RPID: We’re Back

Step Right Up

This will be a “best ideas only” bio substack providing actionable, highly digestible and high conviction value to investors focused on quality not quantity. Disclaimer: Nothing in this article (or substack) is considered investment advice and is solely the opinion of the author.

The last piece was about the front end of the industry: who gets approved, and when. This one is about what happens after the approval letter.

Every therapy that clears the new, friendlier CBER has to be manufactured, and every batch has to be released. Before it ships, someone has to prove it isn’t contaminated. That test has, for roughly a hundred and forty years, consisted of a technician smearing a sample on an agar plate, waiting up to fourteen days, and squinting at it under a light. It is the single most antiquated workflow left in modern biomanufacturing, and it sits directly in the critical path of a $2M-a-dose CAR-T.

Rapid Micro Biosystems (RPID) sells the machine that replaces the technician and the squinting.