Author: Rebecca Zacks

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

One of the things I’ve always enjoyed about technology journalism is how cozy a niche it is. There just aren’t than many folks who can geek out with the lab dwellers, put the hard questions to the executives, and get it all down on the page, on a deadline–so it often feels like if you cover this beat for long enough you’ll wind up working with everybody else who does at one time or another. And I’m very happy to report that the time has come for us at Xconomy to get to work with Sylvia Pagán Westphal.

Sylvia is an accomplished life sciences journalist who has been a staffer at the Wall Street Journal, New Scientist Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times, and a freelancer for The Boston Globe, CNN.com, The New York Times, and Smithsonian Magazine. She’s got a surplus of academic cred as well: she got her Ph.D. in genetics from Harvard Medical School, studied journalism at the Boston University Center for Science and Medical Journalism, and was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. (See Sylvia’s bio for more on her background, including an important disclosure.)

After all those years of reporting on and studying biotech, pharma, and medicine, Sylvia has some strong opinions about how those industries work—and how they could work better. We’re thrilled that she’s agreed to share those ideas as Xconomy’s new life sciences columnist, starting today with a thought-provoking piece on the web of self-interests that both threaten life sciences and hold the sector together. Sylvia’s column will be called The Pulse. I encourage you to check out her inaugural piece, and to watch this space for new installments ever other week or so. Knowing Sylvia, it’s sure to be a fun ride.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

This week saw new leadership at a couple of New England’s life sciences companies, some wisdom from one of its newly public companies, and a new truce in one of its long-running power struggles.

—Luke tracked down close to 200 alumni of legendary Boston-area biotech firm Genetics Institute, which was acquired in 1996 by Wyeth. The (still-growing) list includes many of the leaders of Boston’s current crop of biotechs, including Tuan Ha-Ngoc of Aveo Pharmaceuticals, Adelene Perkins of Infinity Pharmaceuticals, and John Knopf of Acceleron Pharma.

—Cambridge, MA-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) staved off a proxy battle with billionaire investor Carl Icahn with a deal that gives a board seat to Eric Rowinsky, one of the people Icahn nominated for Biogen’s board back in January. For his part, Icahn has agreed to back Biogen’s slate of candidates for open board seats at the company’s upcoming annual meeting, and to drop any plans to wage a proxy battle with the company this year.

—Luke checked in with Mark Leuchtenberger on his first day as CEO of New Haven, CT-based antibiotic developer Rib-X Pharmaceuticals. Gearing up to shepherd Rib-X’s lead candidate through the final phase of clinical testing and onto the market, Leuchtenberger was candid about what he learned from the failure of his last firm, Cambridge, MA-based Targanta Therapeutics, to reach that same goal.

—Peter Hecht, CEO of the newly public Ironwood Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:IRWD), talked to Ryan about how he pulled off one of the few biotech IPOs since the economic downturn. Having longstanding ties to institutional investors and a potential blockbuster drug in late-stage clinical trials helped the Cambridge-based firm raise $203 million last month and become one of the few biotechs in Massachusetts worth more than $1 billion.

—Cambridge-based Epizyme, a startup out to create new cancer drugs drawing on the field of epigenetics, recruited a new CEO from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Robert Gould, who took up the post just this week, replaces Epizyme’s founding CEO Kazumi Shiosaki, a managing director at MPM Capital, one of the investors who have put a total of $54 million into the startup.

—Diagnostics maker IntelligentMDx of Cambridge got a green light from the FDA to market its test for the H1N1 virus on an emergency basis. The approval will expire on April 26 of this year.

—The FDA had less happy news for Cambridge biotech giant Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ), whose Allston Landing manufacturing plant was the site of a viral contamination discovered last June. The agency said it will be reviewing operations at the plant for “an extended period” and may require to the company to make payments to the government.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

The FDA added some suspense to one New England biotech firm’s week, while two others reached closure on nice-sized venture deals.

—Genetix Pharmaceuticals raised $35 million in a Series B round of venture capital from new investors Third Rock and Genzyme Ventures and return backers Easton Capital, Forbion Capital Partners, and TVM Capital. Ryan took a look at how the 17-year-old Cambridge, MA-based firm is working to prove the mettle of its approach to gene therapy—and to help restore investors’ faith in once-hyped field.

—Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, a startup incubated in the Boston offices of MPM Capital, raised $21 million in Series A round of funding led by MPM and New Enterprise Associates. The funding will help Rhythm conduct clinical trials of two new treatments for obesity and diabetes. The startup licensed the molecules, genetically modified versions of hormones called ghrelin and melanocyte-stimulating hormone, from the French biotech firm Ipsen.

—The FDA delayed a decision about a diabetes drug from Waltham, MA-based Alkermes (NASDAQ: ALKS), San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN), and pharma giant Eli Lilly. The agency did not request that the drug, exenatide once-weekly, undergo any new animal tests or clinical trials to be approved, but it did raise various issues around its prescribing information, manufacturing, and risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) program.

—Forma Therapeutics of Cambridge joined forces with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of White Plains, NY, to discover drugs for immune cell cancers. The deal, financial terms of which were not disclosed, follows on a drug-discovery deal that Forma inked with Lexington, MA-based Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:CBST) last year.

—Duffy DuFresne, CEO of Maynard, MA-based Ischemix, told Ryan that his company is about to launch a make-or-break human test of its drug CMX-2043 for protecting heart tissue during cardiac surgery. The 11-year-old firm has enough money from individual investors—mainly its chairman and president, Reinier Beeuwkes, and its medical director, Geoffrey Clark—to fund the 200- to 220-person trial, but will need to show encouraging results to raise additional funds after that.

—Ryan took a look at the efforts of companies like Newton, MA-based MedMinder and Cambridge-based Vitality to address the $290 billion-per-year problem of patients who don’t take their medications, using electronic pillboxes and medicine bottle caps that remind patients of the med schedules and alert them when they’re off track. Such companies stand to benefit from proposed healthcare reform, which would give doctors bonuses for improving their patients’ health, and from similar policies already in place at some health plans.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

Another week, another cadre of CEOs with big plans for growing their New England life sciences companies even bigger.

—Diagnostics For All CEO Una Ryan talked about her multi-pronged effort to raise money for testing and deployment of her Cambridge, MA-based firm’s affordable diagnostic technology. Developed in the legendary Harvard lab of chemist George Whitesides, the nonprofit’s paper-based, postage stamp-sized devices could begin helping patients in developing countries with HIV/AIDS and other ailments by year’s end, if Ryan has her way.

—Vertex Chief Medical Officer Bob Kauffman told Luke about the biotech’s to develop a drug cocktail to fight hepatitis C virus while avoiding the flu-like symptoms of standard treatments for the infection. Vertex (NASDAQ: VRTX) is poised to begin clinical testing of one such cocktail, which includes its experimental drug telaprevir, even as it pursues approval for telaprevir for use with standard hepatitis drugs—a milestone the company hopes to reach sometime in 2011.

—Cambridge-based Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB) and its Swiss partner Roche reportedly halted development of ocrelizumab, an experimental drug for rheumatoid arthritis, because of safety concerns. Bloomberg News reported that the drug is still being tested for multiple sclerosis.

—Bob Weiler, chairman and CEO of Waltham, MA-based health IT pioneer Phase Forward (NASDAQ:PFWD) told Ryan about his company’s strategy for maintaining its decade-long growth spurt. Having started out by convincing drug companies to switch from paper records to software for collecting and managing data in clinical trials, Phase Forward is making a series of acquisitions to build up a suite of software products that automate everything from the early clinical development to post-marketing safety studies.

—Swiss pharmaceutical behemoth Novartis signed up to back an online community for organ transplant recipients hosted by Cambridge-based social networking site PatientsLikeMe. Novartis, which has a large R&D organization in Cambridge, previously tapped PatientsLikeMe for information about patients with multiple sclerosis.

—The FDA said it intends to reveal today whether it has approved a once-a-week diabetes drug from Waltham, MA-based Alkermes (NASDAQ: AMLN) and San Diego-based Amylin Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AMLN). Alkermes stands to collect a 7.5 percent royalty on worldwide sales of the drug, an version of exenatide (Byetta) that can be injected just once a week, instead of twice a day.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

Another eventful week for New England’s life sciences companies, with big changes potentially in store for two of the biggest firms.

—Biogen Idec’s new board chairman, Bill Young, told Luke that the committee tasked with finding a replacement for outgoing CEO Jim Mullen is first and foremost looking for somebody “who has managed and understands the role of science in a biotech company, and how that needs to be bridged to the commercial side of things.” Mullen, who announced last month that he would step down after a decade at the helm of Cambridge, MA-based Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB), has a business background rather than a scientific one

—Billionaire investor Carl Icahn nominated four candidates, including himself, for election to the board of Cambridge-based drugmaker Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ), which has been under fire following manufacturing problems, supply shortages, and other troubles. Genzyme indicated that it would evaluate Icahn’s nominees and announce its own slate; all nine seats on the company’s board are up for re-election this spring.

—Hamid Tabatabaie, the CEO of LifeImage, told Ryan that the Newton, MA-based health IT startup is partnering with Hopkinton, MA-based storage giant EMC (NYSE:EMC) on a cloud-based service for sharing medical images over the Internet. Dubbed “Time,” for Trauma Image Management and Exchange, the system is set to be unveiled early next month and has built to run on the EMC “Atmos” cloud storage and computing platform.

—Luke chatted with Celldex Therapeutics CEO Anthony Marucci about what it takes to run the small public company (NASDAQ: CLDX), which began as a spinoff from a Medarex division near Phillipsburg, NJ and grew through the recent acquisitions of Needham, MA-based Avant Immunotherapeutics, and Branford, CT-based Curagen. Chief among his tactics for building up the firm’s antibody drug business: an every-other-week commute by car between New Jersey and Needham.

—Sermo CEO and founder Daniel Palestrant told Ryan about his Cambridge-based firm’s plans to revamp its social networking website for doctors, shifting from the Java-based approach it has always used to the Ruby on Rails open source Web programming language. The move, aimed in part at helping Sermo cut its operational costs, combined with layoffs that Sermo made in December, should help the startup become profitable “very soon,” Palestrant said.

—Ryan profiled the efforts of Westborough, MA-based GenomeQuest to become the Google of DNA data searches. CEO Ron Ranauro explained how the unprecedented rate at which researchers are generating genetic data and life science companies’ growing reliance on cloud computing are coming together to boost demand for GenomeQuest’s technology, which researchers use to analyze and manage the genetic information during drug development and other biomedical research.

—Ra Pharmaceuticals, a stealthy startup in Boston, reported in an SEC filing that it had raised $10.3 million of a planned $27.6 million round of equity financing. The firm’s CEO, Transkaryotic Therapies co-founder Doug Treco, is an Entrepreneur-in-residence at Morgenthaler Ventures, where Ra is being incubated, according to the venture firm’s website.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

Posting will be light today as Xconomy is closed for Presidents Day. We’ll be back tomorrow full force.  Meanwhile, enjoy the holiday!

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

This week we’ve got another crop of great interviews with the founders and executives of some of New England’s most fascinating life sciences companies.

—Zafgen CEO Tom Hughes filled Luke in on his Cambridge, MA-based startup’s plans to begin human tests of its anti-obesity drug, which the company hopes will be the first drug to produce weight loss dramatic enough to compete with stomach stapling and other bariatric surgery. Hughes also shared some surprising news from animal studies that the Third Rock Ventures- and Atlas Ventures-backed company has completed over the last year: its original idea about how its drug works has turned out to be completely wrong.

—Solace Pharmaceuticals CEO Eliot Forster confirmed to Ryan that the startup, founded in 2006 to develop pain treatments, has shuttered its Cambridge operations. The move came in late November, after Solace’s lead drug candidate failed in a mid-stage clinical trial. Backed by PureTech Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners, and InterWest Partners, Solace will continue to operate out of its remaining office in Canterbury, UK.

—Veteran biotech dealmaker Adelene Perkins talked to Luke about her journey to the corner office of Cambridge-based Infinity Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: INFI). Perkins, who became Infinity’s CEO on January 1, also shared her plans to build up the commercial side of the company, which has yet to bring a drug to market, and to transform it into a fully integrated organization.

—Ryan chatted with PatientsLikeMe co-founder and president Ben Heywood, whose social networking site for people with diseases such as multiple sclerosis and epilepsy has grown from about 25,000 users in December 2008 to more than 55,000 early this month. The Cambridge-based startup, which sells anonymous data culled from the members of its 10 patient communities to pharmaceutical and research companies, has also staffed up from 20 to 30 employees.

—Cambridge, MA-based Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ) and Carlsbad, CA-based Isis Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ISIS) reported results from a Phase III clinical trial indicating that their experimental cholesterol-lowering drug, mipomersen, significantly lowers the cholesterol of patients with a rare condition called heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia. The drug was also associated with increases in liver enzymes called transaminases, which can indicate liver damage, however—this issue, seen in previous trials, has caused some nervousness about mipomersen among investors.

—Boston Scientific (NYSE:BSX) announced plans to cut 1,000 to 1,300 jobs, or 8 percent to 10 percent of its total work force, as part of a company-wide restructuring effort. The Natick, MA, medical devices giant is aiming to reduce its 2009 gross expenses by $200 million to $250 million during the next two years.

—CombinatoRx (NASDAQ:CRXX) co-founder and former CEO Alexis Borisy talked to Ryan about his new gig as an entrepreneur in residence at Boston’s Third Rock Ventures—and about the super-stealthy new life sciences firm he’s helming, Foundation Medicine. Borisy joined Third Rock in October, a few months after leaving his post at CombinatoRx as part of its merger with NeuroMed Pharmaceuticals.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

If in-depth interviews with some of the heaviest hitters in the New England life sciences industry are your cup of tea, this was the week for you.

—Ryan had a fascinating chat with Jorge Conde, co-founder and CEO of Cambridge, MA-based Knome, about how the startup is evolving in the rapidly evolving field of personal genomics. Just two years ago, Knome, which was co-founded by Harvard geneticist George Church, charged $350,000 to sequence a customer’s genome and interpret the data. Now it’s charging $68,500—reflecting the rapid drop in the cost of sequencing—and trying to find a way to get back in the black.

—Bruce scored an interview with Ralph V. Whitworth, the co-founder of San Diego-based Relational Investors, which has recently amassed a 4 percent stake in Cambridge-based Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ). Whitworth, whose firm recently reached a “mutual cooperation agreement” with Genzyme, outlined the six things he thinks Genzyme needs to do to realize its intrinsic value—and offered his assessment of how well the Cambridge firm’s management is meeting each of those goals.

—Luke caught up with Alan Sachs of Merck, which in 2006 paid a whopping $1.1 billion to acquire Sirna Therapeutics, a competitor of Cambridge-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ALNY) in the field of RNA interference. Sachs, who leads Merck’s RNA therapeutics efforts, agreed with Alnylam CEO John Maraganore that RNAi will prove its therapeutic power in the coming decade, but emphasized that figuring out how to deliver RNAi-based drugs is a formidable challenge.

—American Well CEO Roy Schoenberg talked to Ryan about what his Boston-based company has learned in just over a year of operating a system that lets users consult with doctors over the Internet. A couple of interesting trends: the majority of patients who seek care through American Well’s system are women, and just over half of the online doctor visits are for allergies, aches, colds, and other routine ailments, though the system includes physicians from some 23 medical specialties.

—Michael Bonney, the CEO of Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:CBST) spoke frankly to Ryan about his Lexington, MA-based company’s lack of an encore after the success of its first drug, the antibiotic daptomycin (Cubicin). Allowing that the company “could have been a little more aggressive at pipeline building earlier than we started to,” Bonney discussed the company’s efforts to do so now, in part through acquisitions, and to defend daptomycin against generic competition.

—Ryan checked in with Cambridge-based Millennium a few weeks after it forged a major collaboration with Seattle Genetics (NASDAQ:SGEN). The deal, which gives Millennium rights to market the Seattle firm’s drug for Hodgkin’s and other lymphomas in all markets outside the U.S. and Canada, is one of several indications of how Millennium’s clout has grown since it became the cancer R&D arm of Japanese drug giant Takeda Pharmaceutical Company in May 2008, Ryan explains.

—Luke scored a long-sought-after interview with Matt Emmens, who took the reins of Cambridge-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) last May. Emmens talked about his surprising path to the Vertex helm, and his big goals for the company—chief among them launching its hepatitis C drug, telaprevir, on a blockbuster trajectory.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

This week Ryan and Luke had several great interviews with some of the newest CEOs in New England life sciences. Those and the rest of the week’s biotech, devices, and health IT news below.

—Luke caught up with Steve Gullans, a managing director with Excel Venture Management, who reports that his Boston-based venture firm is having a good year at a time when others are struggling. Early successes among Excel’s portfolio companies include San Diego-based Synthetic Genomics’ $600 million investment from Exxon Mobile and Woburn, MA-based BioTrove’s acquisition by Carlsbad, CA-based Life Technologies.

—Ryan scored an interview with John McCarthy, the new CEO of Marlborough, MA-based Qteros, a developer of cellulosic ethanol technology. McCarthy was formerly the executive vice president at Cambridge, MA-based cellulosic ethanol developer Verenium (NASDAQ:VRNM), and aims to help Qteros cut partnership deals like the $90 million one with energy giant BP he helped Verenium ink in 2008.

—Ryan also chatted with Scott Minick, the new CEO of Cambridge-based Bind Biosciences, which recently closed an $11 million Series C round of venture capital led by businessman and philanthropist David Koch. Minick invested in Bind, a developer of highly targeted nanoparticle-based drugs, in 2007, as a managing partner at Arch Venture Partners; he ended an 11-year tenure at Arch to become Bind’s full-time CEO.

—Waltham, MA-based Polaris Venture Partners and Arch Venture Partners, which has operations in Boston and Seattle, reportedly agreed to pay $14 million for the assets of Iceland-based genomics firm deCode Genetics (NASDAQ:DCGN), which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November. Both venture firms previously invested in deCode.

—Yet another newish CEO, Dave Okrongly of Quanterix, told Luke about his big dreams for his Cambridge-based firm. Chief among them: using technology developed in the Tufts University lab of David Walt to capture the $8 billion market for antibody-based diagnostics.

— Southborough-MA-based IkaSystems, a maker of software for healthcare payers, raised a combined $120 million from private equity fund Essex Woodlands Health Ventures and Providence Equity Partners, according to Venture Wire.

—Cardiorobotics of Middletown, RI, raised $5 million in equity investments, according to an SEC filing. Founded by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the startup develops robotic probes for surgical applications, among other things.

—Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE:TMO) of Waltham said it will pay $145 million in cash for Ahura Scientific, which makes handheld detectors of chemicals and metal for the pharmaceutical and security markets. Backers of Wilmington, MA-based Ahura include Arch Venture Partners, Waltham, MA-based Castile Ventures, California’s Fuse Capital, and GF Private Equity Group, of Durango, CO.

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Rebecca Zacks wrote:

Posting will be light today as Xconomy’s offices are closed in observation of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service.

For those of you looking for a way to pitch in in your own city or town, Serve.gov has a searchable database of volunteer opportunities. If you or your organization would like to aid the disaster recovery effort in Haiti, or to make a donation of goods to the effort, start by registering your offer with the Center for International Disaster Information.  If you’d like to make a cash donation, InterAction has a list of agencies that are accepting them. The newly formed Clinton Bush Haiti Fund is accepting donations as well.

So have a great day, however you spend it. We’ll be back to work first thing tomorrow.

Comments | Reprints | Share: