News Archive

Some of the trends in American health care are obvious: Managing costs in the age of Obamacare, patients using online information to take charge of their own health and wellness, and finding ways to deliver care in settings other than hospitals and clinics. 

Those trends become specific, sometimes knotty, challenges for people engaged in building the tools needed to effectively, efficiently and safely deliver health care.

Envisioning, designing and manufacturing medical devices – which range from robots to sensors, and from surgical instruments to software that allows devices to communicate with one another – was the topic of a conference Thursday and Friday in Chicago. 

This editor attended TEDMED 2014 in DC and had a chance to speak with some of the innovative start ups in the Hive, a showcase of new medical technologies.

BeneVir has developed an impressive immunotherapy for cancer that has the potential to become a lasting, durable cure to the disease. While other existing immunotherapy treatments exist, these solutions only help the immune system scour the body for known cancer cells afflicting a patient. These solutions fail to educate the immune system on how to predict, recognize, and kill cancer mutations that avoid the immune system and lead to a recurrence of the disease. BeneVir’s solution uses a natural human virus whose genes have been altered to allow the virus to target both the original cancer cells and their mutations. Prior to becoming a company, BeneVir’s founders originally developed their immunotherapy concept and licensed the solution to T-Vec, which was acquired by Amgen for $1B in 2011. This original concept recently completed a Phase 3 clinical trial showing a 16% durable cure for melanoma. With this success, BeneVir was formed to expand on the original innovation with what the founder calls version 2.0 plus. With deep technical knowledge, BeneVir is refining their original immunotherapy solution to become an even more potent cancer therapy.

Dutch venture capitalist Aglaia has announced the launch of Aglaia Oncology Fund II. Investors contribute a total of $65 million to the fund, whose target size is $80 to $100 million. Like its predecessor Aglaia Oncology Fund I, the fund is backed by high-net-worth families. The group of investors has now been expanded to include several institutional investors, including the European Investment Fund (EIF), which has made a substantial commitment. Aglaia is also one of the funds selected under the Dutch Venture Initiative, an investment fund recently launched by the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Through the new fund, Aglaia will be investing in an estimated ten to fifteen biotechnology start-ups which are in the process of developing groundbreaking technologies aimed at preventing and curing cancer.

AstraZeneca and Eli Lilly and Company have reached an agreement for the development and commercialization of the oral beta secretes cleaving enzyme (BACE) inhibitor, AZD3293, which might become a viable treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. The oral therapy is expected to prevent the formation of amyloid plaque, which is comprised of peptides called amyloid beta, and slow the disease progression.

The agreement established stipulates that AstraZeneca will pay up to $500 million in development and regulatory milestone payments. Lilly announced that it is planning on receiving the first milestone payment of $50 million in the first half of 2015. Future costs will be equally shared by both companies, including net global revenues post-launch.

The intersection of health and big data is getting more crowded. San Mateo, Calif.-based Lumiata is the latest company to get venture backing for technology that crunches data with the aim of improving medical care, Yuliya Chernova reports for Dow Jones VentureWire.

The company has already run an analysis of some 100,000 BlueCross BlueShield patients that found about 10,000 people who were very likely to have congestive heart failure, even though they were undiagnosed. Now the insurance provider, which is also an investor in the company, is alerting doctors who have those patients about this potential missed diagnosis.

Washington state’s Providence Health & Services today said it is launching a $150 million venture capital fund to help spur innovation across the healthcare system that lowers costs and leads to better outcomes.

Coincidentally, it’s the second VC fund announced in as many days on the West Coast, following yesterday’s announcement from the University of California.

On September 16, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences released a report entitled Restoring the Foundation: The Vital Role of Research in Preserving the American Dream. The report addresses the link between scientific research and advancing innovation and prosperity, and contains recommendations for strengthening its role to address challenges in the 21st Century. The recommendations fall under three overarching objectives: securing America’s leadership in science and engineering research; ensuring that the American people receive the maximum benefit from federal investments in research; and regaining America’s standing as an innovation leader by establishing a more robust national government-university-industry research partnership.

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AstraZeneca will jointly develop and commercialize its high-risk, Phase II/III-bound Alzheimer’s disease drug candidate AZD3293 with Eli Lilly, in a deal that could net AZ up to $500 million in development and regulatory milestone payments.

AZD3293 is an oral beta secretase cleaving enzyme (BACE) inhibitor designed to prevent the formation of amyloid plaque and eventually slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. The company cites Phase I studies that showed AZD3293 significantly and dose-dependently reduced levels of amyloid beta in the cerebro-spinal fluid of Alzheimer’s patients and healthy volunteers.

The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and other research institutions closer to Greater Washington have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ALS Association in the past few years.

Early indications are that some are likely to see even more in the future as contributions to the viral “Ice Bucket Challenge” have surpassed $113 million.