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Archive for the ‘Venture Capital’ Category

We’re seeing an acceleration of M&A activity and a growing IPO pipeline through the end of 2016, but the bar remains high.

Posted in US and Global Economy: Trends and Findings, Venture Capital on December 3, 2016| Leave a Comment »

We’re seeing an acceleration of M&A activity and a growing IPO pipeline through the end of 2016, but the bar remains high.

 

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

Here’s what one top VC firm predicts will happen to tech startups in 2017

Dec. 2, 2016, 9:00 AM

Accel is an early & growth-stage venture capital firm and is known for its investments in Facebook, Slack, and Dropbox. This is the firm’s annual presentation on what the tech environment is like for founders today and what will happen in 2017, republished with permission.

  1. It’s an incredible time to be a technology entrepreneur.
  2. A rising “new guard” are officially the most valuable companies in the world: Apple, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook.
  3. But of course, it’s important to stay disciplined.
  4. We’re seeing an acceleration of M&A activity and a growing IPO pipeline through the end of 2016, but the bar remains high.

 

*In order as of 11/22/16:

  • Apple — $596B
  • Alphabet/Google — $551B
  • Microsoft — $478B
  • Amazon — $372B
  • Facebook — $348B

**Bloomberg dug into the numbers here too.

 

SOURCE

http://www.businessinsider.com/accel-2017-vc-predictions-2016-11

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Business Forward Roundtable with John Podesta: Economic Growth and Opportunity

Posted in Health Economics and Outcomes Research, Venture Capital, tagged , on July 26, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Business Forward Roundtable with John Podesta: Economic Growth and Opportunity

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.

July 26, 2016 (Philadelphia, PA)

A Round Table and Q&A with the Entrepreneur Group Business Forward and John Podesta,Chairman and Founder of Center for American Progress on Policy, Economic Growth and Opportunity

ABOUT BUSINESS FORWARD

With the help of more than 50 of the world’s most respected companies, Business Forward is making it easier for tens of thousands of business leaders from across America to advise Washington on how to create jobs and accelerate our economy. Business Forward is active in over 100 cities and works with more than 450 senior Administration officials, Members of Congress, mayors, and governors.

Business leaders who have participated in our briefings have seen their suggestions implemented in the Affordable Care Act, the Jobs Act, three trade agreements, and every one of the President’s budgets. Many have also shared their recommendations with their representatives in Congress and through op-eds and interviews with local media. Ninety-eight out of 100 business leaders who have participated in a Business Forward briefing would be interested in participating in another one.

Member Companies

Many of America’s largest and most respected firms – from America’s software, telecommunications, media, hospitality, financial services, manufacturing, apparel, defense and pharmaceutical industries – have already joined Business Forward.

Members include Aetna, American Airlines, AT&T, Comcast, Cheniere Energy, Deloitte, Dow, eBay Inc., Fidelity Investments, Facebook, Ford, Google, Intuit, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, the National Restaurant Association, Pacific Gas & Electric, POET, Pricewaterhouse Cooper, Qualcomm, SAS, T-Mobile, Time Warner, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Viacom, Visa, and Walmart.

These corporations work with Business Forward to identify, recruit and brief small business owners, venture capitalists and entrepreneurs of all kinds who are looking for a meaningful way to participate in policy debates.

John Podesta on Economic Policy, Equality and Growth

John Podesta delivered opening remarks at the launch event for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth on November 15, 2013.

Recommendations to Advance Progressive Change

Business Forward Round Table on Economic Strategy and Opportunity Agenda with John Podesta: Policy

John Padesta (JP): We have had an economic bounce back from the recession however it is agreed that wages need to go up in US.  The goal of policy is to return to a more equitable time such as during the 90’s.  The Hillary Clinton campaign is actively reaching out to find out what is happening on all levels of the economy: from small startups to international trade and workers views.

JP: There are five main areas the Clinton campaign is focusing on with regard to economic growth policy

  1.  jobs, investment, create context to spur private-public partnership investments
  2. skills training – human capital
  3. invest in places left behind: promise zones
  4. sustainable growth: allowing workers to share in productivity gains by tax reform, profit sharing
  5. family policy – says they will define this policy later in the week

JP: want to get entrepreneurs more involved with policy decision.  Clear directive from Hillary is that policy requires input from ALL stakeholders in economy in all sectors

There may be a focus on paid leave

Question from audience:  What about the crisis in rural health.

Definitely a problem Ann O’Leary will be heading up the health policy for Clinton campaign

 

 

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The 16th annual EmTech MIT – A Place of Inspiration, October 18-20, 2016, Cambridge, MA

Posted in 3D Printing for Medical Application, Academic Publishing, Bio Instrumentation in Experimental Life Sciences Research, Bio-Ethics, BioIT: BioInformatics, BioIT: BioInformatics, NGS, Clinical & Translational, Pharmaceutical R&D Informatics, Clinical Genomics, Cancer Informatics, Biomarkers & Medical Diagnostics, BioTechnology - Venture Creation, Venture Capital, CANCER BIOLOGY & Innovations in Cancer Therapy, Conference Coverage with Social Media, CRISPR/Cas9 & Gene Editing, US and Global Economy: Trends and Findings, Venture Capital on May 17, 2016| Leave a Comment »

The 16th annual EmTech MIT – A Place of Inspiration, October 18-20, 2016, Cambridge, MA, Volume 2 (Volume Two: Latest in Genomics Methodologies for Therapeutics: Gene Editing, NGS and BioInformatics, Simulations and the Genome Ontology), Part 1: Next Generation Sequencing (NGS)

The 16th annual EmTech MIT – A Place of Inspiration, October 18-20, 2016, Cambridge, MA

MIT Media Lab
Building E14
75 Amherst Street
(Corner of Ames and Amherst)
Cambridge, MA 02139

Conference Location: Entire 6th floor of Building E14

EmTech MIT Brings The Award-Winning Journalism of MIT Technology Review To Life

The 16th annual EmTech MIT gathers preeminent thought leaders, researchers and business leaders to examine the most significant themes in emerging technologies, including:

– Rethinking Energy

– Virtual Reality, Augmented Life

– Artificial intelligence

– Global Connectivity

– Engineering a Healthy Planet

– Spotlight talks on the 10 Breakthrough Technologies

– Celebration of the 2016 Innovators Under 35

ANNOUNCEMENT

Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence (LPBI) Group, Boston

pharma_bi-background0238

will cover in REAL TIME

The 16th annual EmTech MIT – A Place of Inspiration, October 18-20, 2016, Cambridge, MA

http://events.technologyreview.com/emtech/16/

In attendance, streaming LIVE using Social Media

Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

Editor-in-Chief

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com

@pharma_BI

@AVIVA1950

 All Speakers

SOURCE

http://events.technologyreview.com/emtech/16/#section-about

Featured Speakers

  • Rachel
    Haot

    Managing Director, 1776

    Incubating Technical Solutions with Global Impact

  • Yael
    Maguire

    Engineering Director, Facebook Connectivity Lab

    Expanding the Global Impact of Internet Connectivity

  • Pranav
    Mistry

    Global Vice President of Research, Samsung

    Envisioning What’s Next for Virtual Reality

  • Padmasree
    Warrior

    CEO, NextEV

    Imagining Clean, Connected Transportation

 

  • Nora
    Ayanian

    Gabilan Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Amir
    Banifatemi

    Prize Lead, X Prize

    Incentivizing Innovative Approaches & Collaboration in A.I.

  • Muyinatu
    Bell

    Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Brian
    Bergstein

    Executive Editor, MIT Technology Review

  • Nessan
    Bermingham

    Chief Executive Officer, President and Founder, Intellia Therapeutics

    The Potential for Genome Editing Technology to Transform Medicine

  • Dinesh
    Bharadia

    Postdoctoral Associate, MIT CSAIL

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Heather
    Bowerman

    CEO & Founder, Dot Laboratories

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Elizabeth
    Bramson-Boudreau

    Chief Operating Officer, MIT Technology Review

  • Qing
    Cao

    Research Staff Member, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Jagdish
    Chaturvedi

    Director, Clinical Innovations, InnAccel

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • David
    Cox

    Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and of Computer Science, Harvard University

    Building Computer Vision Systems Inspired by the Brain

  • Tom
    Davenport

    President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology & Management, Babson College

    Presented by RAGE Frameworks

  • Stefano
    Domenicali

    CEO, Automobili Lamborghini

    Presented by the Italian Trade Agency

  • Kevin
    Esvelt

    Assistant Professor, MIT Media Lab

    The Technology Driving Gene Drives

  • Vivian
    Ferry

    Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Wei
    Gao

    Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Dileep
    George

    Cofounder, Vicarious

    Artificial Intelligence At Work

  • Shyam
    Gollakota

    Assistant Professor, University of Washington

    10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2016: Power from the Air

  • Meron
    Gribetz

    CEO, Meta

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Jiawei
    Gu

    Cofounder, Ling Robotics

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Rachel
    Haot

    Managing Director, 1776

    Incubating Technical Solutions with Global Impact

  • Alex
    Hegyi

    Member of Research Staff, PARC

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Katherine
    High

    Cofounder, President and Chief Scientific Officer, Spark Therapeutics

    Gene Therapy: A New Era of Medicine

  • Christine
    Ho

    CEO, Imprint Energy, Inc.

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Ehsan
    Hoque

    Assistant Professor, University of Rochester

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Solomon
    Hsiang

    Chancellor’s Associate Professor of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley

    Addressing the Effects of Climate Change

  • Karl
    Iagnemma

    CEO and Cofounder, nuTonomy

    Intelligent Machines: Autonomous Cars

  • Sangbae
    Kim

    Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT

    Robots at Work

  • Samay
    Kohli

    Chief Executive Officer, GreyOrange

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Kendra
    Kuhl

    CTO, Opus 12

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Maithilee
    Kunda

    Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Stephanie
    Lampkin

    Founder & CEO, Blendoor

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Desmond
    Loke

    Assistant Professor, Singapore University of Technology and Design

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Evan
    Macosko

    Instructor, Harvard Medical School

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Yael
    Maguire

    Engineering Director, Facebook Connectivity Lab

    Expanding the Global Impact of Internet Connectivity

  • Vikram
    Mahidhar

    SVP, Artificial Intelligence Solutions, RAGE Frameworks

    Presented by RAGE Frameworks

  • Marcela
    Maus

    Director of Cellular Immunotherapy, Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center

    The Promise of Cancer Immunotherapy

  • Pranav
    Mistry

    Global Vice President of Research, Samsung

    Envisioning What’s Next for Virtual Reality

  • Jason
    Pontin

    Editor in Chief and Publisher, MIT Technology Review

  • Ramesh
    Raskar

    Director, MIT Media Lab Camera Culture Group

    Presented by Lemelson-MIT

  • Alberto Maria
    Sacchi

    Board Member & Past President, Federmacchine

    Presented by the Italian Trade Agency

  • Don
    Sadoway

    Professor, Materials Science & Engineering, MIT

    Providing Power for a Growing Global Population

  • Ruslan
    Salakhutdinov

    Associate Professor, Carnegie Mellon University

    The Promise and Limitations of Machine Learning

  • Kelly
    Sanders

    Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Michele
    Scannavini

    President, Italian Trade Agency

    Presented by the Italian Trade Agency

  • Stefanie
    Tellex

    Assistant Professor, Computer Science, Brown University

    10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2016: Robots That Teach Each Other

  • Ronaldo
    Tenorio

    CEO, Hand Talk

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Sonia
    Vallabh

    PhD Student, Prion Scientist, Broad Institute

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Cyrus
    Vance Jr.

    Manhattan District Attorney, Manhattan District Attorney’s Office

    Security & Privacy in the Connected Era

  • Oriol
    Vinyals

    Research Scientist, Google DeepMind

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Aleksandra
    Vojvodic

    Assistant Professor, University of Pennsylvania

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Padmasree
    Warrior

    CEO, NextEV

    Imagining Clean, Connected Transportation

  • Jean
    Yang

    Assistant Professor, Carnegie Mellon University

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Yihui
    Zhang

    Associate Professor, Tsinghua University

    2016 Innovator Under 35

  • Jia
    Zhu

    Professor, Nanjing University

    2016 Innovator Under 35

 

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The Valeant Sky Dive

Posted in Pharmaceutical Industry Competitive Intelligence, Pharmaceutical R&D Investment, Venture Capital, tagged , on April 2, 2016| Leave a Comment »

The Valeant Sky Dive

Reporter: Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP

 

UPDATED on 8/9/2016 at noon EST

Is the new Valeant just a shiny facade?

By Lisa LaMotta | August 9, 2016

http://www.biopharmadive.com/news/valeant-papa-earnings-directors-debt/424107/

 

The Roll-Up Racket    BY

Few falls in business history have been as sudden and as steep as that of Michael Pearson, the C.E.O. of the drugmaker Valeant. Not long ago, he was heading a company whose stock price had risen more than four thousand per cent during his tenure. A former McKinsey consultant, he had developed a strategy based on acquisitions, cost-cutting, and price hikes. The influential hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman, one of Valeant’s largest shareholders, compared Pearson to Warren Buffett, citing his genius at capital allocation. No one’s calling Pearson a genius anymore. In the past six months, Valeant’s stock price has fallen almost ninety per cent, thanks to a toxic combination of sketchy accounting, political blowback, and slowing growth. Two weeks ago, the company announced terrible fourth-quarter earnings, and said that it wouldn’t be able to file its annual report on time, which drove the stock down fifty per cent in a day. Investors who once saw Pearson as a savior now consider him an albatross: when, last week, Valeant announced that he would step down, the stock price rose.

Valeant used to be a small drugmaker, struggling to stay afloat by doing what pharmaceutical companies typically do: invest heavily in R. & D. in order to discover new drugs. But Pearson, who took over in 2008, scrapped that approach. He argued that returns on R. & D. were too low and too uncertain; it made more sense to buy companies that already had products on the market, then slash costs and raise prices. So Valeant became a serial acquirer, doing more than a hundred transactions between 2008 and 2015. It invested almost nothing in its core business; R. & D. spending fell to just three per cent of sales. It was ruthless about bringing down costs, sometimes laying off more than half the workforce of a company it acquired. And though Martin Shkreli may be the public face of drug-price gouging, Valeant was the real pioneer. A 2015 analysis looked at drugs whose price had risen between three hundred per cent and twelve hundred per cent in the previous two years; of the nineteen whose prices had risen fastest, half belonged to Valeant.
The company also pulled every trick in the financial-engineering handbook. In 2010, it merged with a Canadian company, in order to bring down its tax rate, and it sheltered its intellectual property in tax havens like Luxembourg. It used opaque accounting methods that made it hard for investors to judge how well acquired companies were doing. To ward off competition from generic drugs, Valeant entered into a complicated relationship with a mail-order pharmacy called Philidor. Meanwhile, it paid its executives exceedingly well, and tied their compensation to shareholder returns, thus encouraging a single-minded focus on stock price. Valeant embodied practically everything that people hate about business today. So it’s no surprise that much of Wall Street saw it as a profit-making machine.

If Wall Street was happy, what went wrong? There were a couple of contingent problems: the dubious relationship with Philidor made people wary of Valeant’s accounting (the company just announced that it would have to re-state earnings for 2014 and part of 2015), while the political backlash provoked by Shkreli limited Valeant’s ability to raise prices. But the bigger problem was that Pearson’s buy-and-slash approach hit its inevitable limits. Valeant had become what’s known as a roll-up: a company that buys lots of other companies, trusting that they’ll be much more profitable together than they were apart. The challenge for roll-ups is that they have to keep feeding the beast: if you grow by buying, you have to keep buying to thrive. But, the bigger you get, the fewer deals there are that can truly boost your bottom line. And, because your grim reputation precedes you, you end up paying big premiums, which may mean that you have to start borrowing heavily. (Valeant’s debt is almost three times its annual sales.) Not surprisingly, roll-ups have a terrible track record. A Booz Allen study of the performance of eighty-one roll-ups between 1993 and 2000 found that only eleven did better than the market as a whole. Another study found that more than two-thirds of roll-ups created no value for investors at all. The only roll-ups that succeed are those which find, as one study put it, “a fundamentally superior way to make money.” Valeant’s collapse has shown that it had no such ability.

Valeant now says that its roll-up days are over, and that it’s going to focus on expanding its business “organically.” Yet it’s far from clear that this will be possible……

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A Message from Faculty Director Lee Fleming on Latest Issue of Crowdfunding; From the Fung Institute at Berkeley

Posted in Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , on March 29, 2016| Leave a Comment »

A Message from Faculty Director Lee Fleming on Latest Issue of Crowdfunding

Reported from source: http://funginstitute.berkeley.edu/directors-blog/message-faculty-director-lee-fleming-latest-issue-crowdfunding/

I would like to announce our special issue in the California Management Review on CrowdFunding (thank you to Olav Sorenson for co-editing and the Kauffman Foundation for support).  We have a broad and practical set of articles that should appeal to practitioners and academics alike (please see this linkfor the special issue introduction by Olav and myself).

The landscape of CF can be quite confusing; Peter Younkin and Keyvan Kashkooli give us a mapping of the landscape by asking a simple question, namely, what problems does CF solve?  Gary Dushnitsky and his co-authors provide a rich description of CF in Europe; they identify the surprising strength of national boundaries.  Ethan Mollick and Alicia Robb provide us an easily understood synopsis of their research on the importance of CF for under-served entrepreneurs.  Carina Thurridl and Bernadette Kamleitner help aspiring entrepreneurs understand how to bundle the optimal set of rewards to attract backers.  Ajay Agrawal and co-authors describe a recent trend in CF, namely, the emergence of lead investors and syndicates.  Finally, Valentina Assenova and Olav lead a round table discussion of industry leaders, including Jason Best, Mike Cagney, Douglas Ellenoff, Kate Karas, Jay Moon, Sherwood Neiss, and Ron Suber.  Happy reading!

Here is a short video based on our article:

 

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The late Cambridge Mayor Alfred Vellucci welcomed Life Sciences Labs to Cambridge, MA – June 1976

Posted in Biomarkers & Medical Diagnostics, Biomedical Measurement Science, BioTechnology - Venture Creation, BioTechnology - Venture Creation, Venture Capital, Gene Regulation and Evolution, Genetics & Innovations in Treatment, Genetics & Pharmaceutical, Genome Biology, Genomic Testing: Methodology for Diagnosis, Global Partnering & Biotech Investment, Law and Medicine Conflicts, Molecular Genetics & Pharmaceutical, Monoclonal antibody therapy, Mutant Gene Expression, Oligonucleotide Therapeutics & Delivery, Personalized and Precision Medicine & Genomic Research, Pharmaceutical Analytics, Pharmaceutical Discovery, Pharmaceutical Drug Discovery, Pharmaceutical Industry Competitive Intelligence, Pharmaceutical R&D Informatics, Pharmaceutical R&D Investment, Pharmacologic toxicities, Population Health Management, Genetics & Pharmaceutical, Proteomics, Rapid automation of plasma protein pools, Regenerative Biology and Medicine, Regulated Clinical Trials: Design, Methods, Components and IRB related issues, RNA Biology, RNA Biology, Cancer and Therapeutics, Stem Cells for Regenerative Medicine, Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine, Translational Science, Venture Capital, tagged on March 20, 2016| Leave a Comment »

The late Cambridge Mayor Alfred Vellucci welcomed Life Sciences Labs to Cambridge, MA – June 1976

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

How Cambridge became the Life Sciences Capital

Worth watching is the video below, which captures the initial Cambridge City Council hearing on recombinant DNA research from June 1976. The first speaker is the late Cambridge mayor Alfred Vellucci.

Vellucci hoped to pass a two-year moratorium on gene splicing in Cambridge. Instead, the council passed a three-month moratorium, and created a board of nine Cambridge citizens — including a nun and a nurse — to explore whether the work should be allowed, and if so, what safeguards would be necessary. A few days after the board was created, the pro and con tables showed up at the Kendall Square marketplace.

At the time, says Phillip Sharp, an MIT professor, Cambridge felt like a manufacturing town that had seen better days. He recalls being surrounded by candy, textile, and leather factories. Sharp hosted the citizens review committee at MIT, explaining what the research scientists there planned to do. “I think we built a relationship,” he says.

By early 1977, the citizens committee had proposed a framework to ensure that any DNA-related experiments were done under fairly stringent safety controls, and Cambridge became the first city in the world to regulate research using genetic material.

 

WATCH VIDEO

http://www.betaboston.com/news/2016/03/17/how-cambridge-became-the-life-sciences-capital/

Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com. Follow him on Twitter@ScottKirsner and on betaboston.com.

SOURCE

How Cambridge became the life sciences capital

http://www.betaboston.com/news/2016/03/17/how-cambridge-became-the-life-sciences-capital/

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$2M for Speech and Brain Rehab App awarded to BU Spinout Constant Therapy

Posted in Intellectual Property, Intellectual Property, Innovations, Commercialization, Investment in technological breakthrough, Venture Capital on March 16, 2016| Leave a Comment »

$2M for Speech and Brain Rehab App awarded to BU Spinout Constant Therapy

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

I have attended in August 2015 the PITCH done to the Boston Angel Club over the Monthly Breakfast meeting, held at the Union Club in Boston, by the CEO and CSO of Constant Therapy. I was very impressed and realized that the Intellectual Property is a winner.

Gregory T. Huang

March 10th, 2016

Xconomy Boston —

BU Spinout Constant Therapy Gets $2M for Speech and Brain Rehab App

The Boston area has become a hotbed for companies testing new ways to merge software with fields like healthcare, rehabilitation, and education. One of the more interesting areas of activity is assessing and treating brain health and cognitive disorders.

Those elements have come together in a startup called Constant Therapy, which today announced it raised a $2 million Series A funding round led by Golden Seeds. Other investors in the round include Kapor Capital, Launchpad Venture Group, Pond Capital, and Community Health Network of Connecticut. The three-year-old company has raised a total of about $2.8 million to date.

It’s not a lot of money, but the company has an intriguing model to prove out. Constant Therapy is trying to “digitize and amplify” the exercises that speech-language pathologists and brain-rehab clinicians give their patients, says CEO Keith Cooper. The company does this through a mobile app—currently available on iPads and Android devices—that lets patients do exercises at home and track their own progress, all for $20 a month. (The app is free for clinicians to use.)

Traditionally, these exercises are done in a clinician’s office and involve cues like flash cards, workbooks, or verbal interactions. Constant Therapy’s app works with audio, visual, and written materials that can be personalized (see screenshot above). It provides “a new delivery mechanism that’s more engaging, more voluminous, and able to track data and improvements over time,” Cooper says. “Clinicians get a clear picture of how the patient is doing.”

Patients range from children with speech and language impairments to people with traumatic brain injuries from car accidents, say, to elderly folks who have suffered strokes. “We want to be a standard of care for people who have had a stroke or traumatic brain injury,” Cooper says.

A clinical trial is also underway in the VA Boston Healthcare System to test the software in early-stage Alzheimer’s patients, Cooper says. Another potential application is in epilepsy treatments, he says; those experiments are currently in research at Northwestern University.

Constant Therapy was started in 2013 by Motorola veteran Veera Anantha and his co-founders (including Boston University professor Swathi Kiran). Anantha’s idea, as he told me the following year, was to take the effort he had put into wireless devices and cloud-based computing and apply it to making more of a difference in people’s lives. He said he lamented “the amount of technology and intelligence we were putting into selling more stuff to more people” in his previous jobs.

Anantha’s team zeroed in on the emerging science of neural plasticity—how the brain can rewire itself and improve its performance with practice. They found an existing market in brain rehab, and licensed a library of “science-based tasks” from Boston University to build into an app, which they started testing with clinicians (see dashboard below).

Constant Therapy's dashboard interface can help clinicians track patients' progress in the app.

Constant Therapy’s dashboard interface can help clinicians track patients’ progress in the app.

Cooper joined as CEO about a year ago after getting introduced to the company by Vinit Nijhawan, the former managing director of BU’s Office of Technology Development (and anXconomist). Cooper also serves as chairman of SiteSpect, a Boston-based Web tech firm, and he’s been a senior executive with other companies from Carbonite to Connotate.

Constant Therapy now plans to finish up its clinical tests, release its app for the iPhone, and expand its therapy content and categories before pursuing a bigger funding round, Cooper says.

The 10-person company may have growing pains in its future. Its challenges will include dealing with the healthcare industry’s slow pace of change, as Cooper points out (and he’s relatively new to the sector), and navigating issues around providers and insurance reimbursement.

Some related companies in the local health IT sector include Akili Interactive Labs in assessing and treating brain disorders with a game interface; Neumitra in tracking stress and brain health; Tal Medical in depression treatment; American Well in virtual doctor visits;VocaliD in synthetic voices; and MedRhythms and The Sync Project in music-related therapies.

Cooper sees most of these efforts as complementary or tangential to his company. He emphasizes that Constant Therapy stands out by not “trying to invent a whole new approach.” Rather, he says, “We’re going to take what everyone knows works and amplify it.”

 SOURCE
http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2016/03/10/bu-spinout-constant-therapy-gets-2m-for-speech-and-brain-rehab-app/

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Bad News this Week for Biotech Deals? News from Biospace on Deals week of 3/7/2016

Posted in Pharmaceutical Industry Competitive Intelligence, US and Global Economy: Trends and Findings, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , on March 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »

Bad News this Week for Biotech Deals?

 

Curator: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D

 

Last week in biotech ( 3/7-3/11/2016) had a plethora of disappointing stories related to biotech drug development and hits to biotech investing and VC.  Since October of 2016 the biotech index has lost 35% to today (see Biotech ETFs Hit 52-Week Lows: Time to Buy?) however were the hit back in October a signal of some of the listed events below (as shown on Biospace News) and includes:

  •  an long-time biotech startup with failure of mesothelioma trial who has struggled in the past
  • multiple clinical trial failures forces the de-listing of a NASDAQ company (other biotechs this year had similar problems)
  • more problems with drug development for Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy

GlaxoSmithKline dumps Five Prime’s cancer drug in the midst of Phase I

March 11, 2016 | By Damian Garde

GSK gave Five Prime a 180-day notice that it’s nixing its license to the company’s FP-1039, which is designed to block the spread of cancer by interrupting protein signaling. The decision follows GSK’s January move to stop developing FP-1039 in squamous non-small cell lung cancer due to the rise of immuno-oncology therapies from Merck ($MRK), Bristol-Myers Squibb ($BMY) and others, citing a “change in treatment paradigms.”GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) is cutting ties with Five Prime Therapeutics’ ($FPRX) in-development cancer therapy, backing out in the middle of a mesothelioma trial.

Now GSK is set to abandon a drug it inherited through its $3 billion acquisition of Human Genome Sciences in 2012, leaving Five Prime to go it alone in an ongoing Phase Ib study testing FP-1039 against mesothelioma. Five Prime said it plans to work with GSK to complete enrollment in the study, adding that it “continues to be encouraged” by the drug’s potential in mesothelioma.

Embattled Bay Area XOMA  (XOMA) Terminates Gevokizumab Trials, Slashes Headcount by 50%

3/11/2016 6:39:17 AM

March 11, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

BERKELY, Calif. – Troubled XOMA Corp. (XOMA) is terminating half of its workforce after a late-stage failure of its experimental drug gevokizumab for treatment of pyoderma gangrenosum, the San Francisco Business Times reported this morning.

Following the announcement, Xoma’s stock is down this morning about 5 percent, trading at 91 cents per share as of this writing.

Xoma said it is interested in divesting itself of gevokizumab. In a statement, the company said several companies have approached Xoma about acquiring the drug. Gevokizumab binds to interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta), a pro-inflammatory cytokine. Xoma said it will make all information about the drug and study information available to potential buyers. Gevokizumab has had a troubled history with Xoma. The company has halted several trials with the drug for various diseases, including diabetes and a blinding eye disease, the Times reported. In 2014, Xoma was forced to stop testing gevokizumab as an arthritis treatment after the drug did not show significant benefit against placebo after a six-month period.

Struggling Eleven Biotherapeutics (EBIO) Gets Delisting Notice from Nasdaq After Back-to-Back Clinical Trial Failures

3/10/2016 6:07:38 AM

March 10, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

With one piece of bad news after another, Cambridge, Mass.-based Eleven Biotherapeutics Inc. (EBIO) filed a Form 8-Kwith the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, addressed a delisting notification it received from the Nasdaq on Mar. 3.

The Nasdaq informed the company that its stock dropped below $1 a share, and that the stockholder equity didn’t comply with the $5,000,000 minimum stockholders’ equity requirement. As a result, it has 180 days to comply with Nasdaq rules.

On Jan. 10, the company announced that its Phase III clinical trial of EBI-005 (isunakinra) for severe allergic conjunctivitis did not meet its primary endpoint.

In May 2015, the company reported that its drug, EBI-005, for moderate to severe dry eye disease, failed to prevent damage to the cornea or reduce eye pain in comparison to the control group.

In a January statement, Abbie Celniker, president and chief executive officer of Eleven Biotherapeutics, said, “We are disappointed that isunakinra failed to meet its primary endpoint, and based on these overall results we see no immediate path forward in allergic conjunctivitis. Our efforts will be focused on submitting an investigational new drug application (IND) for EBI-031 in diabetic macular edema in the first half of 2016.”

EBI-031 was designed for intravitreal delivery using the company’s AMP-Rx platform. The drug blocks both free IL-6 and IL-6 complexed to the soluble IL-6 receptor (IL-6R). The compound is being developed to treat diabetic macular edema (DME) and uveitis.

DMD Setback Prompts Sarepta (SRPT) to Shutter West Coast Location and Consolidate to Massachusetts, 30 Jobs Gone

3/9/2016 6:13:13 AM

March 9, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff

Cambridge, Mass.-based Sarepta Therapeutics (SRPT) announced yesterday that it was shuttering its research-and-development manufacturing facility in Corvalis, Ore. Most of the employees there are expected to move to Sarepta’s facilities in Andover and Cambridge, Mass. About 30 people are expected to be laid off.

On Jan. 21, Sarepta announced that, with an impending snowstorm on the east coast, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s meeting to review the company’s New Drug Application (NDA) for eteplirsen to treat Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) was postponed.

DMD is a muscle wasting disease caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene. The disease is progressive and generally causes death in early adulthood. Complications include serious heart or respiratory-related problems. It mostly affects boys, about 1 in every 3,500 to 5,000 male children.

On Jan. 15, an FDA advisory committee decided to reschedule the meeting, at which point a recommendation or approval decision will be made. That meeting of the Peripheral and Central Nervous System Advisory Committee has not been rescheduled yet, but Sarepta believes it will be prior to May 26, which is the PDUFA date. The Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) is a law that allows the FDA to collect an application fee from drug companies when an NDA or Biologics License Application (BLA) is submitted.

The DMD drug arena has been fraught with failures and bad news this year. San Rafael, Calif.-based BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc. (BMRN)’s application for its DMD drug Kyndrisa (drisapersen) was turned down by the FDA on Jan. 15. The FDA argued that Kyndrisa didn’t show enough benefit.

On Jan. 25, Cambridge, Mass.-based Akashi Therapeuticsannounced that it had halted its DMD trial for HT-100 after one of its patients developed serious, life-threatening health problems. In that DMD is a serious, life-threatening health problem in itself, it’s not clear if the patient’s problems are directly related to the drug. The patient was receiving the highest dose in the HALO trial, while others in the trial with lower doses were not showing adverse side effects.

 

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Top 20 on CB Insights’ list spotlights the Top 100 venture capitalists

Posted in BioTechnology - Venture Creation, Venture Capital, Venture Capital on March 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »

CB Insights’ list spotlights the top 100 venture capitalists; we have excerpted the top 20 here, along with a selection of their deals.

Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

SOURCE

https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/top-venture-capital-partners/

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/13/technology/venture-capital-investor-top-20.html

 

1. Peter Fenton
Benchmark
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Twitter, New Relic and Zendesk.

2. Fred Wilson
Union Square Ventures
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Twitter, Tumblr and Etsy.

3. Chris Sacca
Lowercase Capital
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Twitter and Instagram.

4. Josh Kopelman
First Round Capital
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: LinkedIn and OnDeck Capital.
5. Jim Goetz
Sequoia Capital
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: WhatsApp, Palo Alto Networks and Barracuda Networks.

6. Danny Rimer
Index Ventures
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: King Digital Entertainment, Etsy and Net-a-Porter.

7. Steve Anderson
Baseline Ventures
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Instagram and ExactTarget.
8. Bill Gurley
Benchmark
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: GrubHub, OpenTable and Zillow.

9. Neil Shen
Sequoia Capital (China)
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: JD.com, Alibaba and Qihoo 360.

10. Scott Sandell
New Enterprise Associates
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Workday, Tableau Software and Spreadtrum Communications.
11. Jim Breyer
Breyer Associates
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Facebook, Etsy and Legendary Entertainment.

12. Peter Thiel
Founders Fund
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Facebook, Yammer and Powerset.

13. Sir Michael Moritz
Sequoia Capital
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: LinkedIn and Zappos.
14. Mike Maples, Jr.
Floodgate
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Twitter, Twitch.tv and Demandforce.

15. Marc Andreessen
Andreessen Horowitz
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Skype (a deal that was led by his co-founder, Ben Horowitz) and Kno.

16. Aydin Senkut
Felicis Ventures
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Meraki, Fitbit and Shopify.
17. Jenny Lee
GGV Capital
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: YY.com, Pactera Technology International and 21Vianet.

18. Roelof Botha
Sequoia Capital
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Instagram and Square.

19. Brad Feld
Foundry Group
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Zynga, Fitbit, MakerBot and Rally Software.

20. Rebecca Lynn
Canvas Ventures
GOT A PAYDAY FROM: Lending Club, FutureAdvisor and Check.

SOURCE

https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/top-venture-capital-partners/

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/13/technology/venture-capital-investor-top-20.html

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GSK Partners With SG3 Ventures to Add $100 Million to the Pittsburgh Biotech Scene

Posted in Investment in Technological Breakthrough, Pharmaceutical R&D Investment, Venture Capital, tagged , , , , , , on March 11, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GSK Partners With SG3 Ventures to Add $100 Million to the Pittsburgh Biotech Scene

From Biospace News: Backed by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), New VC Firm SG3 Ventures Has $100 Million to Bet on Pittsburg Startups

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.

Source: http://www.biospace.com/News/backed-by-glaxosmithkline-new-vc-firm-sg3-ventures/412039/source=TopBreaking?intcid=homepage-seekernewssection-tabtopbreakingnews

 

Pittsburgh-area entrepreneurs will soon have another funding option for growing early phase startup companies.

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has thrown its support behind the creation of a $100 million venture capital fund, which will help meet a need for early stage business startup capital in the Pittsburgh area. Philadelphia-based SG3 Ventures anticipates awarding its first round of funding in about a year, according to Brian McVeigh, vice president of worldwide business development transactions and investment management at GSK.

From Pittsburgh Post Gazette: http://www.post-gazette.com/business/healthcare-business/2016/03/11/New-early-stage-venture-fund-forming-with-eye-on-Pittsburgh-startups/stories/201603090016

New early-stage venture fund forming with eye on Pittsburgh startups

March 11, 2016 12:00 AM

By Kris B. Mamula / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh-area entrepreneurs will soon have another funding option for growing early phase startup companies.

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline has thrown its support behind the creation of a $100 million venture capital fund, which will help meet a need for early stage business startup capital in the Pittsburgh area. Philadelphia-based SG3 Ventures anticipates awarding its first round of funding in about a year, according to Brian McVeigh, vice president of worldwide business development transactions and investment management at GSK.

“There is a huge untapped opportunity,” Mr. McVeigh said. “Let’s bring the money here.”

New prescription drug treatments will be a priority for fund investments, but a balanced portfolio including life science technologies is planned.

In the venture ecosystem, insurers, pension funds and other institutions use such funds to invest in promising startup companies — both to balance their portfolios and to get a shot at investment returns that would not otherwise be possible. The venture funds oversee allotting capital to a portfolio of startup companies.

The investment money enables startups to mature and eventually bring in other investors through a public offering or acquisition by a larger company, generating money to repay the initial investors.

GSK and other big pharmaceutical companies are making similar investments to maximize returns and keep their product pipelines full, but GSK has been focusing on earlier stage companies, shifting its focus to pre-clinical technologies about five years ago, Mr. McVeigh said.

In addition, Big Pharma is increasingly relying on outsourced research and development operations, often in collaboration with universities, to fill industry product pipelines. GSK has funded a number of these initiatives, including a cancer collaboration with the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center.

SG3 Managing Director Keith Marmer said the new venture fund will be committed to technologies developed outside the better known tech hubs of Silicon Valley and Boston-Cambridge.

“We’re here, we’re from here, and we want to be here,” he told a group of entrepreneurs at a recent breakfast meeting in Oakland. “Sustaining technology through research funding isn’t happening anywhere.”

Parsippany N.J.-based GSK closed its consumer health care operations in Moon in 2015, eliminating 274 jobs a year after the company’s merger with Swiss vaccine maker Novartis. Mr. McVeigh works at the company’s offices in King of Prussia, Pa.

With federal research dollars flat in recent years, universities nationwide have been turning to commercialization of intellectual property as a new source of revenue.

At the same time, Pittsburgh’s startup community is showing signs of new life.

Among the signs: Patrick Gallagher’s commitment to the commercialization of faculty research since becoming University of Pittsburgh chancellor 18 months ago, awakening a sleeping giant of economic development and innovation and hospital system UPMC’s creation of a commercial enterprises arm to fund promising technologies.

The timing couldn’t be better for venture capital funds like SG3.

Nationwide, early stage funding has been chasing fewer deals, according to a report by Money Tree, which was compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based on data provided by Thomson Reuters.

Early stage investments nationally last year totaled $19.8 billion, a 23 percent increase from $16.1 billion in 2014. But the number of deals were essentially flat from the previous year, suggesting that some companies were left out in the cold.

What’s more, the amount of money available to Pittsburgh-area entrepreneurs after the earliest rounds of investment isn’t keeping pace with the innovations coming out of the city’s universities, said Dietrich Stephan, a serial entrepreneur who also chairs the human genetics department at Pitt.

“There’s real substance here,” he said. “Without money, we can’t build.”

Seed investment funding — the earliest level of funding — is not a problem in Pittsburgh, said Buchanan Ingersoll Rooney PC lawyer Jeremy Garvey, who also chairs the Bridgeville-based Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association.

“The predominance of funding in this market comes in the earliest stages,” he said. “Institutional funding is much harder to get in this market.”

Early stage venture funding began drying up with the stock market crash of 2008, which also chilled the financial markets for initial public offerings for biotech companies, Mr. McVeigh said. Eventually, conditions thawed for IPOs, but the lower valuations for new companies than before 2008 made that less attractive than before.

“We’re really energized by the energy there” in Pittsburgh, Mr. McVeigh said. “We’re looking to bring venture capital to the region.”

Kris B. Mamula: kmamula@post-gazette.com

About SG3 Ventures

SG3 Ventures is an early stage life science venture capital firm. Our primary focus in on therapeutics and digital health; however, we will invest opportunistically when presented with a potential vehicle to drive superior returns for our limited partners. We are active in company formation, deploying financial and human resources to help deliver value. In addition, we access deep industry networks to ensure a path to market with strong commercial partnerships built into our companies from the beginning. SG3 prefers to invest in the greater Philadelphia Region (Princeton to the north, Baltimore to the south and Pittsburgh to the west). We prefer to make initial investments at the formation or seed stage with a focus on providing financing through mature rounds of investment.

  • Website

    http://sg3ventures.com

  • Industry

    Financial Services

  • Type

    Partnership

  • Headquarters

    3711 Market Street Suite 800Philadelphia, PA 19104 United States

  • Company Size

    1-10 employees

More articles on the Open Access Journal on Biotech Investing Include

J.P. Morgan 34th Annual Healthcare Conference & Biotech Showcase™ January 11 – 15, 2016 in San Francisco

New Values for Capital Investment in Technology Disruption: Life Sciences Group @Google and the Future of the Rest of the Biotech Industry

Bristol-Myers Squibb: A global BioPharma leader – Tracing the innovative biotech core of $3.7 billion R&D Investment and $16.4 billion in Net Sales

 

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