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April 2012 Volume 8, Issue 4

Volume 8, Issue 4 | April 2012

In this Issue

Research & Development

Pharma pink-slippers find pot of gold

Six years after founding company for downsized R&D scientists, Boston Biomedical is acquired by Japanese pharma DSP for $2.63 billion

Being flexible with Fleximer

Mersana, Endo collaborate on antibody-drug conjugate development

Heavy ADME

Concert Pharmaceuticals will partner with Avanir Pharmaceuticals to develop and commercialize deuterium-modified dextromethorphan for nervous system disorders

Joined together by JNK

Scripps Institute and OPKO Health announce deal for promising Parkinson’s therapy

Crossing the 'Valley of Death'

The Wistar Institute and the Moulder Center join forces to accelerate drug development

University of Pittsburgh and UPMC partner with J&J corporate office

The University of Pittsburgh and UPMC have entered into a partnership with Johnson & Johnson Corporate Office of Science and Technology (COSAT) to support translational research

Global News

A new sun rises for vaccines

GSK, Daiichi Sankyo announce Japanese joint venture

Hot target for HCV

Enanta Pharmaceuticals, Novartis collaborate on hepatitis C virus drug in deal worth up to $440 million

Jumping on JAK1

Abbott and Galapagos collaborate on novel oral therapy for autoimmune diseases

Antibody potential a 'SIMPLE' fact

Human monoclonal antibodies focus of new Shire, arGEN-X alliance

Coming into the light

Lonza signs Light Path discovery agreement with LegoChem to provide preclinical material of novel therapeutic compound

Omics & Systems Biology

Bridge over the Charles River

The Bridge Project, a landmark cancer research initiative, pairs Koch Institute, Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center

Acquiring a peer across the Atlantic

Abcam to buy San Francisco-based antibody business Epitomics with even mix of cash and shares

Sanofi cultivates 'research ecosystem'

Pharma partners with Spain’s Centre for Genomic Regulation to explore potential of translational medicine

Delivering genomics to routine care

Foundation Medicine announces collaboration with Array BioPharma to help better target patients for certain cancer treatments

Ready and aiming

RNAi therapeutics get new boost from Arrowhead Research and Axolabs strategic alliance

MJFF showcases Parkinson’s disease advances by Kinemed

KineMed Inc. recently announced that it has been awarded funding by the Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) Industry Partnering Program

Contract Services

BGI on board with ‘Novo Nordisk Way’

Denmark’s Novo Nordisk and China’s BGI establish global collaboration framework to accelerate growth

Making genomic research whole

Mayo Clinic taps Complete Genomics to provide outsources whole-genome sequencing

Charles River rolls toward improved viral clearance studies

CRO licenses EMD Millipore technology to improve drug product safety

An immunological decision

Selventa, Janssen form research agreement targeted toward treating immunological disease

Sister companies trod biosimilar path

Celerion and Ricerca Biosciences form the Biosimilars Alliance to provide clients a more effective development path for biosimilars

Commentary

Completing the picture with regulatory information management

Pharmaceutical companies depend on data to bring products to market, but companies struggle to cohesively and coherently manage all that data and all that information.

Taking inventory of life-science headcounts

Survival requires innovating again and again at a greater and greater speed. Customers create jobs. No one else can.

Editor's Focus

Dr. Chiang Li is not the kind of guy you’d expect to be living on a minimum-wage salary. The Harvard Medical School graduate with more than 60 inventions to his name and founder of Boston Biomedical Inc. chose to subsist on a meager salary for the last six years. Why? Read on for his remarkable story of innovation and sacrifice.

Diagnostics

Abbott and Merck go FISH

Companies collaborate to develop FISH-based companion diagnostic test for cancer therapy

Translating a pilot into a full collaboration

Molecular Response and OncoMed sign collaboration deal that expands existing relationship in translational oncology

Getting an Angle on cancer

Parsortix signs research agreement with Paterson Institute

Reinforcing their lines

Illumina stands fast as Roche continues takeover attempt

Special Reports

Everything old is new again

Drug repositioning provides cost savings, shortcuts

Feature

Great minds think alike

Experimental Bio show brings together numerous specialty societies to advance knowledge in drug discovery, development and more

Tools & Technology

A biopharmaceutical bonanza

GE Healthcare acquires Xcellerex as it looks to broaden capabilities in growing biopharmaceutical market and provide start-to-finish offerings

Across all domains

Certara acquires Simcyp, boosting preclinical research capabilities

A rock-solid partnership

Rockland, NCI collaboration announces release of new antibodies

Comparing apples to Apples

IO Informatics and Sage-N Research announce partnership to discover potential biomarkers, disease causes and prevention

TIBCO, ChemAxon integrate analytics data management applications

TIBCO Software Inc. and ChemAxon, providers of chemical software development platforms and desktop applications for the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, announced in February the full integration of the TIBCO Spotfire Analytics Platform with ChemAxon’s Instant JChem data management application