News Archive

I’m so used to hearing bullish projections on digital health, it’s refreshing when someone contradicts that assessment. Maybe contradict is the wrong word. But Thomas Rodgers, who joined McKesson Ventures last month after a couple of years with Cambia Health Solutions, thinks it will take a lot longer for the technology to enjoy mainstream adoption.

“I think it will be 15-20 years until it is intertwined with medical care. It will take a shift away from fee-for-service and it will also take generational change. Millennials who grew up with technology will need to start getting sick.”

In the decade after the founding of the BioCrossroads initiative, money spent on life sciences research and companies more than doubled, to more than $25 billion, according to a new report released Thursday by the Indianapolis-based life sciences business development group.

That infusion of money—much of which came from out of state—has helped Indiana companies and universities increase the number of life sciences patents, technology licenses, startups and venture capital deals faster than the rest of the nation, according to the report.

The Hong Kong scientist who invented a simple blood test to show pregnant women if their babies have Down syndrome is now testing a similar technology for cancer.

Yuk Ming “Dennis” Lo says screening for signs of cancer from a simple blood draw could cost as little as $1,000. The test works by studying DNA released into a person’s bloodstream by dying tumor cells.

Novavax Inc.’s singular drug development approach to a possible Ebola vaccine may not only help stop the spread of a future pandemic but also reap major bottom-line rewards.

That’s what CFO Barclay “Buck” Phillips told me this week after the Gaithersburg-based company announced it planned to begin Phase 1 clinical trials by December. Novavax announced this week at the 8th Vaccine and ISV Conference in Philadelphia that it’s the only company targeting the newest strain of the virus which emerged in Guinea this year and has killed thousands in West Africa.

New York Medical College will inaugurate its biotechnology incubator Wednesday.

The multimillion-dollar BioInc@NYMC at 7 Dana Drive in Valhalla will offer space to scientists, entrepreneurs and biotech firms.

Johns Hopkins University is the 11th best university in the world, according to the first ever Best Global University rankings published by U.S. News & World Report on Tuesday. The rankings use different criteria than those used for the annual “best colleges” list, on which Johns Hopkins ranked 12th last month.

The new rankings include 500 universities in 49 countries. Sixteen of the top 20 universities are in the U.S., including Harvard, which tops the rankings.

As Penn prepares for the ceremonial groundbreaking of the Pennovation Center on Friday, Drexel University’s Innovation Neighborhood is still searching for a master developer.

Both universities are pushing to become incubators of commercial enterprise and educational advancement. Since purchasing a 23-acre site on Grays Ferry Avenue in 2010, Penn has been working to develop the Pennovation Center — a three-story, 52,000-square-foot complex that will serve as a hub for research and business ventures. In addition to the ceremonial groundbreaking on Friday, Penn President Amy Gutmann will host a series of “Pennovation Talks” at the South Bank campus.

International VC firm SOSVentures is capitalizing on the now buzz worthy biotech investment trend with the creation of IndieBio, the first accelerator to focus on just life sciences.

Y Combinator raised a few eyebrows when it accepted five biotech companies out of the 80 startups in its program this last summer. That was a first for the Silicon Valley accelerator. But IndieBio partners tell us they were already thinking along those lines when Y Combinator started making in-roads with those life sciences startups.

The average board of directors in the biotech world is roughly 90% male, according to a new analysis, and more than half of all industry boardrooms host no women whatsoever, striking numbers that illustrate a sector that struggles with diversity.

Liftstream, a recruitment services outfit, analyzed nearly 1,150 life sciences companies in the U.S. and EU, finding that biotech’s boardrooms tend toward Y chromosomes. Among drug developers with fewer than 1,000 workers, women held just 10% of available board seats, and fewer than 4% had female chairs. C-suites didn’t fare much better, as women accounted for fewer than 25% of leadership teams across the industry.

Strand Life Sciences (Strand) representatives will demonstrate new capabilities of the company’s variant interpretation and reporting software, StrandOmics at the Association For Molecular Pathologist (AMP) 2014 Annual Meeting to be held from November 12th to 15th in National Harbor, Maryland. The 20th anniversary meeting’s theme is “Realizing the Dream of Precision Medicine,” with a special address by Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Institute of Health. At AMP, Strand will host a workshop on the innovative developments and application of its StrandOmics software, plus new expansion efforts in Personalized Medicine.