The Bio Report

Climate change and the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events carry a toll on human health. Not only do floods, hurricanes, and other similar phenomenon cause death and injury, they also create long-term health effects. Jesse Bell, a research scientist at the North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies at North Carolina State University recently examined the issues in an art...

Tom Frieden, after eights years of running the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is turning his sights to global health. Frieden has set a goal of saving 100 million lives from cardiovascular disease in low- and middle-income countries by applying proven strategies used in developed countries. His program Resolve to Save Lives, an initiative of Vital Strategies, will also work to pr...

A public-private consortium is seeking to cut the time it takes to discover and advance new cancer therapies to the clinic to one year from the six years it takes on average today. Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine, or ATOM, brings together scientists from government, academia, and industry with the ambitious goal of harnessing supercomputers to transform cancer drug discover...

Merger and acquisitions may be a path to creating value for life science companies, but talks can breakdown because of flaws in management thinking that skew their sense of the value of their company. Oded Ben-Joseph, managing director of Outcome Capital, applied behavioral economics to the M&A front to discuss how cognitive biases can derail M&A transactions in an article in the September issue o...

The growing problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics represents a significant public health threat. That’s been made worse by the dearth of new therapies that have come to market. AmpliPhi Biosciences is developing bacteriophages, viruses that infect and kill bacteria, to provide a way to target drug-resistant bugs. We spoke to Paul Grint, CEO of AmpliPhi about the health need, AmpliPhi’s ap...

Bioelectronic therapies are being developed to treat a number of conditions that currently can only be addressed using pharmaceutical interventions. Thync, a bioelectronics company, believes its technology that targets the cervical and thoracic spinal nerves to modulate the autonomic nervous system, can be used to treat variety of ailments including mental health, inflammatory disorders, and skin...

Despite the growing volume of electronic health records, they have so far left the recruitment of clinical trial patients, clinical trial designs, and site selection largely unchanged. The result is that drug companies are often designing clinical trials with gaps in information about the patient population they are serving, the medical issues these patients face, and where they can find them. Thi...

Synthetic biology is promising to harness living organisms to replace industrial processes that rely on toxic chemicals, consume large amounts of energy and water, and leave environmental degradation in their wake. One such example of a company seeking to transform an industry in this way is Colorifix, which is developing a revolutionary dyeing process to help the textile industry dramatically red...

Kindred Biosciences is looking to leverage the billions of dollars that others have invested in approved drugs by modifying, improving, and repurposing them for the animal market. The company believes it can formulate, develop, and win approval for these medicines for between $3 million and $5 million each in a matter of three to five years, and capture markets that range between $10 million and $...

When the BIO Investor Forum convenes in San Francisco October 17 and 18, a key point of discussion will be the availability of funding for emerging life sciences companies. One of the panelist addressing that issue this year will be Asish Xavier, vice president of venture investments for Johnson & Johnson Innovation’s venture arm JJDC. We spoke to Xavier about JJDC’s approach to investing as a str...

In April 2016, the consulting firm LifeSci Advisors adopted a comprehensive action plan to advance gender diversity in the life sciences industry. It has partnered with Women in Bio and Girls Inc. of New York City to provide mentorship and advancement programs for women and girls in the STEM fields, started its own board diversity initiative, and created the LifeSci Advisory Board on Gender Divers...

Regenerative medicine is rapidly moving from the lab to the clinic, but as life-saving therapies advance to the marketplace, there are questions about whether the U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs to modernize its regulatory approach to gene and cell therapies. We spoke to Michael Werner, executive director of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, about the state of the industry, the regul...

Glioblastoma is a devastating and fatal brain cancer that progresses rapidly. Median time from diagnosis to death is 12 to 15 months. In recurrent cases, treatment consists of both symptomatic and palliative therapies, but the disease remains fatal. VBL Therapeutics is developing a targeted anti-cancer gene-based therapy that is in late-stage testing for recurrent glioblastoma. We spoke to Dror Ha...

The promise of precision health is to transform a healthcare system that is today based on treating sickness to harnessing a range of technologies to predict and prevent illness. Health 2.0’s Technology for Precision Health Summit in San Francisco October 24 will explore the state of precision health and what’s needed to make it a reality. We spoke to Linda Molnar, chair of the summit, about preci...

Winning regulatory approval for a drug to treat obesity would seem like a great accomplishment, but for Orexigen Therapeutics, that’s when the hard work began. After its marketing partner Takeda ended their agreement because of disappointing sales, the company found itself in the position of having to market a drug to doctors who often don’t consider obesity an illness and believe willpower and di...

Though breakthroughs in the ability to read, write, and edit DNA have broad implications for healthcare, they are also fueling a far-reaching transformation of industries and laying the foundation for a new bioeconomy. The SynBioBeta conference, which has developed into a critical annual event for innovators and investors within the synthetic biology sector, will be held in San Francisco October 3...

The pharmaceutical industry has long argued that high drug prices are necessary to incentivize investment in and fund high-risk research and development of innovative new therapies. In a working paper published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, William Lazonick, professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and his colleagues challenge the industry’s premise. They arg...

Gonorrhea is a common sexually-transmitted infection, but the growth of an antibiotic-resistant strain of the disease is creating what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called an urgent public health threat that requires aggressive action. Entasis Therapeutics is launching a pivotal study of Zoliflodacin, a new class of oral antibiotic that has demonstrated potent activity ag...

A number of clinical successes and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s granting of designations that provide accelerated pathways to experimental therapies speaks to the progress of research funded by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. We spoke to Kevin McCormack, ‎senior director of public communications and patient advocate outreach for CIRM, about the growing pipeline of th...

The problem of counterfeit and falsified medicines is not just an economic problem for the pharmaceutical industry, but also a threat to public health. TruTag Technologies is seeking to address the problem with its nano-scale technology that allows drugmakers to encode information on individual doses of medication to authenticate a drug and provide details on its origin and intended market. We spo...

Mosquitoes are more than just pesky. Certain types of insect serve as efficient vectors for infectious diseases that pose great harm to humans. Oxitec, a subsidiary of Intrexon, has developed a genetically altered male of the Aedes aegypti mosquito designed to mate with wild females to produce offspring that die before becoming adults. The effort is meant to provide a highly targeted alternative t...

Scrutiny of drug prices around the globe is expected to exert growing pressure on the biopharmaceutical sector. EvaluatePharma, in its recently issued World Preview 2017, Outlook to 2022 says that despite consensus forecasts for worldwide drug sales hitting more than $1 trillion in 2022, it does reflect a drop from the same period last year. We spoke to Antonio Iervolino, head of forecasting for e...

Celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder that has helped to drive the gluten-free food craze, can carry serious complications. There’s no treatment for the disease, which afflicts an estimated 2.4 million people in the United States. PvP Biologics is taking a unique approach to treating celiac disease with its Kumamax, a synthetic enzyme that degrades the parts of gluten that trigger an immune respo...

The lack of clarity over healthcare reform, changes to tax policy, and concerns about new pricing pressures are creating uncertainty over the future health of the biotech industry. EY, in its just released annual report on the industry, looks at the effect the growing uncertainty has had on the performance of the biotech companies and strategies for contending with what’s ahead. We spoke to Glen G...

The high cost of drug development, the challenge of translational research, and continuing concerns with R&D efficiency has had entrepreneurs, investors, and drugmakers open to experimenting with new models of innovation. COI Pharmaceuticals, born out of a collaboration between the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline and Avalon Ventures, is one such model that is showing traction. With management...