"Uncle Sam wants you — Or at least your genetic and lifestyle information" by Robert Pear New York Times July 23, 2016
WASHINGTON — Government scientists are seeking 1 million volunteers willing to share the innermost secrets of their genes and daily lives as part of an ambitious 10-year research project to understand the causes and cures of disease.
Those selected to be members of the “precision medicine cohort” will be asked to provide a detailed medical history and blood samples so researchers can extract DNA.
At least they are asking, I guess. That's the first stage. The mandates come later.
They will also be asked to report information about themselves — including their age, race, income, education, sexual orientation, and gender identity, officials said.
But the project involves much more than statistics and laboratory work.
The government plans to collect information about a person’s lifestyle — diet, exercise, smoking, drinking, sleep patterns, and other behavior — and the environment in which a person lives, so researchers can identify possible risk factors, including air pollution or high lead levels in drinking water.
Kind of already have, and with the smartphone by your side....
Those wishing to participate will be able to sign up by computer or smartphone, and even by using an ordinary telephone to contact a traditional call center. The project, begun as part of President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, seeks to develop treatments tailored to the characteristics of individual patients.
It sounds good, but they miss the terrorists, can't find the money, can't protect your data, can't protect you, I mean, you feel safe with them making out your treatments?
“Anybody anywhere can raise their hand and say they want to participate,” said Kathy L. Hudson, deputy director of the National Institutes of Health, which is leading the effort.
You know, there was another guy that did racial profiling and eugenics studies under the guise of health and I'm not going to mention his name but.... whew. Good thing we got Obama looking after it (or at least starting it).
Can someone please get George Orwell on the phone?
Health care providers, including a number of hospitals and community health centers, will invite their patients to participate. Enrollment is scheduled to begin in November or December, with a goal of signing up 1 million or more people within four years. Well, Obummercare didn't meet it's sign-up goals.
That's why premium hikes are hitting after the election; Obama will wave or suspend the obligated-by-law October $urpri$e (then Trump would win, and that is all Democratic hook. That's why it's been buried during the primaries.)
“There are a lot of enticing reasons to participate,” said Mark Masselli, president and chief executive of the Community Health Center in Middletown, Conn., one of a half-dozen clinics chosen by the government to recruit patients. “Perched on your shoulders will be the best and brightest researchers, working on your behalf.”
And a whole lot of others!!
The project is being orchestrated by Dr. Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, who in a previous job led the government’s successful effort to map the human genome.
Congress in December provided $130 million to the National Institutes of Health for the million-person research cohort. Obama has requested $230 million for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, and the appropriations committees in both houses of Congress have approved the request as part of a spending bill for 2017. That bipartisan support strongly suggests that the project will continue after Obama leaves office.
No offen$e, but I'd rather they use the money for food stamps and housing.
The scale of the project dwarfs most other population-based health research in the United States, such as the Framingham Heart Study, which has produced valuable insights on heart disease by following about 15,500 people enrolled at different times since the late 1940s.
“In the Precision Medicine Initiative,” Hudson said, “we hope to follow people for at least a decade. The longer it lasts, the more value it will have.”
Participants will be recruited to reflect the geographic, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of the nation.
Where do I opt out?
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Related:
Globe $till in My Genes
Putting My Nose to the Gritstone
Privy to Your Health File
Obama's Preci$e Diagno$is
I don't think I can be more precise, and it should give a Jounce to the war effort:
"Cambridge startup Jounce gets $225m in Celgene deal to develop cancer drug" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff July 19, 2016
On the prowl for new drug candidates, drug maker Celgene Corp.’s favorite hunting ground is the Cambridge biotech cluster.
Celgene’s latest deal, unveiled Tuesday, will hand a $225 million upfront payment to Jounce Therapeutics Inc., a three-year-old Cambridge startup that is developing cancer drugs. The agreement, potentially worth as much as $2.3 billion, will help Jounce fund development of a new generation of drugs that stimulate the immune system to fight tumors.
It comes three months after Celgene, which embraces a “distributed” research and development strategy, fronted $200 million to another Cambridge cancer drug developer, Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc. Celgene, based in Summit, N.J., is also collaborating with Bluebird Bio Inc., Epizyme Inc., and Acceleron Pharma Inc., all in Cambridge, and has options to buy two other Massachusetts companies.
Related:
"Armed with $200 million from a new research deal, Agios Pharmaceuticals Inc. is jumping into the increasingly crowded field of immuno-oncology to search for drugs that stimulate the human body’s immune response against cancer cells. Agios last week struck a four-year agreement with Celgene Corp. that could potentially bring hundreds of millions in additional milestone payments and royalties if its drugs are successfully brought to market. Investor reaction has been mixed, with Agios falling more than 10 percent the day after the deal was announced but recouping much of that loss. Some stock analysts warned that a revision to an earlier phase of the Agios-Celgene alliance suggests the market potential of a cancer drug now under development might be more limited than initially expected."
It's an ARMS RA$E!
Celgene will take a $36 million equity stake in Jounce, and received options to share profits and losses from its lead experimental drug, JTX-2011, which seeks to treat head and neck cancer and non-small cell lung cancer. The deal also includes options on four other cancer immunotherapies in Jounce’s research pipeline.
The Jounce-Celgene alliance is one of the largest unveiled in recent months between early-stage biotechs seeking cash and development expertise and larger drug makers looking for promising new treatments. Such deals allow the parties to share the escalating costs and risks of drug development.
With a market value of $79.6 billion, Celgene is the third-largest US biotech company, after Amgen Inc. and Gilead Sciences Inc.
The valuation a$toni$hes me, and if you want more see the State AG's Office.
“There’s been a kind of a gold rush in the oncology business over the past six or seven years,” Jounce chief executive Richard Murray said in an interview. “We’re locking in the correct way of using the immune system against tumors. But we’re also seeing that not all patients respond to this approach” to current drugs....
How does it feel to be a guinea pig?
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Hope you don't get burnt to a CRI$PR.
"Big Biotech is here — and it’s starting to look a lot like Big Pharma" by Meghana Keshavan, June 6, 2016
As drug developers and investors from around the world gather in San Francisco this week for the annual BIO International Convention, a new look at the biotech industry shows the biggest players are starting to behave more and more like pharmaceutical giants.
There are 17 biotech companies in the US that generate more than $500 million per year in revenue. And they’re increasingly focused on buying innovative new products through mergers and acquisitions, rather than developing them in house, according to a report from EY (formerly Ernst & Young) released Monday.
“We now have multiple big biotechs that have the financial firepower to compete with big pharma,” said Ellen Licking, a senior analyst in EY’s life sciences practice.
Traditionally, the term “biotech” referred to a company that tinkered with biological building blocks to make drugs, for instance by genetically engineering proteins.
What could be wrong with that?
Pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, focused on medicinal chemistry, screening huge libraries of compounds to find those that might prove useful at fighting disease. In the last decade or so, this line has been increasingly blurred.
Better get that checked out.
Many pharma companies now work on manufacturing drugs inside living cells and “biotech” has become a catchall phrase for startup companies working on all manner of drugs and medical devices. But as the EY report indicates, these companies are not necessarily small.
Oh, it's a "catch-all" term, huh?
And along comes ISIS™ years later.
Thanks to past biotech booms on the stock market and a series of breakthrough therapies — such as Gilead’s blockbuster hepatitis C drug Sovaldi — many biotech companies are now sitting on huge swaths of cash. Some have been around more than three decades and have a global reach.
$ay what?
At the same time, stock gyrations have deflated the value of many true biotech startups — companies that haven’t even begun to earn revenue. This means that potentially valuable technologies at small biotechs are up for grabs at increasingly competitive prices — and both big biotech and big pharma are biting.
Biotech company Celgene, for instance, raised $8 billion in debt last August to help pay for its $7.2 billion acquisition of Receptos — a startup with a promising immunotherapy drug to treat ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease that attacks the intestine....
Speaking of emptying.
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I'll bet that funded one hell of a party:
"Biotechnology Conference in full swing" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff June 09, 2016
SAN FRANCISCO — “Come bring your business to Virginia,” said its governor, Terry McAuliffe, who recalled that sitting next to former Bay State chief Deval Patrick at a BIO event two years ago stirred a sense of biotech envy and led to a push to build up his state’s industry. “In 1607, when the first ships came to America, they didn’t land on that dinky rock in Massachusetts. They came to the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
Them's fighting' words -- or not.
Related: Virginian Convicts Can Vote
Oh, that might complicate things for Clinton.
Iowa, drawing on its dozens of ethanol plants, has become the nation’s leader in bioagriculture, and the state recently approved a tax credit to attract more biochemical companies, said Governor Terry E. Branstad.
I still believe burning food for fuel is a dumb idea (based on deceit if not lies) with so many hungry people in this world. It does make sense if you are an endgame globalist.
Massachusetts officials, by contrast, cited the state’s 550 biopharma companies, its 400 medical device and diagnostic businesses, its network of venture capital investors, and its world-class universities and research hospitals. There are more than 37,000 life sciences workers in the Boston area alone.
And they get plenty of loot!
Whether rivals can steal businesses from Massachusetts is less clear.
Okay, I want you to consider the tone of these articles right now. It's very warlike. Not only are the biotech or whatever coming armed with money, now we have a penis envy fight over whose mi$$iles are bigger! These guys are SCARING ME!
The other thing is, when Bo$ton steals GE from Connecticut it's hailed -- and after a while the mixed me$$age bias and sense of elite entitlement gets old.
Around the massive BIO exhibition floor, business development officials from competing states, countries, and companies were making presentations, engaging in networking meetings, and handing out everything from Swiss chocolates and cappuccino to water bottles and Czech beer. Minnesota officials were touting Discovery Square, a new bioresearch development at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Russian representatives were talking up their country’s pharmaceutical manufacturing base and its cheap labor, courtesy of the ruble’s devaluation....
That must be the “amazing beer”talking.
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What a bunch of “shameless self-promoters.”
So what other activities did they enjoy?
Biotech execs play musical chairs in hot market
You can read a comic book while sitting:
Comic books. Lesson plans. How drug companies target kids
I wrote on word in my paper after perusing that piece: EVIL
Why does anyone go to the BIO convention, anyway?
Good que$tion, and I can only think of one an$wer.
Not that I mean to brand the whole movement in a generic $en$e:
"Brand-name drug group accepts Teva, a maker of generics" by Ed Silverman STAT July 18, 2016
In a move that underscores the changing landscape of the pharmaceutical industry, the chief trade group has officially accepted one of the world’s largest generic drug makers into its ranks.
On Friday, Teva Pharmaceuticals became a member of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which has burnished its reputation on Capitol Hill and elsewhere as a staunch defender of brand-name companies.
The decision to accept Teva, which had been telegraphed earliler, surprised some industry watchers, given the historical rivalry between brand-name and generic manufacturers.
For decades, generic companies have thrived by offering lower-cost versions of more expensive brand-name medicines, but they typically must endure long-running and costly litigation over patents before winning the right to sell their copycat drugs.
The move, however, isn’t all that unexpected, if only because the lines are beginning to blur....
Must be the drugs.
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They forgot to mention Teva is based in Israel, and like the war lies, the health lines have blurred, too!
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Of course, that makes me a "conspiracy theorist," doesn't it?
"Boston Scientific faces conspiracy suit" by Priyanka Dayal McCluskey Globe Staff January 14, 2016
A Houston law firm has filed a suit accusing the medical device maker Boston Scientific Corp. of selling defective vaginal mesh implants made from materials smuggled from China, and putting the health of thousands of women at risk. I can't remember if I blogged about it or not.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in West Virginia, claims the Marlborough company ran “an international conspiracy” and racketeering scheme to sell defective vaginal mesh, used to treat urinary incontinence and other pelvic organ problems, and asks the court to stop sales of the product. Boston Scientific denies the claims.
The allegations from Mostyn Law are the latest legal challenge to Boston Scientific, which already faces some 30,000 lawsuits for its controversial vaginal mesh products. Last year the company paid $119 million to settle about 3,000 of these cases.
The new suit alleges that after losing its US supplier of synthetic resin to produce mesh, Boston Scientific bought substandard material from a known counterfeiter in China, at times “acting like a drug dealer” to hide shipments and avoid being caught by US and Chinese authorities.
They wouldn't do that.
Boston Scientific issued a statement refuting the lawsuit’s claims.
“At Boston Scientific, patient safety is of the utmost importance, and we dedicate significant resources to deliver safe, high-quality products,” spokesman Tom Keppeler said. “We don’t believe the case has merit and intend to vigorously defend these claims.”
The suit, which seeks class-action status, asks for unspecified damages for as many as 55,000 women a year who received the mesh product since September 2012.
Amber Mostyn, a lawyer bringing the suit, said in a interview that Boston Scientific essentially used an untested and unapproved plastic product from China to make its mesh implants, and concealed this fact from authorities.
“They knew they could not verify the authenticity of this plastic resin that they found in a warehouse in China from a known counterfeiter,” Mostyn said. “They bought it anyway and have been implanting it potentially into tens of thousands of women.”
Whether the material from China specifically harmed women is unclear. “It hasn’t been tested. We don’t know what’s in it,” Mostyn said.
In the past, patients have blamed vaginal mesh products for causing a variety of distressing symptoms, including severe pain, bleeding, urinary problems, and pain during sex.
Related: FDA to probe Boston Scientific implant allegations
Do you think that will help?
Vaginal mesh can be implanted to treat women who have lost bladder control, and those whose pelvic organs have prolapsed, or fallen out of place. Boston Scientific earned more than half a billion dollars in revenue from selling mesh and other urology and women’s health products in 2014.
Thar's gold in pi$$!
The company’s shares rose about 3 percent Thursday, closing at $18.16.
The mo$t important thing at bottom.
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Jury is still out:
"Grand jury convened in probe of Boston Scientific" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff April 13, 2016
Federal prosecutors have impaneled a grand jury in a criminal investigation of allegations that Boston Scientific Corp. used counterfeit raw material from China in vaginal mesh implants sold to thousands of American women.
The grand jury in Charleston, W.Va., has sent out multiple subpoenas in recent months, according to two people familiar with the probe. The subpoenas, one of which was obtained by the Globe, seek documents relating to Boston Scientific’s purchase of a type of synthetic resin used in the mesh implants. The people with knowledge of the inquiry spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it.
Among other things, one of the people said, investigators are examining whether the Marlborough medical device company engaged in deceptive trade practices by knowingly receiving substandard resins from China in packaging from a vendor whose materials had been approved by federal regulators, and whether it fraudulently sold defective products to health care providers.
Kelly Leadem, a spokeswoman for Boston Scientific, said on Wednesday that the company has voluntarily provided information requested by the Justice Department. It has not received a subpoena, she said.
Boston Scientific disclosed in a Feb. 24 regulatory filing that the US attorney’s office in West Virginia was reviewing allegations of defective mesh resin. Prosecutors have not accused the company of wrongdoing.
Allegations of counterfeit raw materials first surfaced in January, when a Houston law firm filed a lawsuit in a West Virginia federal court charging Boston Scientific with running an “international conspiracy” and racketeering scheme to sell defective mesh.
“Boston Scientific does not use ‘counterfeit’ or ‘adulterated’ materials in our medical devices,” Leadem wrote in an e-mail. “Boston Scientific has a robust quality system and dedication to patient safety. We stand behind our products, the materials used in those products and our commitment to women’s health.”
The company is also working with the Food and Drug Administration to conduct new tests on the safety and effectiveness of its implants over the next few months.
On April 1, the FDA issued a safety alert saying it was looking into allegations that substandard materials were used in Boston Scientific’s urogynecologic surgical mesh. FDA regulators didn’t recommend that woman remove the implants, however, saying it wasn’t aware of safety problems stemming specifically from the unapproved resin and noting “available data do not suggest any decreased benefit associated with the device.”
The mesh is often used by women to fix a common gynecologic condition called pelvic organ prolapse, where the bladder drops from its normal place in the lower belly and pushes against the walls of the vagina. But the treatment has allegedly caused other health problems.
Boston Scientific and other makers of mesh implants have been the targets of thousands of civil lawsuits over the past decade by women who charge the products have caused painful intercourse, infections, urinary problems, bleeding, and discomfort.
The cases have been consolidated in the court of US District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in the Southern District of West Virginia.
Last year, Boston Scientific paid $119 million to settle about 3,000 lawsuits stemming from its mesh implants, but it still faces thousands of others. There is no evidence that substandard raw materials played a role in the health problems reported by women who filed the suits.
The suit by Mostyn Law was the first to allege the use of counterfeit materials. It charges that the Massachusetts device manufacturer purchased substandard material from a known Chinese counterfeiter after losing its US supplier. It also accused Boston Scientific of “acting like a drug dealer” to hide shipments of about 33,000 pounds of counterfeit plastic resin from customs agents in the United States and China.
Seeking class-action status, the lawsuit asked for unspecified damages for up to 55,000 woman a year who received the vaginal mesh implants since September 2012. Boston Scientific rejected the charges, saying the suit had no merit and promising to vigorously contest it.
In a Feb. 4 conference call with stock analysts, Boston Scientific chief financial officer Daniel J. Brennan referenced the suit by Mostyn law.
Brennan said the company had provided information to the FDA, health and safety regulators in Europe, and the Justice Department, but made no mention of a federal investigation or grand jury examining evidence in the case.
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Do you know what started all of this?
See: Boston Scientific chief got $11.6 million in 2015
In case you mi$$ed it.
Also see: Report: Biotech, med device wages climb 18 percent over five years
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Enough with the foreplay:
"Alnylam’s hiring chief wants employees who are ‘ready for risk’" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff December 08, 2015
CAMBRIDGE — Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. is growing so fast that Karen Anderson, its chief human resources officer, is scouring the biopharma world for great hires.
But many are a stone’s throw from her office. Alnylam hosted a job fair last month aimed at employees of Biogen Inc., the biotech giant just down the street in Kendall Square, after Biogen said it would cut 400 jobs in Massachusetts.
“We’re hoping to hire at least 20 to 30 folks out of that group,” said Anderson, a 48-year-old British native and industry veteran who thinks of herself as Alnylam’s culture builder.
Finding qualified employees is only one part of it, she said. The more important part is finding employees who will thrive in an entrepreneurial environment and help Alnylam transition from a research organization to a full-scale commercial company. (Its therapies for rare diseases are expected to start hitting the market in about two years.)
“I can find 200 people,” Anderson said. “The question is, ‘Can I find 200 people who believe in the same philosophy as we do?’ This is an organization that has a certain intensity. No question is a dumb question in this environment. People will interrupt each other without apology. . . . I don’t want the same people that Pfizer wants. I need people who are ready for a risk.”
They found the fountain of youth here.
Anderson, who previously worked at both Pfizer Inc. and Biogen, said Alnylam has boosted its payroll to 335, including about 280 in Kendall Square, from 155 employees when she was hired in September 2014. She projects the company will have 550 employees by the end of next year and about 1,800 by 2020, when it could have several approved drugs.
To forge a more interdisciplinary culture, Anderson handpicked 14 employees from different departments to form a Talent Board to advise her on everything from hiring to the best way to recognize employees. (Members of the research staff told her they work in teams and singling out individual scientists for recognition struck them as too “big corporate.”)
Anderson, an Alnylam senior vice president, also instituted a “recharge week” where the company is closed between Christmas and New Year’s. The message to employees, she said, is: “We want you to reconnect with your family, recharge your brain, because 2016 is another year.”
I'm tired of news articles reading like public relations handouts and business brochures.
Here is the real reason they gave you the week off.
"Alnylam buys Norton site for $200m drug manufacturing plant" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff February 11, 2016
Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it will build a $200 million manufacturing plant on a 12-acre site it has purchased in the southeastern Massachusetts town of Norton, a facility that may employ 220 workers within five years.
Massachusetts, a global center for drug research, is becoming a force in production as well. Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. runs a plant in Devens, Sanofi Genzyme has manufacturing in Boston and Framingham, and Biogen Inc. has a site in Cambridge. Other companies that make drugs here include Pfizer Inc. (Andover), Shire PLC (Lexington), AbbVie Inc. (Worcester), and Baxter International Inc. (Milford).
Expanding drug manufacturing in Massachusetts has become a priority for state officials because the plants often employ more people than research and development sites.
“This is another proof point that we have all the architecture to take drugs from idea to manufacturing,” said Travis McCready, president of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the state agency charged with promoting biotech and medical technology. “Alnylam is a company born in Massachusetts, and it’s exciting to see them continue to grow in scale here.”
The life sciences center will review an Alnylam application later this month for a tax incentive based on its plans to create jobs at the manufacturing site, McCready said. The town of Norton has approved a 13-year property tax reduction totaling more than $7 million.
State is in a billion-dollar hole, but who cares?
Alnylam, a pioneer in the emerging gene-silencing technology known as RNA interference, is not expected to seek US approval for its first drug until next year. But the company has a market value of about $5 billion based on expectations of its pipeline’s potential.
Chief executive John Maraganore said Alnylam is using a small site in Cambridge to produce its lead drug candidate, Patisiran, which treats a rare neurological disease, for clinical trials and, eventually, commercial sales. But the remainder of its drug portfolio, he said, will be made in Norton and at third-party contract manufacturers to assure back-up production capacity.
Alnylam currently has eight experimental drugs in clinical trials, and expects to have 11 by the end of the year. Maraganore said the company projects it will continue to introduce new drugs for clinical testing at a rate of about three a year for the foreseeable future. In some of its drug programs, Alnylam is collaborating with the larger Sanofi Genzyme.
Maraganore said drug production at Norton will use a process called RNA synthesis, which includes advanced purification techniques. While the company looked at a number of other sites, “basing the plant here in Massachusetts was important to us,” he said, citing the need for a highly skilled workforce. “This facility will be more sophisticated than a typical pharmaceutical plant that makes pills.”
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"No stranger to gambling, this biotech CEO is going all-in on a first drug approval" by Damian Garde, May 5, 2016
Biotech is a risky business, where roughly 90 percent of grand ideas fall flat and billion-dollar failures are commonplace.
In other words, it's a good way to direct money into certain hands and keep it out of other hands.
Btw, YOUR TAX DOLLARS are going to FUND THAT while SERVICES are CUT!
It's called a losing bet!
So it’s fitting that the industry’s self-appointed spokesman is the blackjack-playing CEO of a fast-growing company, one about to find out whether its futuristic science can make an actual product.
John Maraganore is unafraid of the spotlight. The 53-year-old head of Kendall Square’s Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is a regular on CNBC, appearing on camera in his characteristic designer glasses and colorful suits. Mostly he talks about his company’s efforts to develop gene-silencing drugs, but he doesn’t hesitate to defend the virtues — and condemn the sins — of his whole industry, even though his company has yet to win marketing approval for a single product.
Last year, when Martin Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of an old drug by more than 5,000 percent, Maraganore was one of the first biotech executives to castigate the move.
Biotech is “about innovation, patients, and 21st-century medicines,” he said on live television, not “repricing drugs from the 1950s to make a profit.”
It wasn’t a calculated statement, Maraganore told STAT. He got the invitation as he was preparing his kids for school, and he was on the air an hour later, speaking on behalf of drug companies around the country.
“If there are actors in the biotech community out there poisoning the well by creating a negative environment, it hurts us,” Maraganore said in his Cambridge office....
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I wonder what they are betting on next.
**********
Alkermes plunges after depression drug fails in two clinical trials
What do you think?
**********
Ariad Pharmaceuticals eliminating 90 jobs
It's more retrenchment and the second large cutback in less than three years.
Ariad shrinks its board of directors
Ariad snatches CEO from EMD Serono
He's Paris Panayiotopoulos, a Greek-born veteran biopharma executive who was named EMD Serono’s president two years ago.
"Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Monday it would divest its European operations, a cost-cutting move that may be a precursor to a sale of the Cambridge company. The company will transfer 125 employees of its Swiss-based business to Incyte Corp. Ariad, which cut 90 jobs in March, will be left with 275 workers in the United States. The move is expected to save the Cambridge company $65 million annually. “Financially, it makes us much stronger,” said Paris Panayiotopoulos, the new chief executive of Ariad."
So what's going to happen at EMD?
Zieziula to run EMD Serono
EMD Serono has a new chief, one month after previous president’s departure
EMD Serono, targeting immuno-oncology, to add 150 jobs in Billerica
**********
Ironwood agrees to pay up to $265m for licensing rights from AstraZeneca
AstraZeneca to acquire majority stake in Acerta Pharma
**********
"Cambridge startup Codiak BioSciences Inc., which launched in November with $31 million in financing, Tuesday said that it has raised another $61 million in a second funding round. The new investment, bringing Codiak’s total financing to $92 million, was led by Flagship Ventures of Cambridge and ARCH Venture Partners of Chicago, which also led the launch round. Other investors joining both financing rounds included Alaska Permanent Fund, Alexandria Venture Investments, and Fidelity Management and Research Co. Codiak is working with tiny membrane sacs known as exosomes that carry information about red blood cells to diagnose and treat cancer and other diseases. Its chief executive, Doug Williams, was formerly the top research and development executive at Biogen Inc."
At least they can add right.
**********
MilliporeSigma to build $115m Burlington campus
Burlington’s Endurance buys Constant Contact for $1.1 billion
**********
"Cambridge biotech startup Navitor Pharmaceuticals Inc. said Friday it has closed on $33 million in new financing to advance its research into drugs that can regulate activation of cell-signaling pathways that cause a range of age-related diseases."
*********
Astellas Pharma extends takeover offer for Ocala
Ocata investors opposed to takeover win a round
"Overcoming fierce opposition from disgruntled investors, Japanese drug maker Astellas Pharma Inc. won over enough shareholders to complete its $379 million buyout of Ocata Therapeutics Inc."
Angry investors say Ocata Therapeutics undervalued in sale
Ocata’s chief scientific officer to join new parent after acquisition
That will make them even angrier.
Sarepta stock plunges as FDA questions muscular dystrophy drug
Sarepta shares bounce back after FDA acts
FDA panel rejects Sarepta drug to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy
Early drug approvals can backfire
Sarepta’s stock is plummeting
Sarepta to close facility in Oregon, consolidate in Massachusetts
Sarepta’s stock soars after FDA postpones vote
Hope for Sarepta drug approval?
Sarepta sinks amid fresh doubts on FDA approval
Short of cash, Sarepta plans $37.5m stock sale
That's a Sarepta!
*********
Selecta shares trading up after $70m IPO
It's Seres business.
*********
Syros stocks jumps in first day of trading
********
Tesaro investors have a $1.8 billion day
They "won the lottery" regarding ovarian cancer.
Also heavy investors in talcum powder.
"Ziopharm Oncology Inc., a Boston biotech company that last week reported that a patient died in a clinical trial of its experimental brain cancer medicine, Tuesday said an analysis by its safety committee concluded the death was unrelated to the drug. The death, from bleeding in the skull, was the third among the medically fragile patients taking part in the company’s early-stage clinical study of a gene therapy to treat glioblastoma, an aggressive brain tumor affecting about 74,000 people worldwide annually. The first two deaths also weren’t related to the drug, according to Ziopharm. Ziopharm, based in the former Charlestown Navy Yard, said it expects to report data from its study to the Food and Drug Administration as required by the study’s protocol and applicable regulations. The study will remain open for enrollment, the company said."
Related:
"The burgeoning field of pharmacogenomics — the study of how an individual’s genes affect her response to a specific drug — offers new hope, said Dr. Lee Shulman, the chief of the obstetrics and gynecology clinical genetics program at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine."
That's when my stomach started hurting.
Sorry I no longer have the heart for this stuff.
It's too painful to continue, so I'm just going to Gleeve things there before I start crying.
