Archive by category | Business development

Collaborate, not compete

Collaborate, not compete

Collaboration seems to be the last thing on the mind of bioentrepreneurs. This is based on personal experience as well as feedback from my fellow entrepreneur friends. It is quite disappointing and interesting as the same time, as to why most prefer to compete, and not collaborate.  Read more

The Gene Editing Bazaar

The Gene Editing Bazaar

On February 15, 2017, the US patent authorities ended a legal battle over IP rights between University of California at Berkeley and the Boston-based Broad Institute. According to the long awaited decision, Broad keeps its patents allowing them to own the use of CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing technologies in any eukaryotic organisms (including yeast, plants, animals and humans), while Berkeley’s broader patent application, which allows general use of CRISPR-Cas9 in any type of cell (including bacteria), will proceed before the USPTO. Gene editing – the precise and relatively easy deletion, insertion or modification of particular DNA sequences in the genome – is one of the latest innovations aiming to convert genetic engineering into a real engineering discipline. In the past, precise modifications were hard or almost impossible to achieve, frequently leaving genetic marks and requiring rather expensive and time-consuming processes.  Read more

Heparin, Brazil and innovation

Heparin, Brazil and innovation

An article published at the Brazilian Journal  of Cardiovascular Surgery compared all heparins manufactured by Brazilian companies to Liquemine, manufactured by Hoffman La Roche. Heparin is a complex carbohydrate that was introduced to control thrombosis during extra-corporeal surgeries during the 1930s by Clarence Crafoord. It’s been nearly a century and there is no substitute for the drug. No surgeon performs chest surgery without heparin at hand.  Read more

3 years in Bogota; a 3-path strategy

3 years in Bogota; a 3-path strategy

It has been three-and-a-half years since I moved to Bogota as a faculty member at University of los Andes. I remember that when I first started here, almost everybody said my ideas about fabricating microsystems and electronics for biochemical applications were sci-fi, and that there was little hope about their feasibility. Nowadays, we are a successful research team at the microelectronics research center (CMUA) called biomicrosystems, and one of the pioneer groups focused on innovation and entrepreneurship in Colombia.  Read more

Not Invented Here

Not Invented Here

Business development professionals have long complained about the difficulty in convincing Big Pharma research groups that a new project from outside their company  is worthy of consideration.  This is called Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome and, when displayed by pharma, is characterized by skepticism of novel ideas, a focus on data gaps rather than an assessment of the data that exist, and an unwillingness to abandon internal projects even if corporate portfolio valuation standards favor the external project.  Read more

Israeli Ag Bio

Israeli Ag Bio

Israeli biotech comes full circle with the recent Rosetta Green success story. Rosetta Green, a company that specializes in identifying unique genes and developing improved plant traits for the agriculture and biofuel industries, has been purchased by Monsanto for $35 million.  Read more

Biotech, and Dengue

Biotech, and Dengue

Our editorial team came across a bit of news on neglected diseases while monitoring the biotech sector and thought we’d pass it along. Neglected diseases earned that collective moniker partially because the major drug developers of the world didn’t see the financial incentive to pursue products in these indications. Over the years, smaller, more nimble biotechs have stepped into the void, and today biotech companies are contributing 41% of products in the pipeline for neglected diseases, according to a new report by BIO Ventures for Global Health (BVGH), a non-profit based in Washington, DC. The report looks at neglected disease drugs and vaccines currently in development worldwide and examined the entities working on them.  Read more