News Archive

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the real estate firm that helped transform Mission Bay into a thriving life-science hub, now wants to raise up to $20 million to build digital-health companies from scratch in San Francisco.

Alexandria, the nation’s largest owner and developer of real estate for the life-science industry, said in August that it would start three new accelerators nationwide to support startups in biotech, agriculture and digital health. The biotech space is up and running in New York City with $51 million in financing, and the agriculture space is expected to open within the next six months in North Carolina.

J. Craig Venter was one of the first scientists in 2001 to map the human genome. Now this trailblazer in genome sequencing research has his sights set on creating the world’s largest database of human genomes. And he’s calling in Baltimore startup Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc. to help.

BD Medical, a part of Becton, Dickinson and Company, announced receiving FDA clearance for its Intelliport Medication Management System. The product monitors manual IV bolus injections, automatically records how much of which medication a patient receives and warns of allergies by interfacing with the hospital’s electronic medical records.

The Beyond the Pill movement took an interesting turn this week when Qualcomm announced plans to open an investment business with Novartis, according to a company statement. Qualcomm will launch the investment company through its Qualcomm Ventures business. The news splash at the start of the JP Morgan Healthcare conference came about a week after the two companies said at the International CES in Las Vegas that they would collaborate on digital health as part of Novartis’ Trials of the Future program.

AstraZeneca today announced that MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, has entered into a licensing agreement with Omnis Pharmaceuticals (Omnis), a privately-held biotechnology company focused on the development of oncolytic viruses. This agreement will allow MedImmune to combine key agents from its investigational immunotherapy portfolio with Omnis’ lead investigational oncolytic virus programme, a genetically engineered strain of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). The programme is currently being studied in a Phase I clinical trial as a monotherapy for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma and other cancers that have metastasised to the liver.

Qiagen announced on Sunday that it has acquired the enzyme solutions unit of Enzymatics, a supplier of enzymes used in next-generation sequencing and other genetic analysis technologies in life sciences research and clinical applications, for an undisclosed amount.

The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche said on Monday that it would acquire a majority stake in the tumor-testing company Foundation Medicine for more than $1 billion, in a deal aimed at improving both cancer treatment and drug development.

Foundation is the leader in the growing area of sequencing the genes of tumor samples, looking for mutations that can help predict which drug will be most effective for a particular patient.

Roche, the world’s largest maker of cancer drugs, is spending $1.03 billion to buy a 56.3% stake in Cambridge, Mass.-based Foundation Medicine, a company that uses genetics to help select drugs for cancer patients. Roche, based in Basel, Switzerland, will also market Foundation’s diagnostic tests outside the U.S., help educate doctors as to the value of the tests in the U.S., and provide another $150 million to support additional research on Foundation’s products.

The most significant announcement that Apple made in 2014 wasn’t a larger-sized iPhone. It was that Apple is entering the health-care industry. With HealthKit, it is building an iTunes-like platform for health; Apple Watch is its first medical device. Apple is, however, two steps behind Google, IBM and hundreds of startups. They realized much earlier that medicine is becoming an information technology and that the trillion-dollar health-care market is ripe for disruption.

The Tech Council of Maryland plans to outline its legislative priorities Monday as state lawmakers head to Annapolis next week, but lobbyists will have to contend with a new governor and constrained budget as they push their agenda.