Catherine Arnst
Catherine Arnst is an award- winning writer and editor specializing in science and medicine. Catherine was Senior Writer for medicine at BusinessWeek for 13 years, where she wrote numerous cover stories and wrote extensively for the magazine’s website, including contributing to two blogs. She followed a broad range of issues affecting medicine and health and held primary responsibility for covering the battle in Washington over health care reform. Catherine has also written for the Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report and The Daily Beast, and was Director of Content Development for the health practice at Edelman Public Relations for two years. Prior to joining BusinessWeek she was the London-based European Science Correspondent for Reuters News Service. She won the 2004 Business Journalist of the Year award from London’s World Leadership Forum, and in 2003 was the first recipient of the ACE Reporter Award from the European School of Oncology for her five-year body of work on cancer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University.
Recent posts
Xconomy took Christmas week off, but the FDA didn’t—the agency issued a flurry of new drug approvals in the last two weeks of the year, bringing its total number of approvals... Read more »
A lot of patients’ hopes were dashed today with the news that Biogen Idec’s (NASDAQ: BIIB) closely watched drug dexpramipexole for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) failed in a late-stage clinical... Read more »
Synageva BioPharma (NASDAQ: GEVA) announced today that it is commencing an $80 million secondary offering, less than six months after raising $115 million in a July secondary offering.
The... Read more »
The Food & Drug Administration today approved the first drug to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, Johnson & Johnson’s (NYSE: JNJ) bedaquiline (Sirturo), an important breakthrough in the global fight against... Read more »
It’s been a year and a half since Xconomy added New York to the cities it covers. I came on as New York Editor in October, taking over from Arlene Weintraub,... Read more »
NPS Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: NPSP) finally scored today with its first FDA drug approval since its founding 26 years ago. The agency said it approved teduglutide (Gattex) for adults with short... Read more »
Christmas came early for a bunch of biotech startups in the form of new funds, while Amicus and Vertex got only coal in their stocking.
—- On Tuesday, Avaxia Biologics,... Read more »
Amicus Therapeutics (NASDAQ: FOLD) waited until late afternoon on Wednesday to announce that its lead drug, a treatment for rare Fabry disease, failed to meet its end point in a... Read more »
The trending topic among biotech people and the people who fund them these days is that it is almost impossible to scrounge up financing for startups in the earliest stages of... Read more »
Last March, life sciences venture firm Domain Associates and Russia’s state-owned Rusnano announced that they will jointly invest as much as $760 million in biotech. Today the partnership announced it... Read more »
It seems counterintuitive, given that only a handful of life sciences companies of any size have women at the helm, but the biotech startup world is a relatively good place to... Read more »
Avaxia Biologics, a Lexington, MA-based startup that is developing an oral version of popular anti-tumor necrosis (TNF) factor drugs, said today that it has raised $6.4 million in Series B... Read more »
Just a month shy of its first birthday, Blend Therapeutics of Watertown, MA, says it has secured $16 million in Series B financing. It plans to use the money in part... Read more »
It looks like investor Carl Icahn may be having his way with Enzon Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: ENZN). The Piscataway, NJ, company announced today that it is seeking a buyer for some... Read more »
In a surprising move, the Food & Drug Administration today approved Ariad Pharmaceutical’s (NASDAQ: ARIA) ponatinib (Iclusig), a drug for two rare forms of leukemia, three months ahead of... Read more »
Sarepta Therapeutics (NASDAQ: SRPT), based in Cambridge, MA, said it is planning a $125 million public stock offering, and on Thursday priced an aggregate of 4,950,485 shares at $25.25 each.... Read more »
—The last of the year’s major medical conferences, the American Society of Hematology annual meeting in Atlanta, was held this week (Dec. 8-11), and several biotechs reported promising clinical data results.... Read more »
Nielsen (NYSE: NLSN), the television ratings company, is backing a new VC firm, Pereg Ventures, based in New York, that will be looking for early stage advertising and Web-based-marketing... Read more »
Quantum physics, the focus of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Physics, may be ready for a commercial close-up. The newly formed Quantum Wave Fund, based in Boston, announced today that... Read more »
—Obesity is paying off for Cambridge, MA-based Zafgen. On Tuesday the company said it closed on $21 million in a Series D equity funding to support continued development of its... Read more »
