This Week’s Biotech Highlights

The Bank of Canada announced this week that the recession is coming to an end, and although U.S. numbers don’t look quite so good, things were turning around for biotech as well. Nothing breeds a good investment mood like successes, and this week had plenty.

• First off, Venture Capital stats for Q2 in the U.S. showed biotech and healthcare as garnering the biggest share of investments, and Human Genome Sciences scored a big clinical success with its Lupus treatment, which really changed the mood on Wall Street.
• Medarex shareholders got a friendly $2.1 billion (with a “b”) offer from Bristol-Myers Squibb and even though the deal is pretty good for BMS too, all reports were positive.
• You know times are good when new money enters a sector, and that’s exactly what happened with Imperial Capital, a Toronto-based private equity shop that raised $126 million in its fourth fund, which made its first investment in a U.S. company that manages clinical trial reviews.
• Regulatory stars were aligned as well, with a personalized approach to cancer treatment gaining favour in the U.S., and a court upholding the Data Protection Regulations in Canada.

In addition to the goodies on the Cross-Border Biotech Blog, there’s lots to check out on my Twitter stream @crossborderbio, which I’ve been using to post breaking biotech and securities news and for fun conversation with other bio-nerds and with fellow Slaw denizen @conniecrosby.