News Archive

California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), the leading voice to drive innovation for California’s life sciences sector, and PwC US today released the 2016 California Life Sciences Industry Report. The annual report indicates that California’s life sciences sector has a profound impact on the state’s economy, showing industry increases in the areas of sector employment growth, wages, research funding and life sciences venture investment.

The new report suggests that while biopharmaceutical and medical device employment in numerous top-ranked biotech states, including New York and Massachusetts, has decreased in recent years, sector employment in California grew by six percent between 2010 and 2014. Overall, California’s life sciences sector directly employed 281,000 people in 2014 and indirectly employed another 581,000 – totaling nearly one million people employed due to life sciences innovation by Californians.

San Diego-based Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, which is developing antifungal agents that treat life-threatening fungal infections, has raised $40.5 million in Series B funding. RiverVest Venture Partners led the round with participation from other investors that included New Enterprise Associates and BioMed Ventures. In conjunction with the funding, Dr. Niall O’Donnell, managing director at RiverVest Venture Partners and Ed Mathers, a partner at New Enterprise Associates, were added to Amplyx’s board of directors.

A new experimental monoclonal antibody developed by AstraZeneca is being watched as a possible contender to shake up the market for lupus treatments—a neglected disease space—by offering a more targeted approach to treating lupus.

Over the past 60 years there has been only one new FDA-approved treatment for the inflammatory disease: The FDA granted marketing approval to GlaxoSmithKline’s Benlysta in 2011.

If you’re tired of wearable fitness trackers fighting for space on your wrist, it might not be a problem in the near future: researchers say they can reliably measure your heart and breathing rates just by looking at data from a smartphone sitting in your pocket or bag.

Researchers at MIT are working on a project called BioPhone that derives these biological signals from your smartphone’s accelerometer, which they say can capture the small movements of your body that result from the beating of your heart and rising and falling of your chest. A paper on the work was presented at a conference in August.

Boehringer Ingelheim is launching a new research and development (R&D) strategy and a five-year R&D investment programme. This new plan was announced today at its R&D press conference in Berlin. The company pledges to invest a total of 11 billion euros in its new R&D programme over the next five years. Of the total investment, 5 billion euros will go to preclinical R&D with 1.5 billion euro thereof planned for collaborations with external partners. The company is aiming to develop the next generation of medical breakthroughs and maintain its excellent competitive position. The new R&D strategy embraces open innovation in the form of external collaborations to better leverage emerging science and Boehringer Ingelheim’s experience and capabilities for the discovery of new medicines.

Johns Hopkins tech transfer is at the heart of a new agreement meant to bolster the development of a DNA-based vaccine for allergies.

Formally, Rockville-based Immunomic Therapeutics inked a licensing deal with Astellas Pharma, which will develop the allergy vaccine. Through the deal, Immunomic will receive an upfront payment of $300 million, and is entitled to 10 percent royalties from vaccine products developed. Astellas, a Japan-based pharmaceutical giant, gets the right to produce the vaccine worldwide.

The University of Maryland has quietly started its next capital fundraising campaign with an eye on raising more than $1 billion.

In a wide-ranging conversation with the Washington Business Journal, President Wallace Loh said he hopes to build on his recent success, raising more than the record-setting multiyear “Great Expectations” campaign in the next three years. The campaign is in a quiet phase and won’t be officially launched until at least half of the goal is raised.

A new report shows that participation of corporate venture capitalists in life sciences investing has been increasing.

The MoneyTree report from the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers with data from Thomson Reuters show that in the nine months of the year, corporate VCs pumped a total of $1.18 billion into life sciences startups. Whereas in all of 2014, corporate VCs have shelled out $1.2 billion. Back in 1995, as far back as the MoneyTree report goes back, corporate VCs invested only $70.7 million dollars. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved Swiss drugmaker Roche’s Cotellic to be used in combination with the company’s Zelboraf drug to treat BRAF V600 mutation-positive advanced melanoma.

Roche is counting on the addition of Cotellic to help it revive flagging sales of five-year-old Zelboraf, which dropped 25 percent during the first nine months of 2015 and has been under intense pressure from rivals’ drugs as the standard of care moves to combination therapy.

The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine today announced the results of The Princeton Review’s 10th annual survey that names the 25 undergraduate and 25 graduate schools best for entrepreneurship studies.

Babson College captured the #1 spot on the undergraduate entrepreneurship programs ranking list for the 4th consecutive year. Harvard University finished #1 on the graduate entrepreneurship programs list for the 2nd consecutive year.