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BIO CEO & Investor Conference: Being upfront about upfront payments

With today’s economy, it’s important to be upfront about upfront payments in biotech licensing. Since licensing deals allow big companies to fill their pipelines without the upfront work and provide small companies with the capital they crave, a win/win partnership is important.

Today, big pharma is driven by scientific data—often from late phase II clinical [...]

Merger Notes From the BIO Investor Forum

Notes from David Thomas who is out in San Francisco at the BIO Investor Forum,

Reverse mergers: It is difficult for a shell in this market climate to take on quality biotechs due to disagreements on valuation of the VCs vs. public company boards. Other issues with doing reverse mergers are disagreements with fitting the [...]

An award worthy innovation: Reprogramming Adult Cells

Speaking of  award-worthy innovations, per the post below on The Scientist’s new project to name the top 10 life science innovations of 2008, check out the Harvard Stem Cell Institute’s recent work.  They have developed a way to transform “one type of fully developed adult cell directly into another inside a living animal, a startling advance that [...]

BIO’s Daryl Pritchard on the Group Room

BIO’s Daryl Pritchard talks about oncology and personalized medicine at the BIO Internation Convention.
The Group Room, a cancer talk radio show.
Listen to the show:
Media player
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Philippe Bishop, MD
Vice President, Clinical Development, Oncology, Genentech BioOncology
Daryl E. Pritchard, PhD
Director, Research Programs Advocacy, Biotechnology Industry Organization
Susan Samson, MA, MPH
Research Advocate/Policy Strategist, Science Advocacy, UCSF Breast [...]

Globalization in Biotechnology, Ernst & Young report (cont)

As promised here is the post on globalization, one of the three major trends driving the biotechnology industry to reinvent itself, according to Ernst and Young 2008 biotechnology report. Pharma and biotech companies are taking advantage of the ‘flattenning world,’ as described by Colin Powel in his keynote speech, and jumping into the globalization trend [...]

Heard on the Street

“For Vertex, this year’s BIO convention provided an excellent opportunity to
both network and establish new relationships with hundreds of biotech
leaders from around the globe. The convention is ‘the’ place where these
interactions can take place on such a large scale and San Diego was a great
location for these groups to convene.”
–Representative of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated

Jim Greenwood on the Transformative Nature of Biotechnology

“We use the language of life to fix its mistakes. We use the language of life to enable us to live on this planet sustainably. Decoding the secrets of life scares some people, but it inspires us. Some people ask how can you play God with the language of life? We say [...]

Biomarkers and Alzheimer’s

A number of breakout sessions today focused on biomarkers and personalized medicine. A very compelling session was on Biomarkers and Diagnostics in Alzheimer’s. It my impression that one of the major hurdles in the adoption of biomarker technology is the conception that its simply “diagnostics.” The current system is designed to reimburse based on the [...]

Ernst & Young 2008 Global biotechnology report highlights

The Bio International Convention hosted a fantastic panel today on the 2008 Ernst & Young global biotechnology report.  The industry is at “the start of a revolution” and aiming to reinvent itself because of three trends, shared moderator Glen Giovannetti of Ernst & Young, (1) R&D productivity, (2) personalized medicine, and (3) globalization.  This post [...]