The Bio Report

What a Decade of Investment Tells Us about the Health of Biotech

A detailed view of funding of emerging therapeutic companies over the past ten years shows despite a rebound in venture financing, companies continue to struggle to find early-stage money. Nevertheless, the report shows the overall health of investment in the sector is thriving. We spoke to Dave Thomas, senior director of industry research and analysis for the Biotechnology Industry Organization and co-author of the report, about BIO’s findings, what therapeutic areas attracted the most financing, and what impact the capital markets have had on partnering and licensing activity.

What Activist Investors Can Teach Biotech Companies

To improve the long-term value of biopharmaceutical companies, management should learn to think more like activist investors, according to a new report from EY. The report argues that capital allocation and strategic decision-making could benefit from company leaders setting aside their assumptions and challenging themselves by thinking more like outsiders. We spoke to Jeff Greene, Global Life Sciences Transaction Advisory Services Leader for EY, about the report, what industry executives could learn from activists, and whether shareholder activists indeed have a track record worth emulating.

ALS Fight Carries Muller from Patient to Biotech CEO

Bernard Muller was a successful businessman in the maritime and oil industry, but when he was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease ALS in 2010, he turned his entrepreneurial skills toward developing new therapies to treat the disease. Muller co-founded the world’s largest genetic research project for ALS, project MinE, and launched Treeway, a biotech company developing new therapies for ALS. As the Biotechnology Industry Organization kicks off its BIO 2015 International Convention in Philadelphia June 15, Muller is a finalist as one of the organization’s Everyday Superheroes in the pharma/biotech category. We spoke to Muller about his decision to launch Treeway, the active role he sees for patients, and why he thinks traditional approaches to drug development and clinical trial design have not served ALS patients well.

Examining the State of Sleep

Sleep researchers and clinicians will be gathering in Seattle June 6 - 10 for SLEEP 2015, a joint meeting of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and the Sleep Research Society. It is the largest gathering of sleep medicine physicians, sleep and circadian researchers, and health professionals in the sleep field. We spoke to Chris Winter, a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a board-certified sleep specialist with a background in neurology, about our understanding of sleep today, how genetics and digital health technologies may be altering our understanding of sleep, and what we should do to get a decent night’s rest.

TheStreet’s Adam Feuerstein Previews ASCO 2015

Wall Street’s attention will turn to Chicago as the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology runs from May 29 to June 2. Some 5,000 abstracts became available mid-month and investors have been sifting through them to gain insights into which drugmakers will rise and fall on news from the meeting. We spoke to Adam Feuerstein, senior columnist for TheStreet, about the ASCO meeting, what the early abstracts say, and who will likely be making headlines at the meeting this year.

Home-Brew Morphine, Dual Use Technology, and the Biologist’s Repsonsibilities

A recent article in Nature Chemical Biology that shows it is possible to convert sugar into morphine with genetically engineered yeast has sparked public attention over the potential illicit use of the technology and the need for regulation. The work, though, also opens up significant possibilities for producing a wide range of drugs and the discovery of new ones to treat everything from cancer to infectious diseases. We spoke John Dueber, assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and one of the authors of the study, about the work, its implications, and what role biologists need to play in regulating themselves.

Reinventing Tech Transfer

Universities are moving away from a passive approach to technology transfer to engage with industry in new partnerships, put a greater emphasis on translational research, and nurturing technologies so they can give rise to new products and companies. We spoke to Eric Tomlinson, chief innovation officer of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, about these changes, the approach Wake Forest is taking, and how it is forging new relationships with industry and the regional economy.

Thinking Narrowly About Antibiotics

With the mapping of the human microbiome, a new understanding is emerging of the complex relationship between the microorganisms that live in the human gut, skin, and elsewhere on the body, and the role they play both in disease and in maintaining health. Along with growing concerns about drug resistant bacteria, this is giving rise to opportunities for narrow spectrum antibiotics. We spoke to David Martin, founder and CEO of AvidBiotics, about the problems of antibiotic resistance, the benefits narrow spectrum therapies offer, and how the sequencing of the microbiome is leading to new approaches to not only treat infectious diseases, but other diseases not traditional thought of as being driven by microorganisms.