The Cross-Border Biotech Blog

Biotechnology, Health and Business in Canada, the United States and Worldwide

Monthly Archives: March 2009

2009 Gairdner Award Winners Announced

This year’s Gairdner International Award winners: Shinya Yamanaka, for making pluripotent stem cells from epidermal somatic tissue; Lucy Shapiro of Stanford University and Richard Losick of Harvard University for their research on how bacteria grow, divide or become dormant; and Kazutoshi Mori of Kyoto University and Peter Walter of the University of California for their [...]

Essex Woodland Health Ventures’ New $900 million Bio Fund

Essex Woodlands Health Ventures closed on its Fund VIII today with $900 million to invest “across the spectrum of drug, device and service companies in North America, Europe and Asia.”  The In Vivo blog points out that this isn’t exactly new news, but it is still good news for companies that are now a big step [...]

Angiotech Expands and Reworks Baxter COSEAL Deal (for real)

Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANPI, TSX: ANP) reworked its COSEAL deal with Baxter International Inc.  For a $25 million one-time payment, Baxter will pick up the rights to COSEAL in Japan, completing a worldwide package, and will add additional fields of use for COSEAL, as well as rights to COSEAL derivatives. Baxter will owe no further [...]

Trends Update: ChinaBio and Shantha Biotech

One of our Trends in 2009 posts last week talked about the increasing innovative activity in India and China and increasing generics activity among innovator pharma.  This week starts with a relevant update on each front: A report from Seeking Alpha on the ChinaBio Investor Forum that was recently held in Hong Kong, noting domestic companies GeneHarbor [...]

Facts, Theories and Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear

A couple of particularly well-turned phrases in response to the Gary Goodyear evolution flap from an excellent piece in the Globe and Mail by T. Ryan Gregory (author of the Genomicron blog, which has continued to follow the story) explaining facts, theories and everything in between: Darwin had two objectives: first, to establish that modern species [...]

White House Reports on White House Forum on Health Reform*

A post on the White House Blog announced the release today of the Administration’s report on the White House Forum on Health Reform (pdf), about the discussions at the health reform event held March 5th. * say that 5 times fast!

There’s No Bailout Like a Good Exit

A Bloomberg article this morning takes a look at the recent boom in Israel’s biotech and device stocks, and credits the government cash infusion (which we noted at the time) for some of the buoyancy; but also attributes much of the gain to speculation that the J&J-Omrix deal is the beginning, not the end, of [...]

Monday Deal Review: March 30, 2009

Canadian deal and company info from this week

The Week Ahead on Capitol Hill

HHS-Secretary elect Kathleen Sebelius will have confirmations before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Tuesday, March 31, followed by the Senate Finance Committee on April 2.  Both hearings should cover topics such as universal health care and comparative effectiveness.  The first hearing would also address issues like public health preparedness and health innovation, [...]

Friday Science Review: If you want to…

If you want to avoid malaria:  Two PLoS ONE publications by teams in Dr. Kain’s lab at the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health illuminate malaria: one by suggesting that inflammatory peptide C5a may contribute to the pathogenesis of Placental Malaria; and one showing that serum levels of angiopoietin-1 and the angiopoietin-2/1 ratio are promising clinically informative biomarkers [...]

This Week in Texas: One Step Forward, Two-Step* Back

One Step Forward: Earlier this week, Governor Perry of Texas announced $50 million of funding for Texas A&M University System’s National Center for Therapeutics Manufacturing yesterday, following up on his keynote at a conference in February where he spoke highly of the state’s biotech industry.  Two Steps Back: At the same time… Texas, like Georgia (which also [...]

Ontario Budget 2009: Initial Reactions are “Encouraging”

Generally positive reviews of Ontario’s 2009 budget are coming in from the innovation community: TBI gives a shout-out to the Emerging Technologies Fund: The Biotechnology Initiative (TBI) would like to credit Premier Dalton McGunity and Minister of Research and Innovation John Wilkinson for their quick response to the looming economic uncertainty by the creation of the Emerging Technologies [...]

Canadian M&A: Akela Pharma and Nventa to Merge, Akela Shareholders to Own 70%

Akela Pharma Inc. (TSX: AKL) and Nventa Biopharmaceuticals (TSX: NVN) will merge by exchanging 0.0355 Akela shares for each Nventa share, resulting in an approximate 70/30 ownership split between Akela and Nventa shareholders, respectively, in the combined entity. The public company will retain Akela’s name, management, and ticker symbol (AKL).  The arrangement arrangement was unanimously [...]

Duck!

Google’s coming.

2009 Ontario Budget Innovation Highlights

Quick dose of info from the Ministry’s Highlights doc below.  More to come… $300 million in capital funds over six years for research infrastructure, which will be available to leverage funding from the federal Canada Foundation for Innovation $250 million over five years for a new Emerging Technologies Fund that will focus on clean technologies, [...]

Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) Temporary Relief Extended

The TSX and TSX-V temporary relief measures have been extended through September 30, 2009.  Specifically: Toronto Stock Exchange has extended the remedial review period for delistings from a maximum of up to 120 days to up to 210 days. TSX Venture Exchange’s temporary relief measures include: adding flexibility in how existing continued listing requirements are [...]

Takeda Comes to Canada

Takeda expanded into Canada today with the establishment of Takeda Canada Inc., which will be headquartered in Mississauga. Takeda’s primary therapeutic areas include diabetes, cardiovascular disease, CNS disorders, gastroenterology, bone and joint disorders, chronic kidney disease/anemia and gynecological disorders. Takeda Canada will register and commercialize medicines from Takeda’s portfolio of primary care and specialty products. Takeda [...]

BEvERages Tonight in Toronto

I suspect most people in Toronto who read this blog already know about the TBI Pub Night tonight (6pm – 9:30pm, Bedford Academy, 36 Prince Arthur Ave.), but if you didn’t before, you do now. Come harmonize … some GST and PST! (A little Ontario budget humo(u)r.) Hopefully see you there!

Ontario Budget Today

Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan will deliver the 2009 Ontario Budget around 4 pm today. The Finance Budget page is here, and will contain links to the full budget, highlights and press releases following the release this afternoon. You can watch the Budget presentation live on a webcast here.

Roche Tenderly Completes Genentech Deal

The results are in: 84.7% of Genentech’s publicly held shares were tendered and will be taken up by Roche Investments USA Inc. for $95 per share, bringing Roche’s stake up to 93.2% (96.2% with the guaranteed deliveries).  Just a short form merger away from done. Next challenge: integration without assimilation.

Wednesday Brain Dump: Around the World Edition

Click on the map points for each story, or just read on

Disclosure, Disclosure, Disclosure

Disclosure issues have permeated the news lately.  Pharmaceutical companies need to do a better job of disclosing adverse clinical trial results and side effects; companies and doctors need to do a better job of disclosing payments; and journals need to do a better job of disclosing author conflicts. You could view the question of whether to [...]

OVCF Scoreboard: Commitments 1, Biotech/Cleantech 0

The Ontario Venture Capital Fund (OVCF) announced its first commitment yesterday: $15 million to Georgian Partners Capital, which according to its website invests in “growth and later-stage enterprise software companies.” No announcement yet on the anticipated commitment to Mayfield Capital.  Maybe wiser to roll out a commitment to a local fund first. We’ll continue to follow [...]

Science and Technology in India’s Election

A Trends in 2009 post this week noted the increasing innovative activity in India and China.  Further evidence of that trend comes from a ScienceInsider report today that support for science and technology has taken a prominent place in the ruling Congress Party’s election manifesto.  The party notes that in the last two years it has opened: eight new [...]

New Merck Serono Biotechnology Ventures Fund

Merck KGaA, the Darmstadt-based company (not part of Merck & Co. Inc. of the U.S.),  is starting a biotechnology venture capital fund that will invest €40 million ($55 million) in emerging biotech companies during the next five years, with a focus on the core therapeutic areas of Neurodegenerative Diseases, Oncology, Autoimmune & Inflammatory Diseases, Endocrinology and Fertility, as well [...]

Monday Deal Review: March 23, 2009

A relativley light week for Canadian deal and company info this week, but we have all the news that’s fit to print (if not necessarily fit to distribute in the U.S.)

Trends in 2009: Shifting IP Constituencies as Innovator Pharma Buys Generics and Asia Turns to Innovation

Growing industrial and geopolitical realignment of economic interests has the potential to re-define intellectual property constituencies in 2009. 1.  Industrial realignment: the entry of innovator pharma companies into the generics business. This year has already seen Merck get into follow-on biologics by buying Insimed and Pfizer build its generics business with its Aurobindo deal.  As traditional innovator pharma [...]

Friday Science Review: March 20, 2009

I had a hard time finding news-making Canadian science stories this week; but in the meantime, here’s a  ”numbers” edition of the Friday Science Review: Number of Canadians with cancer: Statistics Canada released its latest figures, showing that of all persons living in Canada on January 1, 2005, 695,000 had been diagnosed with an invasive cancer at some point [...]

The Gary Goodyear Evolution Story, As it Has Evolved So Far

Gary Goodyear, Canada’s minister of state for science and technology, has drawn international attention this week for his highly defensive, arguably obfuscatory, chronologically incorrect and possibly creationist statements about evolution. Tuesday, March 17, the Globe and Mail reports Goodyear responding to a question about evolution by saying “I’m not going to answer that question. I am a [...]

$250 million Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund Seen, Raised by $825 million Quebec Venture Capital Fund

Ontario announced the $250 million Emerging Technologies Fund yesterday … pretty much exactly what Monday’s letter to McGuinty from the CVCA requested. That has got to be, by the way, either: the world’s first psychic government relations campaign, or the world’s fastest government stimulus. Not to be out-done, the Québec budget today included an $825 [...]

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 92 other followers