THOU­SAND OAKS, Calif. — In 2023, Dave Reese walked out of a Sil­i­con Val­ley meet­ing and made a ca­reer-chang­ing call.

Reese was work­ing as the head of R&D at Am­gen. He rang up his CEO Bob Brad­way and, ef­fec­tive­ly, pitched the idea of fir­ing him­self, giv­ing a sim­ple ex­pla­na­tion: Every­thing in biotech was about to change, and Reese want­ed to lead that trans­for­ma­tion for Am­gen.

Over 20 years at Am­gen, Reese had long en­vi­sioned a con­ver­gence of biotech and tech. The AI boom ac­cel­er­at­ed his be­lief that the time had come, spurring him to pitch the new role of chief tech­nol­o­gy of­fi­cer. In do­ing so, he's re­or­ga­nized large chunks of the 28,000-em­ploy­ee bio­phar­ma to cap­i­tal­ize.

“It’s the hinge mo­ment,” Reese re­called telling Brad­way. “There’s no ques­tion.”

There’s a con­test brew­ing be­tween two San Diego biotechs look­ing to cre­ate the next gout med­i­cine.

Arthrosi Ther­a­peu­tics un­corked a $153 mil­lion Se­ries E on Wednes­day to com­plete two Phase 3 tri­als of its ex­per­i­men­tal drug called pozdeutin­u­rad. The stud­ies are slat­ed to read out in the sec­ond quar­ter of 2026, the biotech said.

Prime Eight Cap­i­tal led the Se­ries E. CR Biotech, High­Light Cap­i­tal and oth­ers al­so took part in the round. Arthrosi was found­ed in 2018.

The megaround comes two weeks af­ter Crys­talys Ther­a­peu­tics emerged with a $205 mil­lion Se­ries A. Crys­talys re­cent­ly be­gan two Phase 3 gout tri­als of its as­set, named dot­in­u­rad, and an­tic­i­pates da­ta around the end of 2027.

Ec­co­gene, a clin­i­cal-stage biotech whose oral GLP-1 drug forms the back­bone of As­traZeneca’s obe­si­ty pipeline, is plan­ning an ini­tial pub­lic of­fer­ing on the Hong Kong Stock Ex­change.

The biotech made pub­lic a 550-page prospec­tus on Wednes­day, join­ing more than 40 oth­er Chi­nese drug de­vel­op­ers that have of­fi­cial­ly hashed out plans to go pub­lic on the HKEX.

The biotech’s IPO con­sid­er­a­tions have been in the works for more than a year. CEO Jingye Zhou told End­points News in May 2024 that Ec­co­gene could look at a Nas­daq list­ing in ear­ly 2025 and then a dual list­ing in Hong Kong there­after. The Nas­daq ex­change has seen on­ly a hand­ful of biotech IPOs this year.