• Merck Makes Investment in Moderna

    Forbes | Moderna Therapeutics has snagged another $100m of financing, this time from Merck. A $50m cash up front payment for messenger RNA technology along with a $50m equity payment is a strong vote of confidence from the pharma in mRNA's future.

    Jan 14, 2015

  • A Restless Illumina on Display in CEO's J.P. Morgan Address

    Bio-IT World | In his address at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, Illumina CEO Jay Flatley announced new high-throughput instruments, a refined regulatory strategy centered on the NextSeq mid-range sequencer, and progress in oncology and prenatal testing, as his company pivots to a more hands-on approach to clinical genomics.

    Jan 13, 2015

  • GENALICE, Knome Announce Partnership

    Bio-IT World News Brief | GENALICE and Knome today announced a strategic partnership to offer their products together as a turn-key solution for those using next-generation sequencing (NGS) data to interpret patients’ genomes.

    Jan 12, 2015

  • Foundation Medicine Majority Stake Acquired by Roche for $1.03b

    Bio-IT World | Roche announced this morning that it has acquired a majority stake in Foundation Medicine. Roche will tender approximately $780m for 56.3% of the company.

    Jan 12, 2015

  • Biotechs may face a slowdown

    BostonGlobe.com | These are boom times in biotechnology. Forty-one new drugs were approved for US sale in 2014, the highest tally in 18 years. A record 63 biotech startups went public, breaking the 1999 record of 52 initial public offerings. And the value of biopharma merger deals nearly tripled to $223 billion from a year earlier.

    Jan 12, 2015

  • Biogen buys UK-based neuropathic pain drug developer for up to $675M

    Boston Business Journal | The Cambridge biotech firm, known best for its drugs for multiple sclerosis, announced the acquisition of Convergence Pharmaceuticals.

    Jan 12, 2015

  • 23andMe Turns Spit Into Dollars in Deal With Pfizer

    Bloomberg | 23andMe Inc., the genetic-testing startup backed by Google Inc., is sharing DNA data on about 650,000 individuals with Pfizer Inc., to help find new targets to treat disease and to design clinical trials.

    Jan 12, 2015

  • Chinese Services Group WuXi Buys NextCODE Health for $65m

    Bio-IT World | WuXi PharmaTech headquartered in Shanghai has acquired NextCODE Health of Iceland for $65 million in cash. The acquisition will merge the WuXi Genome Center with NextCODE to form WuXi NextCODE Genomics.

    Jan 9, 2015

  • The What and Why on 2014s Record High Drug Approvals

    Forbes | 2014 saw the highest number of new drug applications approved by FDA since 1996, but John LaMattina argues that the year was even more successful than that.

    Jan 8, 2015

  • New Antibiotic Discovered in Dirt

    New York Times | Researchers yesterday announced a new antibiotic found in dirt. Teixobactin has not been tested in humans, but was extremely effective in animal tests.

    Jan 8, 2015

  • Novartis Deal Signals Big Pharma's Entrance in CRISPR-Based Therapies

    Bio-IT World | Novartis today became the first big pharma company to announce a CRISPR program, through a deal with Intellia Therapeutics and Caribou Biosciences that will cover CAR-T therapies and hematopoietic stem cell programs.

    Jan 7, 2015

  • 2014's Turning Points in Genomics

    Bio-IT World | The $1,000 genome, CRISPR gene therapies, nanopore sequencing, the fall of 23andMe's health service... we look back at six of our most popular stories of 2014, and reflect on how each has developed since.

    Jan 7, 2015

  • Moderna's $450m Investment Brings Funding Total to $950m

    Bio-IT World Roundup | Moderna Therapeutics closed a massive private investment round earlier this week, raising $450 million bringing their total funding to $950 million.

    Jan 7, 2015

  • 23andMe Solidifies Business Model with Big Genentech Partnership

    Forbes | 23andMe has signed a deal with Genentech to sequence the whole genomes of 3,000 Parkinson's patients and relatives in its customer community, sharing both genetic and clinical data with the big biotech.

    Jan 6, 2015

  • David Mittelman Joins Tute Genomics

    Bio-IT World | David Mittelman, co-founder of Arpeggi and GCAT, the Genomics Comparison and Analytic Testing (GCAT) platform, has joined Tute Genomics as CSO.

    Jan 6, 2015

  • Promising Gene Therapy Company Spark Therapeutics to Go Public

    FierceBiotech | Spark Therapeutics, a company with a strong Phase III drug candidate bidding to be the first gene therapy approved for use in the U.S., has filed for an IPO, planning to sell $86 million in public shares.

    Jan 5, 2015

  • With FDA Recommendation, Novartis Heads for First Approval of a Biosimilar

    Reuters | In advance of a final decision to be handed down January 7, the FDA today revealed that staff reviewers have recommended approval of a biologic made by Novartis that imitates Amgen's off-patent Neupogen.

    Jan 5, 2015

  • Quanterix Aims for Early Clinical Adoption with High-Throughput Protein Assays

    Bio-IT World | Looking to open its highly sensitive Simoa instruments to new customers, Quanterix is opening an accelerator in its Massachusetts lab, where users can test out homebrewed assays in search of new biomarker tests that detect proteins at extremely low concentrations.

    Jan 2, 2015

  • Banner Year for New Drug Approvals

    Reuters | 2014 was a banner year for drug approvals, Reuters reports. 41 novel medications were approved, the most since the all-time high of 53 approvals in 1996.

    Jan 2, 2015

  • High-Performance Computing Can Accelerate Life Sciences Discoveries

    Bio-IT World | Inside the Box | As petascale supercomputing systems grow more accessible, there is now an opportunity for life sciences researchers to run computations on genomic or molecular data that would be impossible with desktops or small clusters — but only if they are willing to adapt their informatics tools to new computing architectures.

    Dec 31, 2014