This Week’s Biotech Highlights

Things were heating up in the world of biotech this week!

Hot deals — some of the biggest numbers Canadian companies have seen this year:

• Bioniche licensed its Urocidin product to U.S.-based Endo Pharmaceuticals for $20 million up front and the potential for over $110 million more; and
• Allostera raised $17 million in venture capital.

Hot entrepreneurs — new sources of capital and new training bode well for a fresh crop of companies:

• Teralys Capital opened the doors to start spending its $700 million fund; and
• Two new initiatives — one in Waterloo and one in Ottawa — are training and supporting young entrepreneurs.

Hot transplants — U.S. news that will impact Canadian science:

• Canada will have its own online repository of free, full-text academic publications: Pubmed Central Canada is in the works; and
• Francis Collins — a co-discoverer of the Cystic Fibrosis gene with Toronto’s Lap-Chee Tsui — will be the new head of the National Institutes of Health.

Hot trends — three of our Trends in 2009 saw new developments this week:

• Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health is starting a research program correlating genetics with treatment responses right at the intersection of comparative effectiveness and personalized medicine;
• A big boost for R&D in China was the highlight of a few stories about increasing innovative activity in the developing world, and innovator pharma’s increasing moves towards generics and biosimilars; and
• Electronic medical records took two steps forward and one step back, with a data privacy fiasco in Alberta but cool new programs in Montreal and Ottawa.

All that plus piping hot tweets from the brand new @crossborderbio on Twitter at the Cross-Border Biotech Blog.