This Week’s Biotech Highlights

I have been “gone fishing” for the last few days so most of the week’s developments were in a catch-all post that ranged from Sanofi’s further branching out into generics to a Dalhousie study on global fisheries management.

There were a couple of big catches this week: 

• Venture-captialists seem to have reeled in some new funds — the bills in Congress to reauthorize the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) program allow companies backed by VCs to participate.
• And Ogilvy Renault (my home-away-from-home) landed the Golden Law Award as Canada’s best law firm for the second year running.

And there are a couple of fishing expeditions still in progress:

• Dr. Reddy’s, the generics maker, is fishing for access to Celgene’s anti-cancer drug Revlimid to use in producing a generic version; but so far the tight controls on Revlimid distribution are leaving them high and dry.
• And BIO and PhRMA are angling for a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that would limit the number of whistleblower suits that could be brought (those FCA claims are a major source of health care fraud litigation).

See what else the week spawned at the Cross-Border Biotech Blog.