Zoox - $290m (official website)
Lines of LEDs on the front and rear of the vehicle would send signals to other drivers, such as alerts that the robot taxi had spotted an obstruction up ahead on the road. Similarly, its directional sound system would let out a bleep or a blurp to tell a pedestrian in a crosswalk that the vehicle saw him, or to sound an alarm to the driver of a fast-approaching vehicle that he needed to get off his smartphone and hit the brakes to avoid a wreck. Early on the Zoox engineers considered a giant airbag that would envelop the vehicle before an accident; they ultimately went with more conventional airbags for the cabin. Zoox cars will come with high-end audio, plush seats, and some sort of conversational app for interacting with the riders.
The company has six prototypes, or mules, in auto industry lingo. They’re named VH1, VH2, and so on—the VH being short for “vaporware horseshit,” which is how a car blog once described the company’s technology. During a recent visit to SLAC, the mules were put into action with a series of demos. In one, the mule parked with extreme precision in a spot outside the firehouse. In another, it came to a controlled stop for a pedestrian making his way through a crosswalk and issued a bleep-bloop in greeting. In a separate demonstration at an abandoned airfield, the mules really showed off, tearing autonomously through an obstacle course at 50 mph. Your reporter, in crash helmet and safety harness, had the privilege to be the first person experiencing this test in the backward-facing seat.
payer networks, among others, and its analytics engine pulls out relevant insights from the unstructured data, which, when combined with electronic medical records (EMR) data, generate the real-world evidence. Through its innovative approach, Flatiron addresses a few important issues: how to improve clinical trial results, how to optimize the process of clinical trial eligibility assessment, and how to enable pharmaceutical companies to innovate with groundbreaking research that progresses the human race and pushes the boundary of human capability.
Incentives for Roche – Stride towards Gaining Leadership in Highly Competitive Oncology Therapeutics Market
Oncology therapeutics contributes ~60% of the total revenue of Roche, and it is critical to maintaining the market leadership to sustain business performance. With the patent of its key drugs Rituxan, Herceptin, and Avastin set to expire in 2018, 2019 and 2020, respectively, only in the U.S., it is essential for the company to fast-track the development and approval of new drugs. At the end of the fiscal year 2017, the company had as many as 31 oncology compounds in late-phase clinical trials. In such a critical business situation, the company is in dire need of utilizing real-world evidence and analytics solutions to fast track its clinical trials. Research suggests that only 3-5% of clinical trial enrollment yields desired results. The Flatiron platform is able to help identify the right patient cohorts for almost 15 types of cancer conditions for clinical trials, which can help save developers millions of dollars.
For Roche, the regulator-worthy, clinical research-grade data, which is being extracted by the Flatiron Health oncology practice network in almost real time, is of immense value and can be used for readout of drug efficacy and utility. In a nutshell, Roche will save money on clinical trials, make quicker decisions, and have a faster time-to-market. A blockbuster drug takes approximately 12 years and $4 billion-$11 billion of investment. Flatiron may help Roche expedite market launch and save R&D cost for its upcoming oncology drugs.
Further, Flatiron oncology practice network and patient data can be used by Roche in its digital marketing initiatives, patient assistance programs, and other commercial applications. Considering that this network is highly specialized and focused on oncology, the acquisition provides Roche even greater competitive advantage in the oncology drugs market.
The Acquisition is a Much-needed Boost for Roche in a Highly Active Oncology Therapeutics Market Space
Oncology therapeutic companies have started 2018 on a high note. In January, Celgene acquired Juno Therapeutics for CRISPR CAS9 for CAR-T therapy, then Novartis’s new CEO, Vasant Narasimhan, stated that the company is looking to re-create its business structure as a “Data Science and Medicine Company,” and now Roche has acquired Flatiron Health. This is what we have seen for the global top three companies in the oncology therapeutics market.
Over the past two to three years, the pharmaceutical industry’s focus has been on utilizing patient data to gain an understanding of the complex interactions between drugs and organisms, and get insights on the impact that treatments have on the outcomes of health difficulties.
Another interesting aspect is that Roche also has a stake in Foundation Medicine, which is a genomics analysis company. Further, Roche signed a partnership with GNS Healthcare in June 2017 to use its REFS (Reverse Engineering and Forward Simulation) technology to analyze proprietary EHR and next-generation sequencing data for insights on drivers of drug response and cancer progression. By this means, Roche has one of the strongest portfolios of database and analytics platforms at its disposal to support its personalized drug discovery program in oncology.
This market direction is likely to push other pharmaceutical manufacturers to look for next-gen technology adoption to remain competitive in the market. We expect some similar merger and acquisition (M&A) and partnership activities from other major companies in the near future.
Although Future Outcomes Seem Promising, Operational and Integration Factors will be Important for Future Success
In 2016, when Flatiron Health raised $175 million from Roche, co-founder Nat Turner mentioned that the company might go public in the next two to three years. Daniel O Day, Roche’s COO, clarified that the investment was not aimed at monetary benefits. In the past two years, Flatiron successfully collaborated with Pfizer, ASCO, the FDA and more than 2,500 provider sites in the US. All these factors indicate that Flatiron wanted to operate independently since its genomics insight can be leveraged by a wide group of pharmaceutical clients.
As expected, the initial transaction details indicate that Roche intends to maintain Flatiron as an independent subsidiary, which means that Flatiron will be able to provide its services to a wide group of pharmaceutical companies, as it was intended originally. However, it is expected that Roche might focus on developing specific tools/platforms utilizing Flatiron’s expertise for its exclusive usage.
On the other end, given Roche’s previous record integrating the newly acquired firm, it will be interesting to see how integration happens. Roche witnessed major challenges while integrating Genentech, which was also operating as an independent entity. We are curious to see whether Flatiron integration and acquisition will have a similar fate.
As far as the current situation for Flatiron goes, everything looks promising except a few minor issues. Experts are criticizing Flatiron for not providing incentives to clinical trial enrollees or to patients who had agreed to submit their genomic insight in OncoEMR. Whether Roche will resolve these issues is uncertain; however, the gravity of these challenges in the future will have an impact on the possibility of Flatiron operating independently in the long term.
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