"Startups flock to Biogen Idec hoping to do business; Quests for funding, exposure, expertise" by Robert Weisman | Globe Staff, January 15, 2014
SAN FRANCISCO — A parade of eager biotechnology entrepreneurs comes to court the industry heavyweight from back East, and it’s been that way all week for Biogen Idec — and for dozens of other companies from Massachusetts’s mushrooming biotech cluster — at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. The annual meeting has drawn a record 8,500 executives and investors to the area around Union Square. Thousands more spend their time outside the official conference in nonstop rounds of private meetings and networking events that have become a kind of Rorschach test of who is seen as having the power to make things happen in the biopharmaceutical business.
“Much of the action is not taking place in the public presentations,” deadpanned Steve Holtzman, Biogen Idec’s executive vice president for corporate development….
For startups, forging a relationship with Biogen Idec can raise their profiles, provide an infusion of much-needed cash to continue drug research and development, and allow access to the larger company’s sales force and deep well of expertise.
The benefits for Biogen Idec include new drugs to keep its pipeline of products filled, and the money such treatments could generate….
That's the health bu$ine$$ we all know and love. Why would they ever want you well?
A report released last summer by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council listed the state as the leading biotechnology cluster in the world, with more than 56,000 jobs — over half in research — and 1,174 drugs under development.
The Massachusetts presence has been felt everywhere at the J.P. Morgan conference.
A surprise Monday morning announcement that Cambridge-based Genzyme was spending $700 million to buy a chunk of another Cambridge biotech, Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc., set the tone for a conference rife with alliances and partnership deals.
At a Monday night reception hosted by MassBio and the Boston law firm Foley Hoag, business people from across the nation jammed into the basement of Morton’s steak house to talk deals — and the Patriots’ chances of getting past the Broncos — with Massachusetts leaders who had made the cross-country trek.
Did they have a beer with their steak?
Scangos’s presentation drew more than 500 investors into the Grand Ballroom of the Westin St. Francis Hotel, one of the largest crowds of the conference….
If you want all the in$ide ba$eball of the industry you know where to go.
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Related:
Partners promises a new model for health care
Partners defends plan to expand
Venture capital firms booming in Mass.
Biotechs buoy New England venture investments
Related:
Partners promises a new model for health care
Partners defends plan to expand
Venture capital firms booming in Mass.
Biotechs buoy New England venture investments
"After boom, 2014 repeat for biotech is uncertain" by Robert Weisman | Globe Staff, January 13, 2014
I was told it was going to be a bust but stock prices remained healthy and grew phat!
SAN FRANCISCO — As the biotech industry caravan rolls into the City by the Bay for the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference this week, drug makers and deal makers are basking in the glow of one of their strongest years financially, but warily looking ahead.
Biotechnology stocks outpaced the broader financial markets, which soared to record highs in 2013, with the share prices of 81 biotechnology companies more than doubling. Fifty-two life sciences companies went public on US exchanges last year, including nine from Massachusetts, the largest crop of initial public offerings in over a decade….
Related: "A strong stock market and better business climate have continued to concentrate American wealth in the top 1 percent of earners."
At least $omeone is feeling well.
The frenzy was driven by several factors, including the increasing preference of large drug makers to buy smaller companies to acquire drugs, rather than develop them in-house, and a perception that regulators are speeding the path of new therapies to the market.
The new robber barons!
“Big Pharma has clearly concluded that it’s cheaper to buy than to build, so there’s a big appetite for acquiring biotechs, and that’s helped to bring the generalist investors into the biotech market,” said G. Steven Burrill, chief executive of the San Francisco health care financial firm Burrill & Co.
At the same time, the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of 39 new medicines in the previous year, 2012, a 15-year high that helped ignite the recent IPO market for young biotech firms, suggested regulators were more willing to fast-track experimental drugs for hard-to-treat diseases and accept requests for “breakthrough therapy” designation to accelerate the approval process.
“Certainly the fact that the FDA approved a lot of drugs in 2012 was one of the catalysts for the strong IPO market we saw last year,” suggested Glen Giovannetti, the global biotechnology leader for accounting and consulting firm Ernst & Young. “When you have drugs going after real unmet needs, they’re more willing to strike a balance” between trying to extend lives and potential safety risks. “They see that there’s also a risk of doing nothing.”
But the number of new drug approvals fell back to 27 in 2013, a 30 percent drop that made some industry watchers fret that a cautious new mood by regulators could upend the biotech boom. The fear was also fueled by some high-profile setbacks, such as the FDA’s rejection of a kidney cancer drug by Aveo Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge, its pressure on Cambridge-based Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. to temporarily halt US sales of a leukemia therapy, and its rebuff of a multiple sclerosis treatment from another Cambridge firm, Genzyme.
Related:
Genzyme Gets Death Sentence From FDA
Abdicating on Aveo
Calling it “an ominous trend,” John Carroll, editor in chief of the industry newsletter FierceBiotech, wrote that last year’s drop in FDA approvals “raises big questions about the productivity and sustainability of the world’s multibillion-dollar R&D business.”
Others are more sanguine, noting that the number of drug approvals in 2013 reverted to the average of 28 approved in the United States annually during the past five years and was no cause for alarm….
That robust outlook has drawn thousands of industry executives and investors to the J.P. Morgan conference and the rounds of private meetings that will take place at hotels across the city to explore partnerships, financing deals, and mergers.
One of those attending is Bernard Davitian, a former European biotech entrepreneur who is vice president and managing director of Sanofi Genzyme Bioventures….
I've choked down all I can, sorry.
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Related:
"JPMorgan Chase’s quarterly profit fell as rising legal costs ended the firm’s three-year streak of record annual earnings. Fourth-quarter net income declined to $5.28 billion Chief executive Jamie Dimon is whittling down a list of legal woes that includes allegations it misled buyers of mortgage bonds, rigged markets, and turned a blind eye to suspicious activity by customers.
Yeah, that's billion with a B.
Also see: For JPMorgan, a $1.7b Madoff fine
Only Bernie went to jail and that is because he ripped off his own, not dumb goyim.
JPMorgan lost its title as the most profitable US bank after Wells Fargo posted $21.9 billion in annual earnings Tuesday. JPMorgan cut 3,845 jobs during the quarter, bringing the total to 251,196, according to a financial supplement on the company’s website."
No $urpri$e the pre$$ is pu$hing the vaccines.
Also see: In Boston, event planners hear cities pitch venues
Related: Conventioneers Caught in Boston Globe Briar Patch
Funny how the Bo$ton Globe omits references to the convention hacking in the Niemann and Target coverage.
