In fact, financing topped $21.3 billion for US biotechs last year, the $5.5 billion contributed by venture capital firms beat the record set of $39.4 million in 2000, according to Ernst & Young’s annual financial report card on the industry.
Whether this pace will continue is less certain, Scott Morrison, E&Y’s US life sciences director, tells [...]

Only a year ago, private-equity groups had a healthy appetite for biotechs and little competition, naming their price for upstart firms desperate for cash, then quickly selling them to big drugmakers for hefty profits. Now, there are signs private investor groups are being squeezed out of the market they helped create, resulting in a dramatic [...]

No surprise, is it? But the price of acquiring a promising med from a biotech is soaring. The cost has jumped by about 45 percent annually over the last three years, according to a Lehman Brothers research note, and drugmakers were promising an average of $400 million in potential milestone payments under licensing agreements.
The [...]

No, generic drugmakers aren’t thrilled. The Senate health committee voted unanimously in favor of a bill that authorizes the FDA to approve biosimilars, or generic versions of biotech drugs. The legislation, which was jointly sponsored by Democrats and Republicans, includes some stiff compromises for generic companies.
The bill requires generic drugmakers to provide the FDA [...]

As the fuzzy chart tries to make clear, the biotech gold rush is increasingly costing big pharma more money all the time. So far, this year there were 70 deals ringing up $700 million. The number of deals isn’t actually increasing year-over-year, but the average (red line) and total cash (blue bar) upfront payouts are [...]

Sometimes, health is in the eye of the beholder. You can feel great and have an LDL cholesterol count ticking above 300. Or you can ace your annual physical, but still attribute every stray ache or pain to impending doom.
That’s useful to keep in mind when paging through the latest pulse check on New Jersey’s [...]

Last month, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick upstaged the annual BIO extravaganza by announcing a plan to spend $1 billion on biomedical research over 10 years. But some key questions remain - Will the state provide backing? And who gets the money?
Tomorrow morning, about 70 people will gather at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge to sort [...]

That’s the new benchmark for what big pharma may have to pay a biotech these days. The figure was first mentioned last fall by In Vivo magazine and seems to have become a given.
Roger Longman, who wrote the article, argues the rise in cash and milestone payments means some successful biotechs can focus solely on [...]

With a growing biotech industry, major universities and prominent hospitals in its midst, The Boston Globe pays a great deal of attention to biomedical research. And so as the BIO convention attracted some 20,000 visitors to the city this week, the paper wrote this eloquent editorial about biotech and its mission:
“Behind the vibrancy of the [...]

At a BIO session this morning on strategic alliances between biotechs and big pharma, Infinity Pharmaceutical ceo Steve Holtzman listed characteristics of a “perfect match” that sounded as if he was up late last night reading one of those “How to Save Your Marriage” books.
His list included such well-known corporate behaviors as “empathy,” “sensitivity,” and [...]