6 top VCs give their best 2019 predictions for healthcare, from a biotech correction to a ‘shadow cash economy’ stepping into the light

Venrock partner Camille Samuels is ready to get back to the basics in biotech.

“I’m enthused by the correction,” Samuels told Business Insider. Over the past five years, the Nasdaq biotech index is up 25%, though recently stocks have taken a tumble, putting them into correction territory, a term that refers to a 10% or greater decline from a stock’s most recent peak.

In 2019, she said, she’s anticipating a return to the basic biotech-business model. That is, instead of a broad platform with six or more potential drugs in the works, a more straightforward focus on one or two lead programs that a company knows super well.

The correction in turn will drive that because there will be less available capital pouring into early-stage companies, forcing them to have a more zoomed-in approach.

“I remain an optimist on the fundamentals of biotech, but the industry has gotten so enthusiastic as to be undisciplined,” Samuels said.

On the policy side, Samuels said she expects to see the biopharma industry make a concession on drug pricing to appease the Trump administration. That said, she doesn’t expect it to have broad implications.

Another prediction: “Moderna will exit at a $3 billion valuation next year.”

Moderna debuted on the public market on December 7 after raising more than $600 million in the biggest IPO in biotech history. While the IPO valued Moderna at $7.5 billion, it’s currently trading well below its IPO price, with a market value of $5 billion.

Samuels expects that to drop even further by the end of 2019, to a market value of $3 billion.

“It’s hard for me, looking at their pipeline, to figure out why they’re valued five times, six times [as much as] other companies with the same pipeline,” Samuels said.

Lastly, she sees exhaustion with financing cancer-drug makers sinking in, with interest picking up for other diseases that have been left at the wayside.

Two of the scientific areas she’s most interested in at the moment: mitochondrial RNA-based medicines and antiaging biology, particularly a subsection she refers to as “inflamm-aging.”

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