Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Tesaro Builds its Warchest
Kleiner Perkins leads a massive $100M Series B round at Tesaro. Now, Tesaro not only has the funds to push forward with Phase III trials for lead drug Rolapitant, but they'll likely be an active player in the licensing market as they look to build out their pipeline. Not bad for a company that's barely a year old...
Accelerators and Incubators
Over the past few years, startup accelerators and incubators have been popping up all over the country. Whether it's Y Combinator on the west coast or NYCSeedStart in Manhattan, these programs all follow a pretty standard format: they provide early-stage entrepreneurs with co-located work space, mentorship, and seed funding in exchange for a small equity-stake in the new company. As one would expect, the vast majority of these incubators focus on tech or media startups that have low capital requirements.
Most recently, Sandbox Industries announced the founding of Healthbox, a healthcare-focused incubator that will launch next year. To be clear, Healthbox will most certainly focus on healthcare IT or service-based offerings. While it would be great to see the formation of life sciences incubators, I won't hold my breath. The capital-intensive requirement alone make it a difficult proposition. Additionally, the highly specialized lab space and technology requirements make it unlikely that an incubator could properly support a group of companies.
This of course begs the question(s) - what can be done to help early-stage life sciences during their proof of concept and pre-clinical stages? How can innovative life sciences firms be better at showing early results without burning through piles of cash - particularly dilutive equity? Or more importantly, how do we continue to bridge the relationship between academic research and product commercialization? Over the next few weeks, I'll dive into some of the major drivers/issues of launching a life sciences startup.
Most recently, Sandbox Industries announced the founding of Healthbox, a healthcare-focused incubator that will launch next year. To be clear, Healthbox will most certainly focus on healthcare IT or service-based offerings. While it would be great to see the formation of life sciences incubators, I won't hold my breath. The capital-intensive requirement alone make it a difficult proposition. Additionally, the highly specialized lab space and technology requirements make it unlikely that an incubator could properly support a group of companies.
This of course begs the question(s) - what can be done to help early-stage life sciences during their proof of concept and pre-clinical stages? How can innovative life sciences firms be better at showing early results without burning through piles of cash - particularly dilutive equity? Or more importantly, how do we continue to bridge the relationship between academic research and product commercialization? Over the next few weeks, I'll dive into some of the major drivers/issues of launching a life sciences startup.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Let's Try This Again
Ripping off a line from my favorite morning radio hosts Mike and Mike - I'm "back and better than ever!"
A year ago, I decided to enter the blogosophere by launching Phase Zero. While things began with great promise, I quickly became distracted with the enormous amount of change going on in my life and thus it's been a little while since the last post (OK, it's been a whole year!). Nonetheless, I have decided to recommit myself to the project and I'm excited to see how it evolves over the coming weeks and months. Sticking with my original plans, much of the content will focus on life sciences and innovation. That being said, I'll be sprinkling in a nice helping of my other interests - mainly baseball, the wonderful world of food and beer, and anything else the that might be on my mind.
And on that note, I'm off to enjoy the sunny (partly) day in Chicago. Look out for new content real soon!
A year ago, I decided to enter the blogosophere by launching Phase Zero. While things began with great promise, I quickly became distracted with the enormous amount of change going on in my life and thus it's been a little while since the last post (OK, it's been a whole year!). Nonetheless, I have decided to recommit myself to the project and I'm excited to see how it evolves over the coming weeks and months. Sticking with my original plans, much of the content will focus on life sciences and innovation. That being said, I'll be sprinkling in a nice helping of my other interests - mainly baseball, the wonderful world of food and beer, and anything else the that might be on my mind.
And on that note, I'm off to enjoy the sunny (partly) day in Chicago. Look out for new content real soon!
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Greetings from Down Under
Hi Everyone,
I just wanted to send a quick update regarding the lack of posts recently. Yesterday, I arrived in Sydney for the beginning of a three week AUS/NZ adventure with friends from b-school. It will be quite difficult for me to keep the blog updated while I'm gone, but I'll be back in full force when I return. In the meantime, a couple quick thoughts:
I just wanted to send a quick update regarding the lack of posts recently. Yesterday, I arrived in Sydney for the beginning of a three week AUS/NZ adventure with friends from b-school. It will be quite difficult for me to keep the blog updated while I'm gone, but I'll be back in full force when I return. In the meantime, a couple quick thoughts:
- In an attempt to cut costs, the Greek government announced nearly unilateral price cuts on drugs that it purchases. Spain quickly followed Greece with a similiar, although less drastic move. Fearing a ripple effect acrosee Europe, most pharma companies are refusing to agree to the new prices.
- Australian researchers (might as well give the Aussies some love while I'm here) have developed an innovative and cheap method of using specially designed paper to determine blood type. It could be a great application in developing countries. More Here...
- In other news: My sister attended Roy Halliday's perfect game on Saturday night in Miami and said it was incredible. I would have loved to witness such an amazing feet, even if it was at the Marlins' expense. By the way, Halliday's perfect game was the 20th in MLB history and came just 20 days after Dallas Braden threw perfect game #19...
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Congrats to Tryton
Sorry for the lack of posts recently. The last two weeks have been quite a whirlwind as the Columbia MBA graduation is coming up on Sunday. Look out for a reflective post on my MBA experience soon.
In other news, I wanted to congratulate Tryton Medical on the recent announcement of their product launch in Europe. Three years ago, I had the opportunitiy to work with Richard Davis at Tryton for nearly six months. The company was still "virtual" at the time and working hard to raise VC funding. It is exciting to see how far they have come in just three years. Congrats again to everyone over at Tryton!
Tryton Press Release
In other news, I wanted to congratulate Tryton Medical on the recent announcement of their product launch in Europe. Three years ago, I had the opportunitiy to work with Richard Davis at Tryton for nearly six months. The company was still "virtual" at the time and working hard to raise VC funding. It is exciting to see how far they have come in just three years. Congrats again to everyone over at Tryton!
Tryton Press Release
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Next Big Biotech?
Dendreon's much anticipated cancer vaccine Provenge received approval from the FDA this morning. Provenge is a first-of-its-kind prostate cancer vaccine expected to be priced at ~$90,000 or more per patient ($31k per an infusion, 3 infusions per patient).
For some time now, Big Pharma had eyed the Seattle-based company as an acquisition target but Dendreon might now have the legs to make it big on its own. With the FDA's approval, Dendreon's stock is up 15% on the day (75% YTD), and the company is poised to make the rare jump into the biotech elite.
This should be a real interesting story to follow as it is almost unheard of these days for a small biotech or pharma to grow organically and independently. Without an approved product until today, Dendreon now has a market cap of ~$6B, roughly half the size of Biogen. Are they still an acquisition target or are they going to go at it alone? It should be an interesting story to follow. Dendreon Press Release
For some time now, Big Pharma had eyed the Seattle-based company as an acquisition target but Dendreon might now have the legs to make it big on its own. With the FDA's approval, Dendreon's stock is up 15% on the day (75% YTD), and the company is poised to make the rare jump into the biotech elite.
This should be a real interesting story to follow as it is almost unheard of these days for a small biotech or pharma to grow organically and independently. Without an approved product until today, Dendreon now has a market cap of ~$6B, roughly half the size of Biogen. Are they still an acquisition target or are they going to go at it alone? It should be an interesting story to follow. Dendreon Press Release
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Nature's Inspiration
Nature-inspired design or biomimicry is a rapidly evolving field that studies all elements of nature for sources of inspiration and innovation. Festo's bionic handling assist (BHA) is just one of the many concepts that have been developed recently. It's entirely possible that sometime in the near future an elephant trunk-inspired robotic arm could make its way into an operating room. Additionally, the 3-D "printing" process used to manufacture the BHA provides enormous design flexibility and produces significantly less manufacturing waste than conventional manufacturing processes. Who would have thought an elephant would lead to innovation - pretty cool!
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