{"id":172818,"date":"2010-01-13T00:06:41","date_gmt":"2010-01-13T05:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.xconomy.com\/?p=58337"},"modified":"2010-01-13T00:06:41","modified_gmt":"2010-01-13T05:06:41","slug":"genzyme-reaches-agreement-with-activist-investor-charles-river-closes-shrewsbury-lab-lycera-comes-to-cambridge-more-boston-area-life-sciences-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/172818","title":{"rendered":"Genzyme Reaches Agreement with Activist Investor, Charles River Closes Shrewsbury Lab, Lycera Comes to Cambridge, & More Boston-Area Life Sciences News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Roundup<\/a>, Life Sciences<\/a>, people<\/a><\/div>\n

\t\tRebecca Zacks wrote:<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was another crazy-busy week for New England’s life sciences firms, many of which closed small-to-medium sized venture financings. I’ll talk about those as part of Friday’s deals roundup, but in the meantime here are some of the other highlights:<\/p>\n

—Alnylam Pharmaceuticals CEO John Maraganore<\/a> told Luke about his vision for the coming “RNA decade,” in which Maraganore believes RNA-based therapies like those his Cambridge, MA-based firm is developing will begin to reach their potential. Maraganore also discussed Alnylam’s (NASDAQ: ALNY<\/a>) goals for this year, which included moving its lead drug candidate, a treatment for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), into a Phase IIb trial; obtaining the first clinical trial results on its liver cancer drug; and launching clinical trials for a treatment for the rare condition TTR amyloidosis.<\/p>\n

—Cambridge-based BIND Biosciences, a developer of nanoparticle-based drugs founded by MIT’s Robert Langer and Harvard Medical School’s Omid Farokhzad, named Scott Minick—previously a managing director of ARCH Venture Partners—as its president and CEO<\/a>. BIND also reportedly raised $11 million in a Series C round of financing.<\/p>\n

—Wilmington, MA-based Charles River Laboratories International (NYSE:CRL<\/a>) announced it will close its Shrewsbury, MA-based preclinical testing facility<\/a> by the middle of this year; the company will let go nearly 300 workers in the process.<\/p>\n

—Biotech giant Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ<\/a>) entered into a “mutual cooperation agreement” with Relational Investors<\/a>, the San Diego-based investment fund, following fund co-founder Ralph Whitworth’s public calls for change at the Cambridge-based company. Whitworth’s firm, which owns about 4 percent of Genzyme’s stock, pledged to support Genzyme’s slate of board candidates and other proposals in 2010; in return, Genzyme has agreed to give Whitworth a seat on the board in November if he requests one.<\/p>\n

—A promising University of Michigan spinoff called Lycera announced it’s moving its headquarters from Ann Arbor, MI, to Cambridge.<\/a> The startup, which is pursuing a new approach to treating autoimmune diseases, also named Bill Sibold, the former senior vice president of U.S. commercial business at Biogen Idec, as its new CEO.<\/p>\n

—Cancer drug developer Synta Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: SNTA<\/a>) of Lexington, MA, raised $25 million in a sale of 5.5 million shares of stock at $4.50 apiece<\/a>. Synta had just $51.7 million in cash and investments at the end of September, according to its most recent financial report, so the cash is a significant drop in the bucket for the company.<\/p>\n

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Roundup, Life Sciences, people Rebecca Zacks wrote: It was another crazy-busy week for New England’s life sciences firms, many of which closed small-to-medium sized venture financings. I’ll talk about those as part of Friday’s deals roundup, but in the meantime here are some of the other highlights: —Alnylam Pharmaceuticals CEO John Maraganore told Luke about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1189,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1189"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172818\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}