This Week’s Biotech Highlights

This week was a week of small steps in biotech. And not the kind of small steps that are actually giant leaps, either.

Canadian VC funding saw a big leap for tech and cleantech funding, but only a marginal increase for biotech. This news roughly coincided with the purchase of the VenGrowth funds by Covington Capital this week, which seems like a big leap, but will probably end up only being a minor step in the reshaping of the industry in Ontario.

Both the United States and Europe took small steps toward increasing the availability of biosimilars (“generic” versions of complex biologic drugs) this week. The EMA introduced guidelines for antibody biosimilars and the FDA formally announced a meeting that has been in the works for some time to implement the U.S. biosimilars legislation that passed as part of health reform.

Public thinking about personalized medicine took a small step forward with the release of a “personalized health manifesto,” which read more as “white paper” than as “call to arms” but that nevertheless pointed in some interesting directions.

Stay tuned to The Cross-Border Biotech Blog and @crossborderbio on Twitter to keep an eye on all of the industry’s baby steps, strides, leaps and paradigm shifts.