The Cross-Border Biotech Blog

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

Monthly Archives: December 2010

Friday Science Review: December 31, 2010

Just a couple papers to squeeze in this year before the clock strikes 12. I look forward to 2011 and the research it will bring in the Canadian realm. For those readers heading out tonight for some fun on the city, enjoy! More science reviews to come in the new year.. Porcine Adenovirus PAV3, A [...]

Monday Biotech “Happy Holidays” Deal Review: December 27, 2010

Welcome to your Monday Biotech “Happy Holidays” Deal Review!  For those who may have noticed, last week the Monday Biotech Deal Review took its own holiday, so this week’s digest contains biotech news spanning the past two weeks – to ensure you don’t miss a single drummer boy’s beat.  It has been a busy two [...]

Friday Science Review: December 24, 2010

Given that the UN Climate Change Conference has just wrapped up in Mexico, I thought for the Christmas edition of the FSR I would lay out some articles from Nature focused on global warming and its impact on one of Canada’s most iconic animals — the polar bear. University of Alberta’s Andrew Derocher reports on [...]

Weekend Reading: This Week in the Twitterverse

Social media, publication quality, Canadian VC policy and exhaustion (mine and patents’) make for a light dose of interesting reading this weekend: Friday Science Review: stagnant technologies in Africa, congenital blindness in children and chronic pain in the crosshairs… http://ow.ly/1auHag Social Media Reshaping Healthcare: Some cool data on the use of Twitter as a Public Health [...]

Friday Science Review: December 17, 2010

I’ll begin the FSR this week with a few comments regarding some investigational work coming from the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health.   Professors Dr. Peter Singer and Dr. Abdallah Daar, and PhD student Ken Simiyu, traveled to Africa to better understand why commercialization in the biotechnology and healthcare industry has been so poor of late. [...]

Trends Update — Social Media Reshaping Healthcare: Twitter as a Public Health Surveillance Tool for the 21st Century

We have been following innovative uses for social media in the biotech and healthcare industry here on the blog. Recently, a comprehensive paper was published in PLoS ONE outlining the use of “infoveillance” tools on the web to track the public response to the H1N1 epidemic. Dr. Gunther Eysenbach and Cynthia Chew, both researchers at [...]

Monday Biotech Deal Review: December 13, 2010

Welcome to your Monday Biotech Deal Review.  It was a bit of a slow week this week, with a few small private placement announcements, and some activity in the licensing sector.  Read on to learn more.  

This Week in the Twitterverse – Weekend Reading

Here’s your dose of weekly biotech news, all wrapped up in one weekend-friendly package: VenGrowth Funds Receive Non-Binding Merger Proposal from GrowthWorks Canadian Fund http://eqent.me/hyhgU Oncolytic viruses for cancer therapy and synthetic promoters for diabetes therapy in this week’s Friday Science Review!http://bit.ly/g16v6Q Cephalon strikes record $2B stem cell pact with Mesoblast. $130m upfront+$220m for 20%, $1.7b later… http://bit.ly/dRGQlI [...]

Friday Science Review: December 10, 2010

CD8+ Cytotoxic T-cells, Weapons of Selective Destruction McMaster University ♦ Published in Molecular Therapy (npg), Nov. 30, 2010 Oncolytic viruses (OVs) are being investigated as a means to destroy tumour cells. They exert their cytotoxic effects either directly through infection, or indirectly, if they have been engineered to flag down cancer cells by delivering tumour-associated [...]

Biotech Trends Update — IP Constituencies: Indian Industry Lobbies to Keep IP Out of Free Trade Agreement with EU

An article in yesterday’s Hindu Business Line says the Indian Drug Manufacturers’ Association is lobbying heavily to keep data protection and other innovator-friendly IP provisions out of the free trade agreement being negotiated between India and the EU. But, with Glenmark and Jubilant on the rise, and with even Biocon carrying the R&D water in its [...]

Monday Biotech Deal Review: December 6, 2010

Welcome to your Monday Biotech Deal Review.  There was some activity with Angiotech last week, with extension agreements being executed extending certain deadlines dealing with Angiotech’s proposed recapitalization as well as a preliminary loss in court against Rex Medical L.P.  Read on to learn more, as well as your usual assortment of biotech news. 

This Week in the Twitterverse: Weekend Reading

Here’s your dose of weekly biotech news, all wrapped up in one weekend-friendly package thanks to our Twitter stream: RT @ArsenicMicrobes: We come in peace – Funny! But agree with @matthewherper on this one: not an alien http://bit.ly/ebEPxe Never too early for biotechs and VCs to understand and plan for payer-focused endpoints http://bit.ly/fDEsbL via @InVivoBlogChris My short presentation [...]

Friday Science Review: December 3, 2010

It’s all about microscopic machinery this week with two articles in Molecular Cell (Cell Press) and a third in Nature Cell Biology. The MMS22L-TONSL Complex to the Rescue: A Sine Qua Non for Genome Integrity Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute ♦ University of Toronto Published in Molecular Cell, November 24, 2010 In order for DNA replication [...]

Canadian Biotech and Healthcare Licensing Trends in 2010

I was fortunate this week to host the Canadian Healthcare Licensing Association‘s (CHLA’s) annual holiday get-together on behalf of Ogilvy Renault at our Toronto office (we hosted a parallel CHLA event in Montreal earlier this week). I presented a short slide deck on licensing trends in 2010, with data drawn from our Monday Biotech Deal [...]

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