Latest Posts

• Bio Roundup: Generic Drugs Graft, ASCO Ahead, ElevateBio Rises & More

  Generic drugs are supposed to give consumers more choices and a counterweight to more costly branded medications. During his tenure as FDA commissioner, Scott Gottlieb often spoke about generics as a market force that could help tame climbing drug prices. But... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/17/19

• Boston Tech Watch: Hydrow, Sea Machines, Toast, Pillar & More

  [Updated, 9:05 am. See below] Another $100 million for early stage investing in Boston. Check-out machines are becoming clock-in machines. A hundred-plus startups join MassChallenge’s latest cohort in Boston. Read on for more of this week’s Boston tech news.... Read more »

  Brian Dowling5/17/19

• ASCO Abstracts: Breast Cancer, Precision Treatments in the Spotlight

  The world’s biggest annual cancer conference is just around the corner. Data presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting each year can change medical practice and make or break companies whose drugs are under the microscope. That’s what makes... Read more »

  Ben Fidler5/16/19

• ViaCyte, Fate & More: Xconomy Awards San Diego Big Idea Finalists

  The finalists in the Big Idea category of the Xconomy Awards San Diego are pursuing ambitious goals in pursuit of better ways of improving health. Their approaches range, from a new way to deliver insulin to patients with Type 1 diabetes... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo5/16/19

• Laurie Glimcher To Headline Xconomy Keynote Series in Boston in September

  As groundbreaking therapies and diagnostics are coming to market, more patients are benefiting from the promise of precision medicine, but many are not, or aren’t able to access the latest treatments and technologies. What are hospitals and drug and diagnostic developers... Read more »

  Corie Lok5/16/19

• Pillar Fuels Second Go-Round With $100M Fund for Boston Startups

  It took a few more years than initially planned, but early-stage venture firm Pillar has raised the $100 million fund it wanted.

  Launching with fanfare in 2016 under former North Bridge Venture Partners’ Jamie Goldstein, Pillar set its sights on $100... Read more »

  Brian Dowling5/16/19

• Ginkgo Eyes Antibiotics With Deal for Warp Drive’s Gene “Mining” Tech

  Microbes designed by Ginkgo Bioworks are used in consumer products such as fragrances and beverages, and they’re undergoing research for applications in agriculture and medicine. The synthetic biology company has been pushing to expand its technology to more uses, and its... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/15/19

• Science & Strategy Stars: Xconomy Awards San Diego Secret Weapon Finalists

  [Updated 11:30 a.m. 5/16. See below.] Success in life sciences is always a team effort. Often, those doing the heavy lifting do so behind the scenes, without much external recognition of their role. To celebrate these hidden stars, we... Read more »

  Sarah de Crescenzo5/15/19

• Vertex Continues Plan to Diversify, Strikes a $70M Pact With Kymera

  Vertex Pharmaceuticals is best known for its cystic fibrosis franchise. But over the past several years Vertex has been making inroads elsewhere, and a deal it is announcing this morning continues that strategy.

  Vertex (NASDAQ: VRTX), of Boston, will pay... Read more »

  Ben Fidler5/15/19

• Endpoint Security Company CrowdStrike Files Publicly for IPO

  CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity company that identified the two Russian government-linked hacker groups that invaded the Democratic National Committee (DNC)’s network during the 2016 presidential campaign, filed publicly for an initial public offering on Tuesday.

  Sunnyvale, CA-based CrowdStrike sells cloud-based security... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/14/19

• Weather Tech Q&A: Understory CEO on “Ground Truth,” Climate Change

  [Updated 5/17/19, 3:56 pm ET. See below.] As climate change brings more extreme and unpredictable weather, the stakes for improving the ability to track and forecast atmospheric conditions are rising.

  That has contributed to a growing interest in startups... Read more »

  Jeff Engel5/14/19

• Respond Raises $20M to Advance Automated Response to Cyberattacks

  In business sectors such as warehouse operations, automation may put a company’s current employees out of work in some cases. In the cybersecurity sector, automation can take up a multitude of tasks without displacing any staffers—because there aren’t enough qualified humans... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/14/19

• Stock, Profit & AI: Carbon Black CEO Reviews Year Since IPO

  It’s been a little over a year since Carbon Black debuted on the Nasdaq stock exchange, raising $152 million selling its shares to the public for the first time.

  The Waltham, MA-based cybersecurity company’s stock price (NASDAQ: CBLK) has bounced... Read more »

  Brian Dowling5/13/19

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• Meet the X of the Year Finalists for the Xconomy Awards San Diego

  The Xconomy Awards categories weren’t enough to capture the full diversity of the San Diego life science community. So we at Xconomy created X of the Year for people who are so unique they needed their own categories. Read on for... Read more »

  Corie Lok5/13/19

• ElevateBio Gets $150M to Grow a Crop of Gene & Cell Therapy Startups

  When a biotech startup is ready to test an experimental therapy it faces a pricey choice: Should it make its drug in-house, or hire a contract manufacturer? The decision is particularly expensive for companies developing complex gene and cell therapies, which... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/13/19

• Tech Ethics, Regulation & Strategy: Here’s the Napa Summit Agenda

  With Uber’s long-awaited IPO, Facebook’s mounting controversies, and ongoing debates over drug pricing and safety issues, come a great responsibility. A big story in the innovation community now is about the ethics and regulation of tech and life sciences. What are... Read more »

  Gregory T. Huang5/10/19

• Register Today and Save on “What’s Hot in Boston Biotech” on May 21

  It finally is starting to feel like spring in Boston, which means our annual half-day life science forum, “What’s Hot in Boston Biotech,” is just around the corner. It’s happening on Tuesday, May 21, at Bristol-Myers Squibb in Cambridge,... Read more »

  Ashley Gentile5/10/19

• Bio Roundup: Rare Disease Showdowns, Prices on TV, Dealmania & More

  The market for drugs for rare or “orphan” diseases continues to grow. An April report from Evaluate Pharma predicted sales of orphan drugs to rise 12 percent a year between now and 2024, when they will account for an estimated 20... Read more »

  Ben Fidler5/10/19

• Boston Tech Watch: MIT Solves, AltioStar Raises & Enel Scouts

  [Updated 5/9/19, 11:00 am. See below.] The week in Boston tech news saw the launch of a philanthropic venture fund at MIT, some large fundraising rounds, an open source acquisition, and more.

  —MIT is raising a philanthropic venture fund to... Read more »

  Brian Dowling5/10/19

• Uber Completes $8.1B Public Market Debut in Spite of Tumultuous Past

  [Updated 5/10/19, 5 pm ET. See below.] Ride-hailing giant Uber secured $8.1 billion in new capital late Thursday as it priced an initial public offering that set its market capitalization at $82.4 billion, according to calculations by The... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/9/19

• Two Days, Five Biotech IPOs, and $359M Raised for Clinical Trials

  It will be hard to top last year’s flurry of biotech companies joining the public markets, but this week is shaping up to be the busiest for life science IPOs in recent memory. Five biotechs priced their IPOs and at least... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/9/19

• Nominations for Xconomy Awards Boston Ending Soon

  The Xconomy Awards Boston program has celebrated the best in the area’s life sciences industry for the last two years. We couldn’t have done it without receiving hundreds of nominations of the people, companies, and organizations that are blazing trails in... Read more »

  Corie Lok5/9/19

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• Mobility News: Cruise’s New Cash, Tesla’s Pivot to Robotaxis & More

  As the mobility industry waits with baited breath to see how Uber’s IPO will play out on Friday, there is plenty of news being made elsewhere in the sector. Cruise scored another massive investment, Toyota AI Ventures opened a new fund,... Read more »

  Sarah Schmid Stevenson5/8/19

• Acquia Buys Open Source Marketing Automation Software Firm Mautic

  Open source website software company Acquia is buying marketing automation startup Mautic, the companies said. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

  Acquia, based in Boston, develops open source tools to manage websites built using the open source content management system... Read more »

  Brian Dowling5/8/19

• Goldfinch Bio Lands $55M From Gilead in Kidney Drug R&D Pact

  Goldfinch Bio set out to build a database of patients with kidney diseases, which it could study to understand the biology and genetics of kidney disorders in order to develop better drugs. The biotech startup is making headway on its research... Read more »

  Frank Vinluan5/8/19

• Lyft Posts $1.1B Loss for Q1 in First Earnings Report Post-IPO

  Newly public ride-hailing company Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT) filed its first-quarter earnings results Tuesday, reporting a 95 percent increase in revenue compared with the same period in 2018, but a net loss of nearly $1.14 billion.

  That first-quarter loss includes $894 million... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/7/19

• SMA, Migraine Data Lead Neuro Highlights from AAN Meeting

  The American Academy of Neurology meeting in Philadelphia is rolling on through the end of this week. There has been plenty of news to digest already. New clinical data could herald cutting-edge treatments for migraine, the rare disease spinal muscular atrophy,... Read more »

  Ben Fidler5/7/19

• Canadian VCs Lead US in Gender Parity, But Both Need Work: Report

  Women hold a small fraction of venture capital leadership roles in the US and Canada. A new report suggests their clearest path to venture investing may run through corporate innovation arms.

  While only 15.9 percent of corporate venture capital (CVC) leaders... Read more »

  Angela Shah5/7/19

• Exabeam Raises $75M To Compete With Splunk, Other Security Leaders

  Landing its second shot of new capital in less than a year, cybersecurity startup Exabeam announced today it secured $75 million in a Series E funding round co-led by new investor Sapphire Ventures and returning investor Lightspeed Venture Partners.

  San Mateo,... Read more »

  Bernadette Tansey5/7/19

• Verve Has Top Cardio-Geneticist, $58.5M to Aim CRISPR at Heart Attacks

  A new startup wants to edit out the world’s biggest killer. Prominent cardiologist and geneticist Sekar Kathiresan is heading up a new company, Verve Therapeutics, that will develop gene-altering medicine to prevent heart attacks. Heart disease is the leading cause of... Read more »

  Alex Lash5/7/19

• FDA OKs Pfizer Rare Disease Drug, Sets Up Battle With Alnylam, Akcea

  [Updated 5/6/19, 9:20 am ET. See below.] A year ago, there were no FDA-approved medicines available for US patients with the debilitating rare genetic disease transthyretin amyloidosis (ATTR). Things have changed fast, however: With the FDA’s decision to approve... Read more »

  Ben Fidler5/6/19

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