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Free tasty food, brightly coloured bicycles and high salaries are well-known hallmarks of the Googleplex—Google’s famed headquarters in Mountain View, California. But it was not these perks that led cardiologist Jessica Mega to pause her thriving academic career at Harvard Medical School to become the chief medical officer of the company’s life-sciences team. She was lured by the ambitions of the effort, soon to be incorporated under Google’s parent firm Alphabet. Nurtured by Google’s expertise in data analytics and engineering, the biology team is expected to create miniaturized electronic devices and to use these and other means to collect and analyse more health data, more continuously, than is possible today.

UC San Francisco (UCSF) has launched a collaboration with international pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) to promote early-stage research with the potential to translate into new therapies for cancer, obesity and antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Through the collaboration, researchers from UCSF will work alongside GSK scientists to identify and jointly expedite promising basic research. In a shift from traditional sponsored-research agreements, the program will provide early-stage funding for validating academic discoveries that are not otherwise supported by traditional grant mechanisms.

GlaxoSmithKline and five other major drugmakers have teamed up with the UK government to launch the world’s first venture capital fund dedicated to finding new ways to prevent and treat dementia.

The Department of Health, the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK and the six pharmaceutical firms have raised $100m (£65m) to invest in early-stage, novel treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other forms of dementia. GSK’s boss, Sir Andrew Witty, has been one of the main driving forces behind the initiative, in which the company is joined by the US drugmakers Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, and Japan’s Takeda.

The Seattle-based Microsoft Ventures Accelerator is a four-month program that connects startup founders with mentors and gives them the tools to help grow their business. The accelerator has 24 graduates to date, and is looking for its next class.

Specifically, Microsoft Ventures is looking for companies that focus on machine learning.

Rockville-based health care IT provider DrFirst has secured $25 million in equity financing from Goldman Sachs, elevating its raise in the last year to $42 million.

DrFirst, which specializes in electronic prescription software services, said in a news release it will use the new investment to expand sales and marketing resources. It will also develop resources for new and existing products.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) announced today that it has received FDA approval for the cobas® HBV and cobas® HCV viral load tests, the first assays approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on the cobas® 6800 and cobas® 8800 Systems. The fully automated systems offer the fastest time to results, the highest throughput and the longest walk-away time available among automated molecular platforms, providing laboratories both improved operating efficiency and flexibility to adapt to changing testing needs. The new tests are the next generation of Roche’s viral load tests, which clinicians use to manage the treatment of patients chronically infected with hepatitis B or hepatitis C virus.

On October 8, 2011, I said goodbye to my loved ones and didn’t know if I would ever see them again. 15 hours later I was in the ICU having become the 11th person in the United Kingdom to undergo an intestinal transplant at The Churchill Hospital, Oxford.

As part of transplant I had an ileostomy. This is where part of the intestine is brought to the outside of your body and your bodily waste is collected in a pouch known as an ostomy pouch. You lose control of the very thing you take for granted. On top of that, everyone wants access to output data and the only way of doing this is manually emptying into a jug. There had to be an alternative.

MedImmune, the biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, recently joined the Human Vaccines Project to develop vaccines and immunotherapies for infectious diseases and cancer, according to a press release.

The Human Vaccines Project aims to accelerate vaccine development by deciphering the human immune system with the support of leading academic research centers, governments and nonprofit groups.

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The California Life Sciences Institute (CLSI), the non-profit partner of the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), today formally joined forces with the Bay Area BioEconomy Initiative (BAB), a non-profit organization committed to strengthening the life science economy of the San Francisco Bay Area by fostering innovation and collaboration.

Founded in 2013, under the leadership of Tony Coles, Una Ryan, and Matthew Hudes, BAB has worked with industry, universities, investors, medical centers, health insurers and payors, high-tech companies and government to advance several key strategic imperatives to support the Bay Area life sciences industry. As a result, BAB has emerged as a new model for cross-disciplinary collaborations.