Many Eyes Visualizations: FDA Application Approvals 2000-2008

Take a look at the FDA Application Approvals 2000-2008 visualization (created by user mktlgcs) over at IBM’s Many Eyes to get an aerial view on the US. pharmaceutical industry.

BioBlocks: outsourcing biotech, one block at a time

Friend Dan Erlanson (Co-Editor in Chief of the niche and smart Fragment-based Drug Design blog Practical Fragments) sent me this story on the recession proof business model of a biotech company called BioBlocks and his founder medical chemist Peter Pallai:

Approximately one out of 5,000 compounds pass an initial screen, hit the designated biological target, and end up making it to clinical trials. So Pallai’s pitch is simple. He and his team are good at one thing-chemical synthesis of new drug candidates to hit those targets. By outsourcing this piece of the puzzle to his team of chemists, about 25 of whom work in Budapest, Hungary, biotech companies can get the work done fast and well, he says. It makes sense professionally for his chemists as well, because they can get steady work, rather than hitch their wagons to one of hundreds of biotechs that dream of becoming the next Genentech, but are more likely to end up flaming out in a few years.

Aquincum Institute of Technology, Budapest, IT & BT shaking hands

There is a nice initiative now in Budapest dedicated to the present and future of high technology: a new private university momentarily dubbed as Aquincum Institute of Technology (AIT) will be built near to the Graphisoft Park in Óbuda (Aquincum) concentrating on competitive information-/biotechnology (mainly bioinformatics) education and entrepreneurship.

The main instigator of the project is Gábor Bojár, founder and CEO of the most successful Hungarian software company, Graphisoft.

According to this source:

“The company aims to become the global leader in building-architectural software solutions, hence it must found the training of professionals on a business basis, Bojar said. The new school is to be opened in 2010.”

Mr. Bojár convinced world-class Hungarian scientists and businessmen like Wolf-prize winner discrete mathematician and computer scientist László Lovász, inventor and architecture professor Ernő Rubik, former Office guru, intentional programmer and space tourist Simonyi Charles and scale-free network theorist Albert-László Barabási amongst others to back the idea of a profit-oriented technology university sustained by the market itself.

It’s not too hard to recognize some particular Silicon Valley virtues or models behind the idea of an university like AIT let’s just think about the innovative environment at Stanford, intellectual and entrepreneurial home of the HP, Sun Microsystems and Google founders. What I have in mind here concerning the biotechnology part is The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) which is ‘a cooperative effort between the state of California, the University of California campuses at Berkeley, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz, and industry and venture capital partners’.

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The idea can be traced back to a San Francisco dinner

Do you want a startuppy job: ask CoNotes or not!

Andrew Chen, founder of CoNotes said that to my mailbox:

“I’m basically trying to solve the problem that startups have in hiring the right people. A lot of it has to do with marketing (it’s hard for startups to get prominence over big named companies particularly in university settings), but also fit.“

And that is a very nice endeavour indeed!

I found 1 job description by typing “biologist‘ into the search field although manually I found a bit more mostly in the protein scene. Bioinformatician? Guess what. Hopefully the numbers will grow.

Remember StartupSearch?

Patent Board science strength of biotech firms in WSJ

The Wall Street Journal Patent Board Biotechnology Scorecard was published this week in which biotech companies & private research firms are grouped by their Patent Board science strength ranking “which is based on the scale, quality, impact, and nearness to core science of a company’s patent-based intellectual property”.

What I found interesting at the first sight is Geron‘s nice position and the lack of Genentech. Also take a look on the charts and compare, say Illumina and Affymetrix or the research intensity/innovation cycle ratio in case of the same company.

Says my source, San Diego biased marketing expert Rick Cook in an in medias res email:

“Three of the top 10 science-based researchers, according to the rankings, are based in San Diego. Several other San Diego companies fall outside the top 10.
Nanogen, one of my clients, made the rankings. What’s particularly interesting about Nanogen — who competes against #1-ranked Roche — is that the company has by far the lowest market cap (just over $28 million) represented in the rankings. In fact, if you divide patents issued by market cap, which could be used as a proxy for size, Nanogen ranks number one — dollar-for-dollar the most innovative company on the list.”

80 is the new 50 so Carl Icahn has a blog without content.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn (72) recently made the bloglines with his energetic position on the Microsoft – Yahoo deal. He has a blog too or at least it is coming soon since 01/31. /Having a blog for more than 3 months without any content is kinda equivalent with planning to sign up for Twitter but actually not doing it./

Daniel Gross, Newsweek: Eighty Is the New Fifty

“Carl Icahn has a blog (though it doesn’t contain any content)”….

“In time, it’s likely that prejudices toward older workers will be eroded less by the exploits of eternally youthful financiers, and more from a longstanding demographic trend. As they’ve moved through life, the baby boomers have altered societal attitudes on everything from smoking marijuana to Botox. As boomers coast into their golden years, it’s likely the acceptance of older workers at every rung of the corporate ladder will grow. In the 1960s, the boomers’ mantra was: don’t trust anyone over 30. In the 2010s, it’ll probably be: don’t trust anyone under 70.”

SciBX trial edition for May 22, 2008

from my mailbox:

Science-Business eXchange aka SciBX is a new publication from the makers of Nature and BioCentury that aims to improve the translation of today’s science into tomorrow’s products for the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease.

Dear StartupSearch: Is 23andMe a web-based startup or not?

1. A start-up is a company with a limited operating history (Wikipedia).

2. Startup search

“tracks the web technology ecosystem commonly referenced as “Web 2.0.” We collect facts and figures about new web products, startup companies, key startup employees, and the funding dollars powering their growth.”

3. 23andMe is a pioneering web-based, personalized genomics startup (founded in April, 2006) with a high-tech service, a definitely “Web 2.0″ website & investors most Web 2.0 startups only dreaming of.

4. Why is 23andMe not tracked by StartupSearch?

Biotech firm funded by Life Extension Foundation to push regmed therapies

Press release:

“We at Life Extension Foundation are pleased to help finance BioTime‘s entry into the field of regenerative medicine. We believe that one of the most important applications of embryonic stem cell technology is the slowing and reversing of aging and age-related disease.

Genome Technology launches MethodShare beta!

Genome Technology, the heavy trafficked New York based biotech website (also a printed monthly magazine) just launched the beta version of MethodShare as “a place for people to discuss methods and tools, recommend methods papers to one another” according to Ciara Curtin, senior editor. The site will be coming out of beta soon.

How the site can position and maintain itself in the narrow space between the professional Connotea reference manager on the one hand and the versatile high end methods site ranging from Nature Protocols to JoVE on the other hand is a really open question at this point. This won’t be a simple game and good luck to them.

The Spittoon: the eminent corporate blog of 23andMe and Consumer Enabled Research

The personal genomics service 23andMe just launched publicly a corporate blog called The Spittoon that has been internally up for a few weeks. It is a new chapter in biotech corporate blogging. Just like the web page of 23andMe, The Spittoon’s WordPress blog platform, the concept and design is excellent: amongst others you can find scientific blog posts written by Matt Crenson science writer and posts written by founders Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki in the name of radical transparency. As Wired fellow Clive Thompson wrote:

Radical forms of transparency are now the norm at startups – and even some Fortune 500 companies. It is a strange and abrupt reversal of corporate values. Not long ago, the only public statements a company ever made were professionally written press releases and the rare, stage-managed speech by the CEO. Now firms spill information in torrents, posting internal memos and strategy goals, letting everyone from the top dog to shop-floor workers blog publicly about what their firm is doing right – and wrong. Jonathan Schwartz, the CEO of Sun Microsystems, dishes company dirt and apologizes to startups he’s accidentally screwed. Venture capitalists now demand that CEOs be fluent in blogspeak.

Radical transparency could be standard in the case of Silicon Valley tech startups but in the Biotech Industry the standards are light years away from that. For instance the 23andMe research team communicates publicly on the biparental inheritance of mitochondrial DNA which is a sensitive issue concerning their genealogy service. The reason why Spittoon is so web-friendly and uptodate and is in fact a paradigm corporate blog for every other biotech company in the future is its web-based business model and Google-like corporate culture thanks to its networking background.

For instance, Anne Wojcicki co-founder introduces the concept of Consumer Enabled Research in her introductory blog post The Power of We:

Our goal at 23andMe is to enable individuals to form communities around shared interests and to empower those communities to be actively involved with research. We call it Consumer Enabled Research. We don’t just want communities to have a voice, we want to provide a platform for them to collectively aggregate their genetic information. One of the significant bottlenecks in research is the lack of data. Researchers and physicians rarely have enough of it to really understand a disease or how to treat it. Our goal is to change that.

After registration readers can make comments and I strongly hope that the comment system will not be shut down (just like in the past at BoingBoing), but for that commenters should be on-topic and moderate. I’ve just commented Wojcicki’s post, but I’d like to share it with you here too:

Startup recipe: collect hair at the barber, isolate keratin, regenerate nerves

Biotech entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs, here is a tip for Ya to launch a regmed business (and don’t forget to market the product as recycled and green) :

Winston-Salem Journal: Human hair could hold key to regeneration of nerve tissue, Wake Forest research shows

The study, published in the current issue of Biomaterials, found that the protein keratin found in human hair enhances nerve regeneration and improves nerve function – compared with current treatment options – in animal research.

As part of the study, the scientists used hair cut at a local barber shop and chemically processed it to remove the keratin. The keratin protein was purified and used to form gels that filled the nerve guidance conduits.

CIRM and NIH stem cell grants to the biotech industry

Different attitudes, same endeavors.

1. The folks at the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) started to offer grants for biotech companies up to $55,000 out of the 3 billion ‘hope’ dollars.

San Diego Union Tribune: Industry and academia team up:

For the first time in its three-year existence, the state taxpayer-funded stem cell institute is offering grant money to biotechnology companies….The stem cell institute wants to issue up to 20 planning grants to allow prospective disease-team members to hold teleconferences and travel to meetings around the state with potential collaborators to work out the details of how their group would function.

The idea is to form a team whose members have expertise in all areas of developing a drug or diagnostic – from the initial idea to testing it on animal models, producing enough of it for experiments and figuring out how it meets the needs of patients.

2. On the other hand, the NIH people in Bethesda, Maryland like the West and East Coast United Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) but not because the company’s single cell biopsy method for creating ethical ES cells.

Reuters: Advanced Cell Technology Awarded Grant from the NIH

Nature Editor-in-Chief’s changed mind on enhancement drugs for healthy people

Philip Campbell, the open editor-in-chief of Nature was asked by John Brockman under the cover of the 2008 Edge Annual Question: WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

Campbell writes in his thoughtful answer:

“I’ve changed my mind about the use of enhancement drugs by healthy people. A year ago, if asked, I’d have been against the idea, whereas now I think there’s much to be said for it.”

Before citing further the argument of Campbell I’d like to remind the analogous problems of biotechnological life extension products targeted for healthy people in a “normal” physiologic state. Good example are the resveratrol-like but more effective sirtuin activators with a probably positive healthy lifespan extension effects developed by David Sinclair and his group at Sirtris. The trick is to market Sirtuin activators as anti-diabetes drugs, or find other registered diseases to target with the drugs. According to Mass High Tech:

“Aging is not a disease to the FDA,” Sirtris co-founder Christoph Westphal said, so Sirtris is focusing on drugs to treat ailments of old age.

With this story in our changed and future focused mind it is very promising to read for healthy life extension supporters what Campbell, a mainstream academic science representative has to say on cognitive enhancement drugs:

New cognitive enhancing drugs are being developed, officially for therapy. And the therapeutic importance — both current and potential — of such drugs is indeed significant. But manufacturers won’t turn away the significant revenues from illegal use by the healthy.

That word ‘illegal’ is the rub. Off-prescription use is illegal in the United States, at least. But that illegality reflects an official drugs culture that is highly questionable. It’s a culture in which the Food and Drugs Administration seems reluctant generally to embrace the regulation of enhancement for the healthy, though it is empowered to do so. It is also a culture that is rightly concerned about risk but wrongly founded in the idea that drugs used by healthy people are by definition a Bad Thing. That in turn reflects instinctive attitudes to do with ‘naturalness’ and ‘cheating on yourself’ that don’t stand up to rational consideration. Perhaps more to the point, they don’t stand up to behavioral consideration, as Viagra has shown.

Research and societal discussions are necessary before cognitive enhancement drugs should be made legally available for the healthy, but I now believe that that is the right direction in which to head.

The Regeneration Station – a biotech blog by Aastrom’s Jon Rowley

Jon Rowley is a senior manager at Aastrom Biosciences with a long experience in the not too old Regenerative Medicine field. I am pleased to introduce here his new blog The Regeneration Station as one of the first biotech – regmed blog written by an industrial expert who will share with us his insights on stem cells therapies, biomaterial-based devices, tissue engineered products and … biotech stock options i.e. all the things that are shaping the face of a young industry. According to Jon: Early adopter companies form and often fail, but they do succeed in removing some risk from the technology. As risk decreases, large companies try to figure out how to play in the new technology sandbox that is littered with small companies. Today, even Baxter is running a cell therapy clinical trial for cardiac regeneration, PerkinElmer is buying up cord blood banks, Celgene is dabbling in placenta-derived cells, and Teva Pharmaceuticals has an autologous MSC long bone trail underway.

There is another thing why more academic science bloggers should read Regeneration Station. Jon will definitely show us the “time and money” gap between science and the translation of it: “I do not want to undermine the importance of the great work that was done in generating pluripotent stem cells from adult skin cells, but the only thing I think about when hearing this news is TIME and MONEY. I know I will be fielding questions from my friends and relatives over Thanksgiving weekend on whether or not Aastrom (my employer) is doing this type of work or if we have to change our business model. I will have to explain that this type of research is at such an early stage, that it will not be impacting what is going on in Biotech for 20 years, if not more. It is challenging enough to manufacture and distribute an autologous cell product

Web entrepreneurs and biotech: strangers from distant lands

Elrond: Strangers from distant lands, friends of old you have been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor. Middle Earth stands upon the brink of destruction, none can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Each race is bound to this fate, this one doom. Bring forth the ring, Frodo.
[Frodo puts the ring on a stand for all to see]
Boromir: So it is true. In a dream, I saw the Eastern sky grow dark. But in the West, a pale light lingered. A voice was crying, “The doom is near at hand, Isildur’s Bane is found.”
[Reaches for the Ring]
Boromir: Isildur’s Bane…
Aragorn: Boromir!
Gandalf: speaking the words engraved on the Ring] Ash Nazg Durbatuluk, Ash Nazg Gimbatul, Ash Nazg Thrakatuluk, Agh Burzum-ishi Krimpatul.
[the light darkens and the air rumbles; Boromir backs away from the Ring]

Let us form the first real alliance of BT folks and IT people through personalized genomics (and later with regenerative medicine as I hope so), but take care, biologists and geneticists have way too powerful tools and web entrepreneurs are greedily looking for new territory with their unconceivable computational and storage capacity and perpetual hunger! Go, go, push, push! (Of course, there is no such thing as an outside threat of Mordor in this situation, the real threat (the other side of the reward coin) as in every revolutionary case is the shared ambition of tech people to make formerly impossible things possible).

The following words are from David Ewing Duncan’s Welcome to the Future:

Some analysts predict that the genetic-testing market 23andMe is entering could be worth a staggering $12.5 billion by 2009. Naturally, this has attracted the interest of Web entrepreneurs. They see an industry that is largely unregulated (so far) and costs only a few million dollars to enter—the price of a few brilliant programmers, a website, and marketing—and are betting that people will pay to test their own DNA directly. One indication of the potential market is that online medical-information companies are starting to make real profits. WebMD, for instance, attracts 40 million users a month and expects to net more than $30 million this year, mostly from ad sales. “I’m convinced there is an early-adopter market here,” says Sue Siegel, former president of Affymetrix and now a venture capitalist at Mohr Davidow. “Millions of people are used to getting health-care information online.”

23andMe: “official launch” webcast by co-founders Avey and Wojcicki

From the press release: The co-founders of 23andMe, the first, web-based personal genome service, Linda Avey and Anne Wojcicki will hold a webcast media briefing on Monday, November 19, 2007 at 11:00 am PST/2:00 pm EST. (via The Genetic Genealogist)

The new faces of Silicon Valley: biotech-savvy co-founders Avey-Wojcicki

After Jobs-Wozniak, Yang-Filo, Brin-Page, it’s time to memorize the names of the co-founders of 23andMe, the first personalized genome service, who are turning the tech establishment into a biotech mode.

The new faces of Silicon Valley: the age of Blue Jeans/Black T-Shirt co-founder computer nerds is over, welcome to the era of stylish, well-dressed genetics-savvy co-founder business ladies! According to the about page of 23andMe:

Linda Avey has over 20 years of sales and business development experience in the biopharmaceutical industry while the other founder, Anne Wojcicki brings to 23andMe a 10-year background in healthcare investing, focused primarily on biotechnology companies.

23andMe is probably the most well-connected startup in the history of Silicon Valley with an unlimited amount of networking and server capabilities thanks to Wojcicki and board member Esther Dyson.

Collect and FedEx menstrual stem cells with the C’elle kit: the next flow

It is a somewhat very positive idea that human tissues previously considered as waste products (after filling their essential role in the human body) like the placenta and the umbilical cord are radically reinterpreted as valuable sources of prospective therapies due to the current results of stem cell research and regenerative medicine. Exactly this reinterpretation is taking place now with the cells of the regularly produced menstrual blood flow as the first commercially available menstrual stem cell service, C’elle was launched by cord blood banker Cryo-Cell.

The user friendly process in a nutshell: Upon ordering, you’ll receive an attractive, discreet C’elle collection kit by FedEx delivery. Inside, you’ll find everything needed for you to collect and send your C’elle menstrual stem cells for processing and preservation, including a menstrual cup, collection tubes, prepaid FedEx airbill for return shipment to Cryo-Cell, and comprehensive instructions for use.

There are 3 plans and pricings available: annual plan for $499 includes processing & first year’s storage, semi-annual plan for collecting two specimens instead one, and quarterly plan for four specimens, and you have to pay for the annual storage thereafter in the range of hundreds of dollars/year.

Unfortunately we’re short of strict scientific details (summary here) as of this moment, but a peer review article will be published this winter. Scientists involved: Amit Patel, Gerald Elfenbein, Stephen J. Noga, Paul R. Sanberg. What we could know: The characteristics of these menstrual stromal cells are similar of the human endometrial stem cells derived from the endometrial lining of the uterus, but their collection is non-invasive and pain free. Let’s take a look on the table left in which menstrual stromal cells are compared to the more established mesenchymal stromal cells from the bone marrow. I’d like to highlight 2 differences:

The busy life of a stem cell (biotech) startup founder

If you ever thought of launching a biotech startup… the following blogterview is for you. Jim Hardy is a long time insighful commenter of Pimm and he shared with me his brand new experience as the founder of a biotech startup in the much hyped field of regenerative medicine. The transparency of the interview makes it really valuable besides its information richness thanks to Jim. I found especially useful the used equipment network by necessity, which could be the base of a worldwide biotech startup network and could serve a biodiy movement. Make no mistake: biotech is the next IT.

ACs: Would you be kind enough to introduce your background?

JH: My name is Jim Hardy and I have a BA in Biology and Chemistry from Wittenberg University, a small Liberal Arts school in Ohio. I sold Xerox office equipment for a couple years after school before getting back into science. I was large-scale chemical mixer making laundry detergents, a lab tech at the University of Rochester for 3 years and dabbled in graduate classes before moving to Maryland in 1988 to work in R&D at Life Technologies, which is now Invitrogen (a subject for a separate post). I have always found R&D rather boring and would rather finish one project and move on to the next, so the rest of my career has been in Manufacturing.

ACs: What is the story of Gahaga BioSciences?

JH: Gahaga is an acronym for the three founders: Garner-Hardy-Gage. That’s always the first question. We started the company to commercialize a proprietary method for extracting 3-5 times the number of implantable HSC from afterbirth than is achievable from traditional Cord Blood recovery procedures. Our current business has drifted away from the initial goal. I found your blog, because I was googling amniotic stem cells, or something of that nature. The initial process I am using for producing MSC’s is almost precisely as you describe in the “Make Stem Cells at Home” post and in your poster. Dissect amnion, digest, plate or freeze. So, by classification, my cells would be Amniotic Membrane-human Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (AM-hMSCs).

I just learned our cells stain intensely positive for Nestin (a neural stem cell marker), by Cellomics Array scan and CD 44+ (hematopoietic stem cell marker) by FACS. Right now I am just looking to get these cells into as many places as possible to learn what exactly they are.

Lanza up, West down at Advanced Cell Technology

Robert Lanza is now the Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology, while Michael West is voluntarily stepping down as the company’s President and Chief Scientific Officer and jumps into the CEO seat of BioTime Inc..

Lanza and West are 2 legendary figures in the biotech industry, and here are 2 interesting things concerning them:

West is in the science, telomerase, stem cell, regmed, biotech business because of his strong life extension commitment and had a big effect on Aubrey de Grey (see How to Live Forever or Die Trying: On the New Immortality by Bryan Appleyard or the highly entertaining Rapture by Brian Alexander).

Lanza was the disciple of the founder of behaviorism, psychologist B.F. Skinner and they had some articles together, say this Science article on the “Self-Awareness” in the Pigeon.

source: Advanced Cell Technology Announces the Promotion of Dr. Robert Lanza to Chief Scientific Officer

SENS3: The stem cell marketplace by Linda Powers, Tucan Capital (slides)

Linda Powers is the managing director and co-founder of Toucan Capital Corp, a $120 million venture capital fund (SBIC) focused on seed and early-stage life science and advanced technology investments (the fund markets itself as the The Leading US Investor in Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine). Out of here insights and facts presented on the SENS3 conference (I caught some of her slides with my iPhone, see below) I’d like to highlight the following ones:
- the anti-aging market today is approx. 42 billion dollars,
- the number of issued and published U.S. stem cell patents has been decreased for the first time since 2000 compared to the earlier year,
- viable business models in regenerative medicine are still missing,
- first-to-trial and -market is not always advantageous in regmed.

The iPhone case: the hackers may have the law on their side!

I’ve activated my iPhone in a prepaid mode exactly for the reason of being flexible and switch to another network provider ASAP. So I do not have a 2 year contract with AT&T and I am happy to say that. The AT&T network and coverage is almost non exisiting in the 2 crucial places of my current life in New Orleans, United States: a., at home and b., at work. At home I must go to the street if I want to make a valid phone call with my iPhone, at work I must go to a special corridor at the edge of the building for the same reason. Next week I am going to England and it would be good to use my iPhone as a phone there. Nevertheless my iPhone is an integrated, hacked and essential part of my life. So what shall I do? Well, there are options it seems.

Something really new and interesting is happening, please read the links:

Wikipedia: George Hotz

Business Week: Why Apple Can’t Stop iPhone Hackers

Wired: Legal or Not, iPhone Hacks Might Spur Revolution

Slashdot (the comments): Can Apple + AT&T Shut Down iPhone Unlockers?

Nanodrop video ad from the Brown iGEM team

Imagine a world where grad students and postdocs are well paid by manufacturers and companies by doing ads like the following one. The Brown iGEM Team shows off the Nanodrop Spectrophotometer and compares it to regular spectrophotometers in a funny, easy to catch way. (They were not paid by this.) And how the disclaimers would look like in peer review articles in that ad world?

Link: New wave of science marketing: Brown University iGEM 2007

Industry and career focused stem cell report in the current Nature volume

Positively tuned (for the most part) report on stem cell science by Ricki Lewis: The hard cell Nature 447, 748-749 (June 2007) Excerpts, emphasis added by me:

research in the field is thriving globally. At least 500 companies and collaborations have sprung up, 100 of them in the past year alone…

A solid background for a researcher includes a doctorate in molecular, cell or developmental biology, as well as skills to work with specific cell or tissue types…

Are we really in the age of Regenerative Medicine 2.0? A comparison by Chris Mason

In the age of compelling technology analogies and nomenclatures it was unavoidable that somebody at last identifies enough differences in the history of industrial regenerative medicine to tell Regenerative Medicine 1.0 from 2.0. The man behind is Chris Mason, Group Leader of Stem Cell + Regenerative Medicine Bioprocessing Unit, University College London and cofounder and co-organiser of the London Regenerative Medicine Network (LRMN). His papers can be downloaded from his website and I advise to start with the one titled Regenerative Medicine 2.0, a term also abbreviated as RegenMed 2.0, but I would call it simply RegMed 2.0. The best way to focus on the differences between the 2 periods of RegMed is to show the comparative and quite exhaustive Table 1 made by Chris (in 3 screenshots). It is worth discussing his points and tenets and put the question: Are we really in the age of Regenerative Medicine 2.0 or the analogy with Web 2.0 is unestablished in many respects?

20 medical enterprises out of 100 fastest growing tech companies in 2007

Check out Business 2.0′s 100 fastest growing tech companies and read the excellent little summaries on the first 25 out of which 5 are medical related. In regenerative medicine LifeCell has a high position with competitors like Genentech (here think about the recent 23andMe story), Amgen Inc, Gilead Sciences.

BioTech(nically), Business 2.0′s new biotech blog

Business 2.0 Blog Beta Network‘s new blog BioTech(nically) was launched written by Marie Cannizzaro who says about herself in the intro post, March 27: “Before joining Business 2.0, I wrote for Dow Jones VentureWire and Stanford Magazine. I have a degree in Human Biology with a concentration in Biotechnology and Bioethics from Stanford University.”

At the present moment, the blog is in an experimental condition, and it takes time for the blogger to form an idiosyncratic style with special topic selection and get a highly targeted stable audience. But as BioTech(nically) is a member of a very prestigious blog network of professional journalists, it is a superb advantage that could easily shorten the experimental period. Good luck to Marie and welcome to the emerging biotech blogdom.

Truth to be told: I would be really happy to do this biotech blog job for Business 2.0. In fact I did try to apply this job even when it was non-existing, but I was sure this fits into Business 2.0′s web and high tech focused profile. Here are some sentences from my pushy mail to Erick Schonfeld, from October, 2006 with the subject: joining Business 2.0 Beta as a biotech blogger: “I found the Business 2.0 Beta aggregator idea fascinating but what I really missed out of the blogs you have is an uptodate and cool biotech-regmed blog.

Technological breakthroughs in Regmed according to a Global Strategic Business Report

Research and Markets has announced the addition of Regenerative Medicine – Global Strategic Business Report to their offering for EUR 3,407.00. Link

“This report analyzes the worldwide markets for Regenerative Medicine in Millions of US$. The report provides separate comprehensive analytics for the US, Japan, Europe, Canada, and Asia-Pacific, and Rest of World. Annual forecasts are provided for each region for the period of 2003 through 2010. The report profiles 107 companies including many key and niche players worldwide. Market data and analytics are derived from primary and secondary research. Company profiles are mostly extracted from URL research and reported select online sources.”

In this research focused industry I’d like to highlight the content of chapter 4 of the Business Report on technological innovations in regmed: how many of them have you ever heard?

4. Technological Innovations / Breakthroughs II-27
Biovest International Launches AutovaxID™ II-27
Stelic Institute Announces New Treatment Method for Acute Liver Failure II-27
TissueGene Initiates Phase 1 Clinical Trials for TG-C II-27
ISTO Announces FDA’s IND Approval for Neocartilage Graft II-28
Cook Biotech Introduces Surgisis® AFP™ Anal Fistula Plug II-28
Korean Scientists Make a Major Breakthrough in Stem Cell Lines II-28
Japanese Researchers Regenerate Jaw Bone II-28
Geron Researchers Differentiate Hepatocytes from hESCs II-29
Geron Demonstrates Potential of hESCs in Treatment of Parkinson’s disease II-29
Geron Researches Cardiomyocytes for Heart Disease II-29
Endovasc Announces New Findings at Texas Heart Institute Research II-29
Geron and Celera Genomics Complete Characterization of Active Genes in hESCs II-30
Rockefeller University Develops Solution for Maintaining Plupotency in hESCs II-30
Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer II-31
Manipulating Cells to Develop Tissue II-31
Terumo All Set to Regenerate Cardiac Muscle Tissues II-31
ThermoGenesis Innovates Bioengineered Cornea Cell Implant II-32
Organ Rejection Risk Minimized by Filtering Antibodies from Blood II-32
Regenerative Medicine for Acute Renal Failure Patients II-33
Tepha Develops PHA4400 Thermoplastic Polyester Biomaterial II-33
Regenerated Eye Transplantation Mastered in Tadpoles II-34
Investigations on Role of Microgravity in Regenerative Medicine II-34
Geron Researches Derivation of Neurons and Neural Progenitors from hESCs II-34

Carnival of Biotechnology on Babybiotechs

The recent Carnival of Biotechnology is hosted on Babybiotechs and is rather industry and business oriented which is a good sign of a more mature industry. Check the posts and form an opinion.

80 year old Lokey’s $33 million donation for Stanford Stem Cell Labs

Such a Californian story: Lorry I. Lokey, the founder of Business Wire will give a minimum of $33 million to help build a home for Stanford’s Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Lokey says: “The important thing to me is that stem cells might not only extend life, but also improve the quality of life, as so many people suffer in their later years,” said Lokey, who will turn 80 in March. “But I think stem cells will have applications across the entire life span.” Lokey’s contribution to the School of Medicine—its largest single gift to date from an individual—will launch construction of new stem cell laboratories on campus where scientists will probe the power of these elusive cells in treating conditions as diverse as cancer, stroke and diabetes. Lokey launched Business Wire in San Francisco in 1961 with $2,000 of his own money. It quickly grew to become a news industry powerhouse, now distributing an average of 17,000 corporate and academic press releases a month. “The biotech revolution has become so important to the quality of life,” he said. “To me, the biotech field is going to be very, very hot for the next generation.” Link

Disruptor candidate stem cell therapies

Stem cell therapies are likely to be disruptive treatments for the following medical sectors according to the Stem Cell Market Analysis Fact Sheet:

What is interesting in the following list: all the target tissues are of mesodermal origin.

• Total knee implants: Stem cell therapies that repair worn articular or meniscus cartilage will delay and potentially reduce the need for total knee replacement surgery

• Sports medicine: Stem cell therapies will extend the continuum of care for “weekend warriors.” It is highly likely that stem cell therapies will become the standard of care for torn meniscus or damaged articular cartilage

• Heart muscle repair following heart attacks

• Vascularization: To improve flow of blood by stimulating growth of new capillaries and vessels to the heart muscle

• Use of bone marrow transplants: stem cell therapies significantly reduce the effects of graft vs. host disease in patients with transplants.

• Treating the broad range of inflammation in the human body.

All American Stem Cell Companies = 1 YouTube = $1.65 billion

Did you ever think that the market value of all public stem cell companies is $1.655 billion, which is exactly (+5 million) the amount of money Google Acquired YouTube in a stock-for-stock transaction in October, 2006? This fact sheds new light on the maturity of the information technology and biotechnology markets. Let’s make hypes into proportion!

Stem Cell Therapy Market, US, 2005-2016: do you believe this?

This extrapolation is from the inforich and insider Stem Cell Market Analysis Fact Sheet of the 2nd Annual Stem Cell Summit, February 12-13 at San Diego, happening now.

Other important facts concerning the Stem Cell Therapy Market in the U.S.:

23andMe: the early bird of web based biotech startups

23andMe is a biotech focused web startup based in Mountain View, California (yes, the Googleplex neighbourhood) self-defined as “an early stage startup developing tools and producing content to help people make sense of their genetic information. Our goal is to take advantage of new genotyping technologies and help consumers explore their genetics, informed by cutting edge science. Genome deciphering technologies have reached affordable levels, allowing consumer access. For the individual, such information will provide personal insight into ancestry, genealogy and health. For society, the collection of genotypic and phenotypic information on a large scale will provide scientists with novel avenues for research.”
Briefly, they are concentrating on the enormous genomics data we already have to analyze them for customers. They are probably right, because in biotech, genomics could be the first field that has enough results, easy measurement methods (a little blood or biopsies), infotech background and enough commercial demand to make the business profitable within 1-2 years. Unfortunately, regenerative medicine and the stem cells frontier are not in this position yet. The next business step could be monetizing data from proteomics, transcriptomics. With the promising combination of computer science, biology and informatics 23andMe is an early bird of a biotech-based web domain, because there will be times when all your genes, RNAs, peptides (and in my opinion: cells and tissues) will be taken into account by your initiative to know your future prospects, and a web-based service is a proper choice for managing all of your biodata. Security problems will emerge, of course.

Best companies to work for: IT Google and BT Genentech

According to Fortune Magazine January 22 Issue, the best 2 Amercian companies to work for are from the high tech domain and from the Bay Area: Google, the IT Lord, and Genentech, the first real biotech company founded in 1976, which is the Apple of the biotech industry. As Genentech CEO and Google board member Art Levinson says, “What draws people to both companies is the environment, one where they have an ability to pursue things largely on their own terms.” Of course, there is one more reason Levinson is a Google acolyte: “Here I am a guy who can afford a good meal, and every time I go to a Google board meeting, I don’t leave until ten o’clock at night because I get a free dinner there.”

Bay Area biotech prospects through BayBio Chief’s lenses

Insightful, inforich and überoptimistic interview by David Morrill with Matt Gardner on the Bay Area and the broader Northern California Biotech Cluster. Gardner is the president of BayBio, an independent, non-profit 501(c)(6) trade association serving the life science industry in Northern California. Gardner helped author BayBio: Impact 2007, a new report in which he discussed the progress of the life sciences industry and the challenges that lie ahead.
Short summary:

- Bay Area specialities

In the Bay Area the biotech industry had a head start by expertise already built by earlier IT-driven industries, the Area’s specialities are the entrepreneurial atmosphere, a readiness and a tolerance for risk.

- stem cell research

Valley Brats in Rolling Stone’s Tech Issue: trends in journalism (weekend off)

And now for something completely different! Sometimes life is just simply life for me without any extension. This is Life.exe. So at the weekends during the largely dead webtimes, I’ll blog about other things than stem cells, regenerative medicine, maximum life extension and biotech. This week offstory is a report, which shows the transformation of the now mainstream, once countercultural Rolling Stone magazine into a Wired-type Zeitgeist patterned techweb conglomerate. I bought the 16th November issue because it seemed like a Wired magazine by cover and content too: (inversely, look at the december Wired cover: it is Rolling Stone-like):

- coverboys and story are not the usual nice bodymaniac popceleb men&women but Colbert&Stewart

- blogs of musicians,

- long report on a radical idea by a planetary engineer to stop global warming,

- a big article with the title: The Baby Billionaires of Silicon Valley.

That is about the Valley Brats, the hidden power clique of under 30 übergeeks in the Bay Area, like Firefox main creator Blake Ross,

Kevin Dewalt’s answers: technology professional, lifestyle life extensionist

Kevin Dewalt is an American technology professional, presently working at a VC. Kevin is a strong life extension supporter. We’ve met online at Baris Karadogan’s blog. I specially liked his “happy argument” for maximum life extension on the psychological level, see answer 3.

1. What is the story of your life extension commitment?

When I was 23 I discovered a book called “Optimum Sports Nutrition” by Dr. Michael Colgan. In it he presents arguments for lifestyle and nutrition changes that athletes could make to improve performance. The idea that changing my exercise, eating, or lifestyle habits could change my physical well being, health and longevity thrilled me and I began my quest. I began researching and learning about dietary supplements. At age 25 I became a vegetarian. At 26 I joined the Life Extension Foundation and have followed their recommended supplement scheme since. At 33 I began started a mild Calorie Restrition diet, lost 10 pounds and have remained on the diet. At that time I also began following the writing of Aubrey de Grey (blogterview here), Roy Walford, and others and realized that the only way I was going to be Father Time forever would be through significant advances in science.

2. Is it a commitment for moderate or maximum life extension?

Sand Hill Road Venture Capitalist about life extension as business

There was a very interesting comment dialogue last week apropos of Aubrey de Grey‘s TED talk, and the host was Baris Karadokan’s blog called From Istanbul to Sand Hill Road subtitled High-tech, venture capital, creativity and innovation. Here are some details. Link

storytelling idea source