Luke Timmerman
Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.
Recent posts
Three of the world’s biggest drugmakers are chasing what many analysts consider to be the next multi-billion dollar opportunity in cancer immunotherapy. All three companies are going to show their stuff... Read more »
This is my last week on the job at Xconomy.
After almost six years, I’m moving on. I’m going to finish writing a biography of Leroy Hood, the pioneer of... Read more »
For years, Merck was a traditional small-molecule, pill-in-a-bottle company that was known for being skeptical and late to the biotech drug party. So why is Merck suddenly mobilizing real resources—people... Read more »
Hype and biotech go hand in hand, but genomics takes exaggeration up a few extra notches. When genomics companies fail, they tend to crash especially hard. Yet every now and... Read more »
Stories like Cellular Dynamics don’t grab venture capitalists in Boston or the San Francisco Bay Area. Stem cell biology as the basis for a low-margin laboratory “services” business? Borrrring. Most of... Read more »
Most people in the local business community have never heard of Bothell, WA-based OncoGenex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: OGXI). But the little company, working on an experimental prostate cancer drug, has an... Read more »
People who appreciate baseball stats agree: Jonny Gomes of the Boston Red Sox is a below-average player. Yet, if you pay attention to his intangibles, he looks better. Even with... Read more »
Two or three years ago, most biotech pros would have scoffed if you had predicted a revival of cancer immunotherapy. Dendreon flopped, right?
Oh, how quickly things change.
Today, researchers... Read more »
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is trying to get more biotech entrepreneurs to work on global health, and it just hired another venture capitalist to give the initiative a boost.... Read more »
Some of the more exciting ideas in biotech are coming up in molecular diagnostics. There’s cool science at work. A number of tests have potential to cut down on overtreatment, reduce... Read more »
Entrepreneurs who want to use high-powered DNA sequencers for, say, a new way to diagnose cancer, are in much the same boat as infotech entrepreneurs a decade ago. Before they can... Read more »
One of the important new medicines for blood cancer just got approved by the FDA for a large new group of patients.
Sunnyvale, CA-based Pharmacyclics (NASDAQ: PCYC) and its partner... Read more »
One of the old saws in journalism is to “follow the money” when you’re looking for a story. But sometimes you learn even more by following the people.
The... Read more »
[Updated 4 pm PT] Myriad Genetics telegraphed its plan to acquire Crescendo Bioscience three years ago, and now it has followed through on the deal.
The Salt Lake... Read more »
Acucela founder and CEO Ryo Kubota is a native of Japan, and now he’s got a lot more investors supporting his work there.
Seattle-based Acucela is selling 9.2 million shares of... Read more »
People can argue all day about whether Illumina has, at last, given us the $1,000 genome. The answer does matter, because the cheaper it gets to sequence a whole human... Read more »
Pharma companies have been feeling the heat for years from people who argue they must be more transparent with raw clinical trial data—including the good and the bad—so that independent researchers... Read more »
Seattle hasn’t cranked out many big-idea biotech startups in the last few years, and now it’s up to Thong Le to see whether he can provide a spark.
Le, 38, has... Read more »
Imagine for a minute you’re a teenager with a rare genetic muscle disease nobody has ever heard of. No treatment exists. Your doctor says you might die if you ever eat... Read more »
Thinking about Big Pharma’s relationship with the biotech industry last week at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco reminded me of an old physical education teacher I had in... Read more »
