Earlier this month at the annual J.P. Morgan conference, the biotech industry launched its encore to a wildly successful 2020 – virtually. And, as is becoming the common scenario, attendees found both pros and cons to our new (temporary?) reality.

“J.P. Morgan and the meetings around J.P. Morgan are such a fun week for us in the industry typically, but I have to be blunt: This week has been extra busy. I think the Zoom environment, and the virtual environment, has created an efficiency that’s good for everybody, except the folks that have to present the data because we have to present every 30 minutes without bio breaks,” OncoCyte Corp. President and Chief Executive Officer Ronnie Andrews told BioSpace.

We hear you guys loud and clear: You’re pretty sure J.P. Morgan’s days in San Francisco are done, and you basically couldn’t be happier about it.

That’s the message, at least, that we got from those who weighed in on last week’s poll about the meeting's future. Two-thirds of respondents said the confab would leave the Bay Area when it returns from virtual-only, while just 22% said it would return to its previous form. Another 12% said it would stay in San Francisco but leave its longtime host venue, the comically undersized Westin St. Francis.

As the 2021 virtual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference wrapped up, there was still news from companies regarding their deals, pipeline and regulatory updates. Here’s a look.

ImmunoGen - ImmunoGen provided an overview of its programs, with a particular focus on submitting its Biologics License Application (BLA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) before the end of this year for mirvetuximab soravtansine, with hopes of it being approved in early 2022. It is being studied in platinum-resistant ovarian cancer patients with high levels of folate receptor alpha. The submission will be based on data from the Phase III SORAYA clinical trial.

COVID-19 lockdowns last year brought challenges for companies in nearly every industry—including pharmaceutical companies trying to get the word out about new drugs. But for companies with established connections, technology served as a suitable temporary substitute to in-person meetings, Incyte CEO Hervé Hoppenot said in an interview.

Medtech majors used this week’s virtual J.P. Morgan healthcare conference to talk up their plans in the hot, increasingly competitive robotic surgery sector. Here, we round up what executives from Intuitive Surgical, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic and Zimmer Biomet said about their activities in the area.

Jazz Pharmaceuticals is in the middle of a four-product launch cycle—one in 2019, two in 2020 and one more targeted for 2021—and a dramatic shift for the small pharma.

For years, Jazz has depended on Xyrem to fuel its growth, but 2021 will change that. Thanks to the new drugs, plus launches in new markets and new indications, more than half of Jazz's revenue will come from new drugs by 2022, CEO Bruce Cozadd said.

Art Levin is living his “scientist’s dream come true.”

The Avidity Biosciences CSO set out years ago to build a new class of oligonucleotide-based therapies for severe muscle diseases, like myotonic dystrophy (DM1) — the rare, genetic disorder that causes progressive muscle weakness.

Earlier this week, Pfizer partner BioNTech upped the pair’s 2021 COVID-19 output projection to 2 billion doses for 2021, up from a previous estimate of 1.3 billion. But how will the companies get there?

By doing things “very differently and very out of the box in manufacturing,” CEO Albert Bourla explained Tuesday during a fireside chat at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference.

Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson came on the job touting his digital hopes for the company, and now he's aiming to take the French drugmaker to digital level 2.0 with renewed ambitions and a new digital chief who joined from outside the industry.

Chief Digital Officer Arnaud Robert said Tuesday at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference that the digital challenges in the pharma industry are “quite real." Still, the opportunities at Sanofi are “greater than any company I’ve worked at” or in “any industry I’ve worked in.”

German biotech CureVac shouldn’t be discounted from being a major COVID-19 vaccine player despite being at the tail end of the race to market.

This is according to Marianne De Backer, Bayer’s head of business development who would have helped pen its vaccine deal with CureVac, speaking at the annual J.P. Morgan healthcare conference today.