The Cross-Border Biotech Blog

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

Monthly Archives: April 2010

Ontario’s New Life Sciences Commercialization Strategy Announced by Minister of Research and Innovation John Milloy

2 Comments Posted by on April 30, 2010

At a press conference in London today, Ontario’s Minister of Research and Innovation, John Milloy, is scheduled to announce the Province’s new $161 million Life Sciences Commercialization Strategy. The bulk of the money ($114 million) is allocated to the Global Leadership Round in Genomics & Life Sciences (GL2), though $100 million of that was announced last [...]

Jeremy Grushcow, News

Friday Science Review: April 30, 2010

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 30, 2010

Maybe these primary research projects will lead to the next great “Dendreon” story… Mirror-rorriM Movement Disorder: Defects in the proper connections between the left and right sides of the brain can lead to involuntary movements where one side of the body follows or mirrors the movement of the other side.  A study of two families [...]

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Biotech Trends at BIO 2010

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 28, 2010

As I’m preparing for the BIO conference in Chicago next week, I’m excited to see that several of the biotech trends we’ve been following on the blog are showing up as conference sessions. Interested in “A New Kind of Non-Dilutive Financing and Fundraising: Partnering With Not-for-Profits”? Get an early start at our trends page on [...]

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Monday Biotech Deal Review: April 26, 2010

1 Comment Posted by on April 26, 2010

This week’s deals are highlighted by a new TSX-V listed biotech, a $16 million D round, five collaborations a FedDev win for Bioniche, and updates on this month’s flurry of financings.

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This Week in the Twitterverse

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 24, 2010

Here’s some reading for the weekend from our Twitter stream on @crossborderbio: Canadian Foundation for Innovation’s Leaders Opportunity Fund supports 10 McGill researchers http://bit.ly/aRuStd for $1.7M Medicago $MDG headed for the TSX big board (from the Venture exchange) http://bit.ly/cY68Dl Congratulations! Genome Canada discloses planned allocation of $75m 2010 budget http://bit.ly/ccANNC Canada’s drug spend hit $30b in [...]

Jeremy Grushcow, This Week in the Twitterverse

Friday Science Review: April 23, 2010

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 23, 2010

Iron Man 2: Actually, this is about IRP2 – Iron Regulatory Protein 2.  Ok, not quite as exciting as the superhero movie but it is interesting/unexpected that overexpression of IRP2 promotes cancer cell growth.  In contrast, the very similar IRP1 protein suppresses tumour growth.  The difference seems to lie within a 73 amino acid sequence [...]

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Canadian Flax Growers Plan a Roundup Resistant Strain That May Also Resist EU’s GM Resistance In New $5.5m Collaboration with Cibus Global

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 23, 2010

Canada, the world’s largest flax producer, is looking to maintain its dominance. Growers want the economic advantages of a roundup-resistant variety without jeopardizing sales into the European Union. The E.U. accounts for 60% of Canadian flax exports, but genetically-modified crops face continued resistance in many E.U. countries. The solution may be generated by a collaboration announced yesterday [...]

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Health Canada’s Statistics on Patent Listings and Generics Litigation

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 21, 2010

In Canada, Under the PM(NOC) Regulations, the Minister of Health maintains a Patent Register (the analog to the U.S. Orange Book).  Health Canada collects statistics on patent listings and litigation, and Ogilvy Renault’s Life Sciences team recently put out a bulletin summarizing some of the data.  A few highlights: Out of 248 applicable generic drug [...]

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Biotech Trends Update — Commercialization by Foundations: Lymphoma and Leukaemia Society’s Preclinical Program Has Advantages for Companies

1 Comment Posted by on April 19, 2010

In my first post noting the trend of non-profit foundations stepping in to support commercial projects, I held out the  Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS)’s Therapy Acceleration Program as a key example. LLS recently made another investment from that program, giving $3.2 million to get Avila Therapeutics’ AVL-292 into trials for B-cell cancers (pdf).  In writing about this [...]

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Monday Biotech Deal Review: April 19, 2010

3 Comments Posted by on April 19, 2010

This week’s deals are headlined by Æterna Zentaris’ $15 million placement (on the back of positive regulatory news over the last couple of weeks). Æterna Zentaris’ is joined by a passel of other private placements, but not much else.  As a bonus for a slow deal week, though, we’ll throw in a name change and [...]

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This Week in the Twitterverse

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 17, 2010

Here’s some reading for the weekend in case you missed these items the first time around on @crossborderbio: Introduction of Private Member’s Bill to add genetic characteristics to the Human Rights Act http://bit.ly/dhwbyp via @mikesgene  RT @genomicslawyer @genetics_blog Colbert on gene patenting http://bit.ly/bx37kQ Note 2 ACLU: Don’t make enemies with the ppl who own cancer  New [...]

Jeremy Grushcow, This Week in the Twitterverse

Friday Science Review: April 16, 2010

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 16, 2010

An amazing week of Canadian research advancements… Cancer Genome Project is Well Underway: The Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), who is leading the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC), published a report this week in Nature outlining the international effort to sequence 25,000 cancer genomes – 500 genomes from each of the 50 most common [...]

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Biotech Trends Update — Social Media for Biotechs: Building Momentum Toward Critical Mass

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 15, 2010

In December, I wrote a post listing the top 3 reasons biotech companies should use social media and noted that we would be following adoption and use of social media by biotechs as one of our Trends in 2010. The 2010 Dose of Digital Dosie Awards held voting for finalists this week, including for Best Facebook Page, [...]

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Monday Biotech Deal Review: April 12, 2010

4 Comments Posted by on April 12, 2010

This week deals are back in full force, despite the fact that Tengion’s IPO was less popular than expected and Neovacs scaled back its planned IPO.  Highlights include Patheon raising $280 million from its note placement, Verio Therapeutics getting phagocytosed by Fate (but remaining in Ottawa) and Lorus Therapeutics’ F-1 filing for a $17.5 million unit [...]

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2010 Gairdner Award Winners Announced

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 11, 2010

This year’s Gairdner Award winners were announced this week.  The Gairdners are a fantastic Canadian contribution to the world of medical research, with seventy-three Gairdner winners over the past 50 years also becoming Nobel laureates.  Here is this year’s batch: The Gairdner International Award winners: William A. Catterall Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology, University of Washington Seattle, “for discovery of the [...]

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This Week in the Twitterverse

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 10, 2010

Here’s some reading for the weekend in case you missed them the first time around on @crossborderbio: FDA to hold public hearing Monday for PDUFA comments. Announcement and background webinar at http://bit.ly/cs66xY Obama appoints 12 to bioethics commission for “practical, policy-oriented, ethics-based” advice. http://go.usa.gov/iWp via @whitehouseostp RT @TechLaw_Elman: PBS Newshour: Superb report of the debate on [...]

Jeremy Grushcow, This Week in the Twitterverse

Friday Science Review: April 9, 2010

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 9, 2010

New fixes for diabetes, HIV, and nerve damage… Nano-Vaccine Cures Diabetes: To prevent the immune system from attacking pancreatic cells in Type 1 diabetes, a nanotechnology based “vaccine” was used successfully to stop the disease in mice.  The strategy involves nanoparticles that are coated with diabetes specific peptides and bound to MHC molecules. When injected [...]

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Comparative Effectiveness and Personalized Medicine are “Part of the Same Question” Collins Confirms

1 Comment Posted by on April 6, 2010

In a very informative Kaiser Health News interview (via GenomeWeb), Francis Collins says that “personalized medicine strategy and CER strategy are part of the same question. … There will often be more than one therapeutic intervention, so you have to compare them. But you also want to know what’s different about the individual that might have an [...]

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State of the Biotech Industry — Heading into BioFinance

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 6, 2010

As the BioFinance conference in Toronto starts up today, I thought it would be worth looking at a few recent data points for the biotech industry: The Q1 Burrill data (via PharmPro) shows above-market gains for public biotechs (up 8% in Q1), $6.1 billion of pharma partnering deals were done, and total biotech VC investments [...]

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Monday Biotech Deal Review: April 5, 2010

1 Comment Posted by on April 5, 2010

The past week was consumed with religious holidays and summer weather, and also with year-end earnings announcements, so there was less deal activity than usual.  Still, there’s about $500 million of goodies to check out after the jump, thanks mostly to MDS and its delightful Dutch auction.

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This Week in the Twitterverse

Leave a Comment Posted by on April 4, 2010

It was a quiet week on the blog (confluence of holidays), but here are some good tidbits to catch up on over the weekend in case you missed them the first time around on @crossborderbio: RT @GenomeWeb_News: White House Seeks Comments on Translating Federal R&D http://tinyurl.com/yzpanec 2 days ago RT @dgmacarthur: Genetic Future post: Nature special issue [...]

Jeremy Grushcow, This Week in the Twitterverse

Top 5 Reasons the Myriad Genetics ALCU Patent Ruling Is Not a Big Deal

1 Comment Posted by on April 1, 2010

Right in the middle of Passover, Judge Robert W. “Let my Patents Go” Sweet released his 152-page ruling (pdf), granting summary judgement to the ACLU and invalidating several of Myriad Genetics’ patents on the sequence and use of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.  It was greeted by some as the 11th plague, and by others as [...]

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