A prominent health system CEO implored the Washington region’s employers to not drop their company health plans in response to the Affordable Care Act, predicting disastrous consequences for the industry if they do.
So far, most companies aren’t taking that step. But enough have to raise the alarm for William “Bill” Robertson, CEO of Gaithersburg-based Adventist HealthCare, which operates two Montgomery County hospitals and network of affiliated services.
The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute announced today that Randy W. Schekman, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at the University of California, Berkeley, Thomas C. Südhof, an HHMI investigator at Stanford University, and James E. Rothman of Yale University are the recipients of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.
According to the Nobel Assembly, this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honors three scientists who have solved the mystery of how the cell organizes its transport system. Each cell is a factory that produces and exports molecules. For instance, insulin is manufactured and released into the blood and chemical signals called neurotransmitters are sent from one nerve cell to another. These molecules are transported around the cell in small packages called vesicles. The three Nobel Laureates have discovered the molecular principles that govern how this cargo is delivered to the right place at the right time in the cell.
Osiris Therapeutics shares rose Friday morning after the company said it is selling some of its stem cell therapy technology, including its transplant treatment Prochymal, to Mesoblast Ltd. in a deal that could be worth more than $100 million.
Prochymal treats bone marrow transplant cells that attack the recipient’s body, and it is approved in Canada and New Zealand but isn’t being sold. Osiris said it wants to focus on businesses with the greatest commercial potential. Its remaining products include Grafix, which is used to treat chronic and acute wounds, Ovation, which is used in tissue repair, and Cartiform, a treatment for acute cartilage injury.
There have been more than 30 initial public offerings of biotechnology companies so far this year, and there’s a line around the block of promising new entrants looking to debut on the public markets.
Angelika Warmuth/European Pressphoto Agency But don’t call it a bubble. Those in the know are calling it a boom, and saying the good times are likely to continue for biotech, even in the face of clinical setbacks and other bumps in the road.
The health care industry has survived economically by cross-subsidizing margin shortfalls in one activity with the revenues generated from others. But the very existence of these cross-subsidies is symptomatic of deep flaws in the health care reimbursement system. As we move forward we need to be mindful of two principles that must be at the heart of any fundamental health care reform: “no margin, no mission” and “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” As the era of health care cross-subsidization ends, these principles must guide our actions.
MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, has acquired Spirogen, a privately-held biotech company focused on antibody-drug conjugate technology for use in oncology.
MedImmune will acquire 100 per cent of Spirogen’s shares for an initial consideration of $200 million and deferred consideration of up to $240 million based on reaching predetermined development milestones. Existing out-licensing agreements and associated revenue streams are excluded from this acquisition.
Shares of MacroGenics are surging in Thursday midday trading after the biotechnology company raised $80 million in its initial public offering.
MacroGenics sold 5 million shares of stock for $16 per share. It had expected to sell 4 million shares for $14 to $16 each. The $80 million total does not include expenses or underwriting discounts.
People love to rank U.S. biotech clusters. Most of these reports are full of data on venture financing, patents, jobs, and NIH funding. But many are riddled with flawed and biased methodology, and are usually designed to push a political agenda.
These rankings, which many people take at face value, have been irritating me for a long time. So last week, I decided to ask a few different questions in order to compare the relative strength of biotech hubs we cover at Xconomy.
Here’s what we know about the Affordable Care Act: 32 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured will now have coverage. What you might not know is that Obamacare could also boost entrepreneurship by decoupling healthcare from employment.
How would that work? Existing research estimates that universal health insurance coverage could increase self-employment by as much as 3.5 percent. The reality is that many would-be risk-takers stay with their employers in large part due to the assurance of health insurance, in what economists refer to as “job lock,” or “entrepreneurship lock.” But, this pressure to be employed by a larger company is loosening as the Affordable Care Act makes it easier and less expensive to purchase individual coverage. Now, hopeful entrepreneurs can go out on their own in a far more efficient allocation of their skills, without gambling their own health coverage, or that of their family.
If UMD researchers are well on their way to creating a robot that can wiggle through the brain to root out the tumors deep within, then anything is possible. Plankton crawled through Spongebob’s cranium and now Dr. J. Marc Simard, a neurosurgeon at the University of Maryland School of Medicine; Jaydev Desai, a roboticist at the University of Maryland; and Rao Gullapalli, a radiologist, believe they’re developing something that can do the same.
It was Dr. Simard who fist came up with the idea after watching a show on TV featuring plastic surgeons using sterile maggots to root out damaged tissue from a patient. “It sounds strange, but it’s a real thing,” he said in an interview with NPR. That’s when the lightbulb went off. “If I could train maggots to resect brain tumors I would. I can’t do that, so robotic maggots are the next best thing.”
