Frank Vinluan
Frank is a business journalist with more than a decade of experience covering various aspects of technology and life sciences. Based in Raleigh, he was a staff writer at the Triangle Business Journal covering technology, biotechnology and energy before joining MedCityNews.com as North Carolina bureau chief. Prior to moving to North Carolina’s Research Triangle in 2007 he held business reporting positions at The Des Moines Register and The Seattle Times. Frank has a bachelor’s degree in history from Carleton College and a master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois Springfield.
Recent posts
[Updated 1/17/19, 8:50 a.m. See below.] An experimental Amgen osteoporosis drug that had sparked concern about cardiovascular side effects has won the backing of an FDA advisory panel.
A... Read more »
Five Prime Therapeutics is cutting its headcount by 20 percent, part of a cash-saving effort the company is making to focus on the cancer drugs it has already advanced into clinical... Read more »
The partial government shutdown may have diminished staffing at the SEC, but it hasn’t dimmed the hopes of biotech firms hoping to go public. On Friday, Kaleido Biosciences and Cirius Therapeutics... Read more »
Diabetes drugs are Eli Lilly’s bread and butter, but the pharmaceutical giant hasn’t lost its appetite for cancer drugs. It grabbed hold of a few more this week by betting $8... Read more »
When Black Diamond Therapeutics emerged from stealth mode last month with $20 million in backing and a handful of preclinical cancer drugs, the company signaled that another financing was in the... Read more »
Beta Bionics, a startup developing a medical device that monitors and manages blood sugar levels in diabetes patients, has closed $63 million to back late-stage clinical tests of its AI-powered technology.... Read more »
Alector, a biotech company focusing on the immune system to treat degenerative brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, has filed to go public to fund human tests of its experimental therapies.... Read more »
The flow of biotech news is particularly heavy today, and for good reason. The annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, one of the biggest gatherings for the biopharmaceutical industry, kicked off today... Read more »
[Updated 1/7/19, 11 a.m. ET. See below.] Eli Lilly is set to acquire Loxo Oncology for approximately $8 billion—a deal that brings to the Indianapolis pharmaceutical giant a class... Read more »
Genentech is paying Adaptive Biotechnologies $300 million up front in a new partnership focused on developing cancer immunotherapies personalized to individual patients.
Seattle-based Adaptive has technology that can analyze the immune... Read more »
A cancer immunotherapy teed up for clinical trials by Tizona Therapeutics is now the centerpiece of a new partnership with AbbVie, which is paying the startup $105 million up front.
In... Read more »
Biotech startup creator Cydan is unveiling a new company, Tiburio Therapeutics, which is backed by $31 million to support its work on treatments for rare endocrine diseases.
Cambridge, MA-based Cydan was... Read more »
Among the life science companies developing new approaches to disease today are those that will shape the healthcare of tomorrow. Earlier this month, Xconomy offered a select audience a peek at... Read more »
Microbiome drug developer Vedanta Biosciences has raised $27 million in funding to press forward with clinical trials for four therapeutic candidates.
Vedanta’s experimental treatments are compositions of live bacteria that the... Read more »
For the second time this week, Gilead Sciences has partnered with a Boston-area biotech, this time with a deal that covers up to five experimental cancer immunotherapies being developed by Agenus.... Read more »
The line dividing biotechnology and high tech is blurring as drug companies find new ways to apply computer advances in the hunt for new drugs. Relay Therapeutics uses these techniques to... Read more »
Signs of a safety problem have Surface Oncology cutting back clinical trial plans for its lead drug only eight months after the company completed a $108 million IPO to finance clinical... Read more »
When it comes to getting a drug into a cell, size matters. Small molecules can easily pass through the cellular membrane in a way that larger therapeutic proteins can’t, which makes... Read more »
Two years after closing a $400 million fund for biotech investing, Versant Ventures is at it again, this time with $700 million in two new funds.
The first of... Read more »
Merck has agreed to pay nearly $2.4 billion to acquire Antelliq Group, a privately held French company that makes devices used in monitoring and tracking animals.
In addition to the... Read more »
