News Archive

IBM Watson Health and Illumina have officially joined forces, announcing a new partnership on Monday as the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference kicks off.

Watson Health is a serial collaborator, but it chose a pivotal agreement to spotlight at JPM. By integrating with Illumina’s platform, the two companies can create an end-to-end tumor sequencing workflow that could increase accessibility and scalability in the field. It could also address a major problem, said Watson Health Vice President Steve Harvey; a lack of standardization.

Below is 450+ pages of our most popular research reports from last year. As always, if you find these reports helpful, share with friends. If you think they’re terrible, please send to your enemies.

From a brand new take on the electric breast pump to a discreet way to check sobriety during a night on the town, trust us, there’s a lot of neat stuff on the horizon.

Dickson Data is back at it. On Thursday it released a new infographic [below] showing which drug patents are set to expire in 2017.

It follows the template of its popular 2016 infographic, which highlighted several major biopharma threats and trends. Times were tough for AstraZeneca, which had $7.4 billion in sales under threat as Crestor and Seroquel XR lose patent exclusivity.

Human Longevity, Inc. (HLI), the genomics-driven, health intelligence company, today announced Cynthia Collins as the new Chief Executive Officer effective January 9, 2017. Collins, who has a successful track record and extensive leadership experience in the life sciences sector, will lead HLI and be responsible for all functions of the company including commercialization of HLI key products and strategic operations. She will also join the Board of Directors.

Venter, who is a co-founder, will relinquish the CEO role but will continue to serve as Executive Chairman of the HLI Board of Directors and will remain in a daily role leading the scientific strategy and direction of HLI.

Vtesse, Inc., a company committed to developing medicines to benefit patients with ultra rare, life-threatening diseases, announced today the appointment of Jason Meyenburg as Chief Commercial Officer. Mr. Meyenburg joins the company from Alexion Pharmaceuticals, Inc., where he most recently served as Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations, The Americas.

“As we near completion of enrollment in our pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial of our lead drug candidate, VTS-270, our primary goal is to advance regulatory submissions. Assuming we receive favorable responses from U.S. and European regulatory agencies, our next goal will be to rapidly provide access to VTS-270 for the children suffering from NPC and its debilitating symptoms,” said Ben Machielse, Drs., President and Chief Executive Officer of Vtesse, Inc. “As someone with deep experience supporting the roll out of rare disease medicines, Jason has the know-how, passion and dedication required to help us to quickly make VTS-270 available for patients in need, pending regulatory approvals.”

MaxCyte®, Inc., a developer and supplier of cell engineering products and technologies to biopharmaceutical firms engaged in cell therapy, drug discovery and development, biomanufacturing, gene editing and immuno-oncology, announces data to be presented at the Keystone Symposia on Precision Genome Engineering summarizing in vitro and long-term preclinical toxicity and engraftment studies following targeted gene correction aimed at reversing mutations to wild-type sequence at clinically relevant levels in CD34+ hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) obtained from individuals with X-CGD. The oral and poster presentations will highlight use of MaxCyte’s proprietary, cGMP-compliant delivery platform in development of ex vivo gene-corrected cell therapies as a potential treatment for monogenic diseases. The Symposia is taking place January 8 to 12, 2017 in Breckenridge, Colorado.

Imagine that you found a drug at a government lab that others passed over which promises to cure, not just treat, certain blood cancers. You entered into a cooperative R&D agreement where your funding doubled the lab’s budget in a critical research area while they leverage the expertise of your company. You’re a small American company taking on the big boys, with a state of the art facility hoping to be first to market with a revolutionary therapy.

Blood cancer treatments may one day include special dietary restrictions: researchers have found that an essential amino acid plays a crucial role in the creation of blood stem cells—a discovery the scientists say could lead to a potential alternative to chemotherapy and radiation.