News Archive

Remember Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster who went on to be founding president of Facebook and then the investor who brought Spotify to the U.S.? He’s now putting his considerable wealth into immuno-oncology, and apparently doing it without his usual “disruptive” style.

The normally brash Parker — the one played by Justin Timberlake in “The Social Network” — has, according to FierceBiotech’s Damian Garde, been doing his homework on T cells and is ready to put his money where his mouth once was. “My role is not to be a disrupter but to be a consistent, long-term funder,” Parker said alongside two Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers, discussing the “new face of cancer.”

Switzerland’s Roche has moved into pole position in the race to launch the world’s first treatment for progressive multiple sclerosis but smaller players are working hard on rival approaches.

While there are a number of treatments for relapsing remitting MS, the most common form of the disease, there are no approved drugs for progressive MS, which is marked by steadily worsening symptoms.

Medtronic, the international medical technology and services company, announced that it has received a grant from the Israeli government to launch a digital medicine incubator in the country. Medtronic will reportedly work together with IBM, Pitango Venture Capital and Rambam Hospital in Haifa to establish an incubator called “HealthO2″ that will help digital health companies to receive funding and access. “HealthO2″ will offer companies between $500,000-800,000 in initial funding to develop their ideas. Medtronics recently invested $2 million in Israeli company DreaMed Diabetes, acquiring the company’s artificial pancreas technology.

Accelerator Corporation, a leading life science investment and management firm, today announced that it has secured an additional $11.7 million in new investment commitments, bringing the final Accelerator IV closing to an oversubscribed $62.8 million. This final closing includes new strategic investments from AbbVie, WuXi PharmaTech, and Watson Fund. These new investors join the previously announced Accelerator IV syndicate, which includes Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Harris & Harris Group, Inc., Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., The Partnership Fund for New York City, Pfizer Venture Investments and WRF Capital.

Health-focused restaurants and retailers, as well as technology-centered businesses, will someday be a part of Inova Health System’s Center for Personalized Health, officials said this week as they prepare to take possession of the 117-acre former Exxon Mobil campus in Merrifield.

All ideas are on the table as Inova imagines what its new “health-focused” concept should look like, said center CEO Todd Stottlemyer during an exclusive tour of the facility.

Big pharma has a big public perception problem among Americans, according to Gallup poll results released September 14. Of more than 1,000 Americans polled, 43% held an unfavorable view of the industry, compared with just 35% who view pharma favorably. Pharma ranks 23rd of 25 industries for which Gallup solicited opinions; the federal government finished dead last.

Investors, however, hold a more mixed view of traditional drug developers. While shares for most biotechs have zoomed, pharma giants are almost as likely to have seen their total values of all outstanding shares—their “market capitalization”—shrink as grow over the past year. Four of 10 companies appearing on GEN’s List of Top 10 Pharma Firms of 2014 (GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., and Roche) showed smaller market cap totals on this year’s edition of the List compared with last year. Another five companies, however (AbbVie, Bayer, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi) showed year-over-year increases in their market caps, which are computed as shares times current market price.

It was like any other contest where startup founders pitch their ideas to a skeptical audience, except the majority of the people doing the pitching as well as in the audience had either gray or no hair.

Most of the 50-plus people gathered in a conference room at Boston’s Harborside Hotel late last week were seasoned biotech executives and consultants, or people with years of experience trying to develop promising academic discoveries. And the “pitch contest” came at the end of a 27-hour session focused on solving a single, looming question that’s haunted the life sciences for decades: How to make sure that the most promising such discoveries make it into the hands of a company with the knowledge and financing to oversee its development.

Youseph Yazdi was surprised by the number of people who jumped in to help design better protective gear for people helping Ebola victims – everyone from freshmen to robotics experts to a wedding-dress maker.

But he was even more surprised when the solutions the team came up with at the hackathon at Johns Hopkins University attracted the notice of leading producers of protective clothing. A version of the suit they designed will be manufactured by DuPont and available early next year, the university announced Monday.

Readers of the NIH Director’s Blog know how excited I am about the potential of precision medicine for revolutionizing efforts to treat disease and improve human health. So, it stands to reason that I’m delighted by the positive reactions of researchers, health professionals, and the public to a much-anticipated report from the Precision Medicine Initiative Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director. Topping the report’s list of visionary recommendations? Build a national research cohort of 1 million or more Americans over the next three to four years to expand knowledge and practice of precision medicine.

When the president announced PMI during his 2015 State of the Union address, he envisioned a precise new era in medicine in which every patient receives the right treatment at the right time — an era in which health care professionals have the resources at hand to take into account individual differences in genes, environments, and lifestyles that contribute to disease. To achieve this, PMI’s national research cohort would tap into recent advances in science, technology and research participation policies to build the knowledge base needed to develop individualized care for all diseases and conditions.

The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse Accelerator Fund II has closed on $4 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commisison.

The fund could raise as much as $12 million, the filing said.