professor Peter Goadsby, MD, PhD, FRS as Co-Chair of the @BetterLifeBio Scientific Advisory Board. We look forward to working together to build the BETR-001 program in cluster headache and migraine.
finance.yahoo.com/healthcare…
Doug Drysdale retweeted
Biopharma M&A - Great slides from Lifesci Capital. Slow activity in Q3 but still 2026 is trending towards being a record year.
Doug Drysdale retweeted
An open letter from the Chairs of AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Chiesi Group, Ipsen, GSK, Novo, Novartis, Roche, and Sanofi
worldpharmanews.com/business…
The Index That Stopped Measuring Biotech
August 19 became known as the Moderna squeeze. The stock jumped 177% after positive Phase 3 melanoma results with Merck, leaving short sellers with an estimated $5.5 billion in paper losses that day, according to S3 Partners.
The mechanics show who absorbed the loss. When a short rises that sharply, it becomes a larger share of a fund’s book without any new trade. Risk systems then reduce gross exposure, often by selling winners to raise cash. Mizuho said funds caught in the squeeze sold crowded AI, infrastructure, and momentum longs to cover, while Goldman’s prime desk reported that systematic long-short funds fell about 1.4% intraday - their worst session in more than two years. A Treasury buyback announcement that day added pressure.
Biotech was on the other side of the trade. XBI ended August up more than 10%, and biotech indexes set records that week - but the rally was near its peak. In September, the Fed raised rates for the first time since 2023 and the 10-year yield reached 5%. By October 7, XBI was about 12% below its August high, though still up roughly 23% for the year.
That headline gain overstates the sector’s strength because of how the index is built. Since June 2024, the index behind XBI has not been meaningfully equal-weighted. S&P caps holdings by trading liquidity, giving larger weights to liquid names and smaller weights to thinly traded ones. Companies with less than roughly $400 million to $500 million in float-adjusted value are excluded. BioCentury warned that XBI would no longer reflect small- and mid-cap biotech; two years later, I think that prediction has proved accurate.
Beneath the index, the market looks different. Stifel data through March showed valuations rising for companies with strong clinical results while those with average or poor data declined. On average, investors in smaller companies’ follow-on offerings this year have lost money.
This matters beyond scorekeeping. A board seeing XBI up 23% for the year may assume a financing window exists when a $300 million company may have none. The window is open for late-stage companies with clean data, but most of the sector is raising capital during a rate-hiking cycle while the most widely cited index suggests conditions are healthy.
Investors who funded tech longs with biotech shorts learned a costly lesson about binary risk on August 19. If you serve on a small-cap biotech board, benchmark performance against the median of a true peer group. $MRNA
The cluster headache patients in the 2010 Karst paper had already been through oxygen, triptans, verapamil (some couldn't tolerate higher doses), steroids and lithium. In the week before treatment they were having between 6 and 19 attacks.
Cluster headache is often called the suicide headache, and the people who treat it will tell you the name isn't an exaggeration.
Migraine is a different scale of problem. It affects an estimated 1.1 billion people worldwide and is the leading cause of disability in people under 50. Triptans, gepants and the CGRP antibodies have helped a lot of them. They haven't helped everyone, and the patients still struggling tend to be the hardest cases.
BETR-001 is an oral capsule for both conditions. It works through serotonin receptors that migraine treatment already relies on and adds a plasticity component through 5-HT2A. It's designed to be taken at home, without hallucinations and without a controlled-substance label.
We're targeting an IND filing in the first quarter of 2027, and we plan to run Phase 1B studies in cluster headache and migraine in parallel.
Doug Drysdale retweeted
Biotech is a stock pickers market right now. So many wonderful companies are beaten down 40% or more from their highs. You can go through chart after chart of high quality late stage and early commercial companies and find great value. On the other side, there is a AI theme in biotech driving a massive bubble in many of the techbio companies. Same narrative that existed in 2021 before they all imploded.
If you avoid the bubbly biotech stocks and focus on the mispriced excellence, there is a lot to love in biotech. I have at least 10 companies I love and want to build positions into. Then there are at least 5 to 10 more I like but don't even own. Be a wise investor and avoid the meme garbage stocks and focus on the undervalued excellence.
On Monday the Nobel Assembly gave the 2026 Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel for optogenetics. The idea is almost absurdly simple. A protein from a pond alga opens a channel when blue light hits it. Put that protein into a chosen set of neurons, thread a fiber into the brain, and you can turn those cells on or off in a living animal with millisecond precision.
That switch rewrote neuroscience. Circuits that were only inferred from lesions and imaging could be tested directly. Memory, anxiety, appetite, movement, and the compulsive loops of psychiatric disease all became experimental objects rather than black boxes. Deisseroth is a psychiatrist as well as a bioengineer, and the clinical implication was never far from the work. The same logic is already in early human use. A few people with inherited blindness have regained modest sensitivity to light after an optogenetic gene therapy, and groups are testing light-controlled approaches in epilepsy and pain.
For anyone building drugs in neurodegeneration or mental health, the lesson is not that light will replace small molecules. It is that causal circuit maps change what a drug target even means. If you can prove a cell type drives a symptom, you stop guessing which receptor to block. Twenty years from an algal protein to a Nobel, and the therapeutic chapter is only starting.
