The Cross-Border Biotech Blog

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

Monthly Archives: August 2009

Monday Deal Review: August 31, 2009

This week Canada seems to have accounted for a significant chunk of the Western Hemisphere’s biopharma deal activity … by numbers, anyway. By dollars, all is dwarfed by the $3.1 billion Proctor & Gamble/Warner Chilcott deal, but don’t let that stop you from reading on

Patheon Special Committee Responds to JLL Statements

Patheon’s special committee issued a press release today in which it: “commented … on the recent expiry of the unsuccessful bid by JLL … and recent statements by JLL regarding the previously announced proposal by Lonza … to acquire all of the outstanding Shares at a price of US$3.55 per share.”

Friday Science Review: August 28, 2009

A Montreal flavour this week… Critical link between EGFR and Src oncogenes: On the heels of last week’s Friday Science Review post on Stat3 in breast cancer, Dr. William Muller’s research team at McGill University has published another significant find linking well known oncogenes, Src and EGFR/ErbB2.  Among their results, they demonstrated how Src can [...]

Mid-Atlantic Bio Call for Emerging Company Presenters

The organizers of the Mid-Atlantic Bio conference, which takes place November 4-6 in Washington DC, asked me to let you (oh faithful readers) know that they are looking for ”emerging companies to present to potential investors” at the conference.  There’s a “showcase” track and a “growth watch” track.  The application to present is here.

Rumoured Omeros IPO Might Signal Newly Opened Window

An article in Xconomy Seattle today reports rumours that Omeros, a company that has been around since 1996 and has raised over $102 million in private money, may revive its 2008 IPO plans. The company’s lead products — “proprietary low-dose combinations of existing drugs” — are more pharma than biotech, putting it in line with Cumberland’s [...]

Trends Update — Comparative Effectiveness: Where Data Shows No Difference, Tie Should Go To the Patient

A post by Scott Hensley on the NPR Health Blog yesterday has some good food for thought in the comparative effectiveness debate: what to do when comparative effectiveness studies show no statistically significant difference between treatments. The post notes that insurance coverage will be a factor in these decisions, but that: “in the end, it might [...]

Monday Deal Review: August 24, 2009

This week saw a few headline deals that we covered at the time, including the Vasogen-Cervus-IntelliPharmaCeutics deal, the move by Takeda Canada to take back ACTOS rights from Lilly, and the Lonza offer for Patheon, but other than that it seems like it was a quiet week everywhere. Still, check out some good stuff

Lonza Offers $460 Million for Patheon, JLL Rejects

JLL Partners’ long-standing bid for Patheon took a turn this morning as Lonza Group AG announced their own bid. Here’s Lonza’s press release. Here’s JLL’s response, rejecting the offer. Stay tuned…

Takeda Canada’s Opening Move: Reacquire Rights to Diabetes Drug ACTOS from Eli Lilly Canada

Takeda Canada, which opened in Mississauga in March, bought back the commercial rights to pioglitazone HCl, a type 2 diabetes drug marketed as ACTOS, from Eli Lilly Canada. Financial terms were not disclosed. Lilly had been marketing the drug in Canada under a 1999 worldwide agreement with Takeda. Takeda Canada general manager Daaron Dohler characterized [...]

Friday Science Review: August 21, 2009

This week… cancers, brains, and fruit flies. Combinatorial therapy to fight melanoma: Malignant melanomas are aggressive cancers that are highly resistant to chemotherapy, possibly due to high levels of Bcl-2 family anti-cell death  proteins.  Although the small molecule inhibitor, ABT-737, is effective against Bcl-2 family proteins in other cancers, it is not very effective in [...]

NRC-IRAP Is On A Roll: 7 Bio Investments in 7 Weeks

NRC-IRAP,* which got $170 million in Canadian stimulus money, has been deploying funds quite rapidly and has included a significant number of biotechs in its largesse.  I found these from July and August: a $260,000 grant to ImmunoVaccine Technologies Inc.; a $498,500 grant to Opsens Inc. (TSX-V: OPS); an undisclosed amount to Paladin Labs (TSE: PLB); a [...]

Trends Update — DTC Genetic Tests: NOVA ScienceNOW Program Takes a Look

Yesterday’s NOVA ScienceNOW program included a segment on direct-to-consumer genomics (H/T to GenomeWeb’s Daily Scan Blog).  The program was bullish on George Church’s Personal Genome Project; but it took a pretty dim view of the predictive value of current consumer technology. The program was accessible and interesting, but it went overboard in making a cautionary point about current DTC genomics [...]

Interview With Garrett Herman Yields More Detail on the LOM-BioQuest Joint Venture

We have new details about the LOM-BioQuest joint venture that was announced last week.  The WSJ article about the JV emphasized the goals of supporting good science and expanding the two companies’ presence in the life sciences market. I spoke to the Director of LOM BioQuest, Garrett Herman, and one of his associates yesterday about [...]

Another Biotech Windfall from the SIFT Tax: Vasogen Molts for Cervus and Merges with IntelliPharmaCeutics. Shareholders Applaud.

In July, we covered the deal ConjuChem Biotechnologies Inc. (TSX: CJB) made with Colabor Income Fund (TSX: CLB.UN), where ConjuChem got $5 million and the Income Fund got a public corporate shell.  ConjuChem had $8.7 million in the bank in April, but was burning it fast (pdf). Noting at the time that ConjuChem shareholders did [...]

Trends Update — Personalized Medicine and Comparative Effectiveness: HepC Treatment Gap, Leukemia Genetics and Beckman Coulter Genomics

A few interesting items hit the news this morning that continue the trend of explaining comparative effectiveness data by examining underlying genetic variation. Genetics explains why white patients respond better than black patients to standard Hepatitis C treatment. Bloomberg reported on a Nature paper showing that Hepatitis C patients with a genetic polymorphism near the [...]

Monday Deal Review: August 17, 2009

In addition to the highlights already noted — Enobia’s $50 million r0und, and the LOM – BioQuest joint venture — there was plenty of other Canadian deal activity this week.  Check it out

Friday Science Review: August 14, 2009

Great stuff this week in Canadian science news… A GIFT for MS patients:  An experimental treatment tested in mice with multiple sclerosis was able to reverse the disorder with few side effects.   The new compound is called GIFT15 – a hybrid protein between GSM-CSF and Interleukin-15.  Surprisingly, it produces results that you would not expect [...]

Trends Update — DTC Genetic Testing: Survey of State Laws on False Advertising

One aspect of direct-to-consumer genetic testing that requires particular vigilance is the “consumer” aspect.  We should expect that as the underlying technology becomes cheaper and testing companies proliferate, there will be more who prey on insecurity and health fears to make a quick buck while providing little value (or worse, missing genuine concerns). GenomeWeb Daily [...]

TBI Mentorship Program Announced

I’ve been working on the committee developing a new mentorship program for life sciences professionals in Ontario.  The formal launch will coincide with National Biotechnology Week in September.  Here’s the blurb: The TBI Mentorship program is designed for science and business professionals at any stage in their career. It provides ongoing opportunities for career and [...]

Q3 Is Looking Up for Biotech: Emdeon, Cumberland, Domain, LOM BioQuest, OETF

This week has seen a continued upswing for biotech and other health industry companies in the U.S. (with two IPOs) and in Canada (with great VC news and the pending appointment of an administrator for the Ontario Emerging Technologies Fund): In the U.S. Emdeon (NYSE: EM) IPO’d today, pricing at the top of its range ($15.50) and [...]

Cumberland Ends Bio IPO Drought But Prices Under Range. Next Up, Emdeon.

Cumberland Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: CPIX) raised $85 million in its IPO today, pricing at $17 per share.  This was less than the $19-21 per share range, but since it’s the first bio IPO since November 2007 we won’t complain. The company is planning to use the proceeds to buy late-stage or approved therapies for acute care [...]

Trends Update — “Personalized Effectiveness”: Amgen Gets Prospective Data to Back KRAS-Vectibix Plan

A few weeks ago, when the FDA changed the labeling on anti-EGFR drugs, Amgen was pretty enthusiastic about “avoiding unnecessary treatments in patients [with a specific genetic marker] who are unlikely to benefit” from Vectibix.  Avoiding these patients leaves more reimbursement available for patients who would benefit from Amgen’s product. Now Amgen has even better [...]

Monday Deal Review: August 10, 2009

Considering last week was abbreviated for the August long weekend here in Canada, there’s a decent amount of activity to run through.  Check out this week’s deals

This Week in the Twitterverse: August 8, 2009

Since I’ve been using Twitter to note short but interesting items that don’t require a whole blog post, I thought I’d post a re-cap of the week’s Tweets.  So, for those who aren’t on Twitter and haven’t been reading the @crossborderbio feed in the column to your right (or who read the blog by RSS), here’s [...]

A Big Week for Confirmations: Sotomayor, Collins, Kappos Movin’ on Up

Today saw three significant confirmations by the U.S. Senate of interest to the biotech community: Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was confirmed 68-31; Francis Collins was confirmed as the next director of the National Institutes of Health; and David Kappos, ex of IBM, will be the new director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. We [...]

Q2 Venture Capital Numbers Do Not Look So Rosy in Canada

When Q2′s venture capital investment numbers came out for U.S. investment, healthcare/biotech investments were on top, beating out even IT investments in that period and generating some optimism. Dow Jones has released the worldwide Q2 venture capital numbers (H/T @startupcfo, and things do not look so rosy here in Canada: The overall number of VC [...]

Trends Update — Electronic Medical Records: President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Meeting on Health IT

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology is meeting now.  The meeting is broadcast live online at  http://tr.im/vK3G. They just finished introductions.  Eric Schimidt, Eric Lander and Harold Varmus are there, among other luminaries.  100% in-person attendance. “21 members include 4 winners of MacArthur ‘genius’ awards, 3 Nobel laureates, 2 university presidents, as [...]

Trends Update — Electronic Medical Records: Salesforce.com Clouds the EMR Field

The WSJ Health Blog notes today that Salesforce.com’s investment in Practice Fusion, though not a large financial investment, follows an appealing trend in the EMR space.  Both Salesforce.com and Practice Fusion are cloud computing plays (aka hosted services / ASP) where software and data live on company servers rather than on local PCs in doctors’ offices. This will be [...]

What Makes MIT So Good at Entrepreneurship

I joined the NCET2 webinar of Edward Roberts’ presentation last week — “Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT” — to see what I could glean for Toronto’s benefit as we work toward creating a more entreprenuerial environment on University Ave.  The webinar homepage has the audio of the talk and a link to the slides. Some of [...]

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