News Archive

April 27-29, 2015 – Boston, MA

Partners HealthCare is proud to announce the 2015 World Medical Innovation Forum, an annual gathering in Boston of more than 1,000 top innovation decision makers. The inaugural event will focus on neurosciences and be held on April 27-29, 2015. The goals of this three-day event are to identify today’s leading neuroscience innovations, address unmet needs, and discuss the critical issues affecting technology development and implementation in this new, evolving era of value-based care.

While regulation of diagnostic tests by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may not directly impact the biobanking industry, it does have an impact on the development of new therapies, particularly personalized medicine, and all of us have a stake in the future of personalized medicine.

National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins kicked off a two-day meeting in Bethesda, MD, this morning to discuss how to turn President Obama’s call for a national health research database into reality. The database, which NIH officials are calling the National Research Cohort, is one of two main thrusts of the administration’s precision medicine initiative.

Fourteen years ago, during the darkest moments of the “stem-cell wars” pitting American scientists against the White House of George W. Bush, one group of advocates could be counted on to urge research using cells from human embryos: parents of children with type 1 diabetes. Motivated by scientists who told them these cells would lead to amazing cures, they spent millions on TV ads, lobbying, and countless phone calls to Congress.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has taken control of Swiss company GlycoVaxyn in a $190m deal that bolsters its early vaccines pipeline.

GSK already owned a stake in GlycoVaxyn and had been working with the company since 2012 on the development of conjugate vaccines for bacterial infections. 

How are venture capital dollars are actually disseminated? Into early stage companies? Late? What fields get the most investment – cancer?

Bruce Booth of Atlas Ventures blogged about this today on his Life Sci VC site about this topic, highlighted in a new whitepaper from BIO. Here are the highlights:

District regulators approved the city’s first equity crowdfunding campaign last week. It was also the only application they’ve received to date.

The Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking approved equity crowdfunding rules last October as a way for the city’s entrepreneurs to raise small sums of money from city residents in exchange for a piece of their business.

Swiss cancer drugs giant Roche (ROG: SIX) has acquired Signature Diagnostics, a privately-held company based in Potsdam, Germany. Financial terms of the transaction, which is the fifth deal in the past year aimed at building Roche’s molecular diagnostics business, were not disclosed.

Google is altering the way it displays search results. Over the next few days, Google Search will begin to dish out health bits of facts with search news. This is Google’s new attempt at health news, in fact, this could be a way to reimagine the now defunct Google Health.

This is not a first for Google. Its feet are firmly planted in the health space, having previously launched feature where people can connect to a doctor via video and its .

It takes just one idea to change the world

The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Award has become the mark of world-class individuals leading world-class companies. We invite you to be part of this exciting program.

About the Entrepreneur Of The Year Program

EY Entrepreneur Of The Year honors entrepreneurs whose ingenuity, hard work and perseverance have created and sustained successful, growing business ventures. The program is celebrating its 29th year and has expanded to more than 140 cities and 50 countries around the world. EY forms a group of individuals from the business community to participate as the independent panel of judges for the program. This panel is made up of past award winners and C-suite leadership of high-growth entrepreneurial organizations. It also includes influential business leaders from the venture capital and private equity communities.