Latest Posts

• Pfizer Bolsters Gene Therapy Position with $51M Vivet Deal

  Pfizer this morning added to its methodical push into the gene therapy field, paying $51 million for a 15 percent stake in Vivet Therapeutics and the option to buy the Parisian biotech in the future.

  Vivet is developing an experimental gene... Read more »

  Ben Fidler3/20/19

• Flagship Reloads With $824M For Latest Growth Capital Fund

  Flagship Pioneering, one of the Boston area’s top biotech company creators, has closed a new $824 million fund to help fuel the growth of its startups.

  The new fund—Special Opportunities Fund II—will complement the cash the firm uses to start its... Read more »

  Ben Fidler3/20/19

• 3D Printing Startup Markforged Raises $82M to Invest in Products

  Venture capital seems to be onboard with the fourth industrial revolution.

  As the proud poster children for the tech-driven wave of change, industrial 3D printing companies have raised big dollars in the last few years, with Burlington, MA-based Desktop Metal in... Read more »

  Brian Dowling3/20/19

• FDA OKs Depression Drug For New Moms: Fast Relief But Tough to Take

  The FDA has just made brexanolone (Zulresso) the first medicine approved specifically for post-partum depression, a potentially devastating disorder that afflicts roughly one in every seven new mothers in the U.S., according to the American Psychological Association

  Now the drug’s owner,... Read more »

  Ben Fidler3/19/19

• Magnitude Software Takes $179M from Private Equity Firm 3i Group

  Austin—[Updated 10:10 a.m. See below.] Magnitude Software is selling a $179 million stake in the company to London-based private equity firm 3i Group.

  Chris Ney, the founder, chairman, and CEO of Magnitude, is investing alongside 3i, the company... Read more »

  David Holley3/19/19

• Flipside Crypto Grading Scheme Expands to CoinMarketCap, Others

  Flipside Crypto, a Boston startup developing analytics for cryptocurrencies, has landed its main metric onto CoinMarketCap and other financial websites including MarketWatch, TheStreet and Stocktwits, the company says.

  Founded in 2017, Flipside says its Fundamental Crypto Asset Score—FCAS for short—rates the... Read more »

  Brian Dowling3/18/19

• JLabs’ Luby Takes the Reins at TMC Innovation Institute in Houston

  Houston—Tom Luby, the head of JLabs in Houston, has been named the new director of the Texas Medical Center’s Innovation Institute, the center announced Monday morning.

  Luby takes over the innovation institute three months after former director Erik Halvorsen left... Read more »

  Angela Shah3/18/19

• Bio Roundup: Golumbeski’s Legacy, CRISPR Moratorium, Rebate Week & More

  While all eyes in the biopharmaceutical world are currently trained on Bristol-Myers Squibb’s proposal to buy Celgene for $74 billion, it wasn’t that long ago that another company’s gaze was fixed on the Summit, NJ, drug maker.

  In the early... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan3/15/19

• Boston Tech Watch: Dill the Pickle Robot, Via Separations & More

  There’s robotics news, clinical research companies raising cash, and plenty of early-stage venture capital money moving in the Boston technology world this week. Read on for more:

  —Via Separations, a startup developing energy-efficient filtration technology, has raised $4.8 million in a... Read more »

  Brian Dowling3/15/19

• Keen, a San Antonio SaaS Startup Owned by Scaleworks, Hires New CEO

  San Antonio—Ben Kuhn has been promoted to become the CEO of Keen, a San Antonio startup that helps software developers with custom application programming interfaces for data collection and analytics.

  Kuhn was hired as the general manager of Keen in... Read more »

  David Holley3/14/19

• Gene Therapy Boom, Cracking Alzheimer’s: What’s Hot on May 21

  Our annual half-day life sciences variety show, “What’s Hot in Biotech,” is back. Join Xconomy on May 21 at Bristol-Myers Squibb’s brand new offices in Kendall Square for a series of candid discussions, in a variety of formats, on... Read more »

  Ashley Gentile3/14/19

• X4 Completes Reverse Merger with Arsanis, Looks Ahead to Phase 3 Test

  X4 Pharmaceuticals is the latest biotech to join the public markets, but it didn’t follow the IPO path to get there.

  Cambridge, MA-based X4 said Wednesday that it completed its “reverse merger” with Arsanis (NASDAQ: ASNS). Such business... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan3/13/19

• Nominations Are Open for the 2019 Xconomy Awards in Boston

  John Maraganore, CEO of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals; Penny Heaton, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research Institute; digital health leader Pear Therapeutics; and renowned women-in-science advocate and MIT professor emerita Nancy Hopkins. These outstanding leaders were among the winners of... Read more »

  Corie Lok3/13/19

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• Clinical Analytics Platform TriNetX Raises $40M to Speed Drug Trials

  TriNetX, a Cambridge, MA, developer of data analytics software for clinical research, has raised $40 million in a Series D funding round led by Merck’s corporate venture capital fund, the company said.

  The company’s analytics platform helps pharma companies detail the... Read more »

  Brian Dowling3/13/19

• The Investments Cisco, Samsung, Toyota, and Chevron Are Making in AI

  Austin—If you’re a startup talking up your artificial intelligence chops in your venture capital pitch, you’re not alone.

  For Cisco Investments, the venture arm of tech giant Cisco, artificial intelligence is no longer one of the key trends to watch... Read more »

  David Holley3/13/19

• Drug-Price Watchdog ICER Dives into Trump-Fueled Pharma Rebate Debate

  [Updated 3/13/19, 12:20pm. See below.] With public and political winds blowing in the same direction, significant reform of the complicated U.S. drug-pricing system seems ever more likely. One part of the system that the Trump administration wants to overhaul... Read more »

  Alex Lash3/13/19

• Jibo’s Last Dance, and the Social Robot’s Hope for the Afterlife

  Last summer, dozens of former Jibo employees returned to the defunct company’s Boston offices for a long weekend of pizza, beer, and brainstorming. The task: How do you teach the company’s “social robot” to say goodbye?

  Rich Sadowsky, Jibo’s former head... Read more »

  Brian Dowling3/12/19

• The Life, Troubles, and Celgene Legacy of Deal Guru George Golumbeski

  George Golumbeski is one of the most prolific dealmakers in the biopharmaceutical world. But the deal that changed his life is a pact he made with himself when he was ten years old.

  Playing with friends in front of his house... Read more »

  Ben Fidler3/11/19

• FDA Clears Way for AquaBounty to Raise Salmon in America’s Heartland

  It’s been more than three years since the FDA approved salmon from AquaBounty Technologies, but debates about labels and other requirements have kept the genetically engineered fish from reaching dining plates. On Friday, the FDA removed the last regulatory hurdle standing... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan3/8/19

• Bio Roundup: Gottlieb Exits, Bristol Defends, Biogen Buys & More

  In early 2017, Scott Gottlieb was considered the most moderate of the potential candidates to head the Food and Drug Administration, which is the most powerful regulator of medical products in the world.

  It wasn’t a high bar to clear. Libertarians... Read more »

  Alex Lash3/8/19

• Boston Tech Watch: .406, Circle, Haven, Shift, LinkSquares & More

  The Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, and JPMorgan-led healthcare moonshot has a name. The venture capital dollars continued to roll in for A.I. startups. The Akamai-Janrain deal was pegged at $125 million. And a local VC firm is reloading for a new fund.... Read more »

  Brian Dowling3/8/19

• Bright Cellars Uncorks $8.5M Round for Wine Subscription Service

  A few years ago, the frothiest market in tech was arguably startups selling subscriptions to boxes of curated goods, such as clothing, beauty products, and food, which would arrive on customers’ doorsteps each month.

  The buzz around this area of... Read more »

  Jeff Engel3/7/19

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• Steering Lyft’s IPO: What Investors Will Weigh During the Roadshow

  Much has been said about Lyft’s early lead over Uber in the “horserace” to become the first ride-hailing app company to go public. But now that San Francisco-based Lyft has filed its 276-page IPO prospectus with the U.S. Securities and Exchange... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey and Sarah Schmid Stevenson3/7/19

• Al Gore: Coming Tech Revolution Could Take More Jobs Than It Makes

  Al Gore may just be on the side of the Luddites.

  Yes, that’s the radical faction of British textile workers at the onset of the Industrial Revolution who broke into factories to smash the new machines that they feared would... Read more »

  Brian Dowling3/6/19

• Intel Reveals Ideas on Promoting AI in U.S. as Chinese Growth Looms

  Even as the executive order President Trump issued last month on artificial intelligence furthered the conversation about a developing national strategy for the sector, it was met with certain criticism. A common complaint was that the plan won’t implement itself.

  “The... Read more »

  David Holley3/6/19

• Joining AI Drug Discovery Race, Erasca Adds $22M For Cancer Work

  Erasca, a biotech startup run by the former CEO of Ignyta, debuted in December with $42 million and an audacious plan to “erase cancer,” but provided little explanation as to how.

  Erasca is still keeping many of those details under wraps.... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo3/6/19

• Blue Squad Aims to Bring Election Tech Up and Down the Ballot

  Austin—All politics is local, the adage goes, and those campaigns are sorely stuck in analog mode.

  That’s why Shion Deysarkar co-founded Blue Squad two years ago as a “digital coalition” to support progressive candidates by providing them with greater access... Read more »

  Angela Shah3/6/19

• Vertex Faces Choice After Second CF Drug Combo Succeeds in Phase 3

  An experimental Vertex Pharmaceuticals cystic fibrosis treatment that combines three of the company’s drugs has hit the main goals of two late-stage studies.

  It’s the second cystic fibrosis (CF) three-drug cocktail from Boston-based Vertex that has succeeded in two Phase 3... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan3/6/19

• Data in Hand, Alnylam to Seek OK for Second RNAi Drug

  Alnylam Pharmaceuticals this morning released new data that it believes to be good enough to bring the second-ever RNA interference medicine to market, a treatment for a potentially deadly, rare genetic disease called acute hepatic porphyria.

  Alnylam’s (NASDAQ: ALNY) experimental... Read more »

  Ben Fidler3/6/19

• Beam Brings In $135M to Turn CRISPR Base Editing into Drugs

  Beam Therapeutics made a splash last year when it launched with $87 million to develop medicines that use a more precise form of CRISPR editing. Beam’s promise of CRISPR-based therapeutics that swap out specific bases or “letters” in the genome—something the... Read more »

  Corie Lok3/6/19

• A Glimpse of A.I.’s Future? MIT-IBM Research Lab Sees Early Progress

  The capabilities of artificial intelligence technologies have increased significantly in the past decade, but there’s a growing sense that new breakthroughs are needed for the field to continue delivering on its promise.

  David Cox and his colleagues have dedicated themselves to... Read more »

  Jeff Engel3/6/19

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