23andMe: Victim of an Overboard FDA Crackdown, or Provocateur?
Todd Smith Last Friday, the Food and Drug Administration issued a warning letter to the direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andMe ordering it to stop marketing its Personal Genome Service....
View ArticleIs This the End of Premium Pricing in Drug and Device Innovation?
Mohit Kaushal Healthcare costs in the United States today account for approximately 18 percent of our gross domestic product—far more than any other developed country. Americans’ average life...
View ArticleModern Day Scrooges Are Ruining Our Health Care System
Stewart Lyman More than a 150 years ago Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol introduced the character Ebenezer Scrooge, who was the embodiment of greed, “tight-fisted…. a squeezing, wrenching, ...
View ArticleAn Innovative Cleantech Strategy: Invest in Solar PV for Nonprofits
Lee Barken For decades we’ve been led to believe that donating money is the only way to financially support a nonprofit organization committed to a mission we care about. However, ...
View ArticleFDA’s Culture Is Genetically Dominant Over 23andMe’s Business Model
John Wilbanks I’ve been following the 23andMe saga with dread and fascination and frustration since it hit in late November. If you’re not up to date, David Dobbs has the ...
View ArticleHow Do You Want to Spend the Next Four Years of Your Life?
View the Slideshow Steve Blank As our Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences class winds down, a good number of the 26 teams are trying to figure out whether they should ...
View ArticleThere May Be More to the FDA/23andMe Story Than Meets the Eye
View the Slideshow Joanne Gibbons Consumers and life science startup companies alike are reacting strongly to the recent decision by the FDA to restrict the genetic testing company, 23andMe, from ...
View ArticleA Revolution is Taking Place in the Treatment of Blood Cancers
View the Slideshow Pieter Droppert I try to avoid sensationalizing early clinical trial results presented at medical conferences, what’s commonly known as “hype over hope.” But at this year’s ...
View ArticleHow Nelson Mandela Inspired Me to Fight Infectious Disease
Alan Aderem [Editor's Note: Alan Aderem is a former political activist from South Africa who now serves as the President of Seattle BioMed, a research institute that focuses on ...
View ArticleFor CytRx’s Insiders, What a Difference a Day Makes
Brad Loncar CytRx (NASDAQ: CYTR) investors had a lot to be happy about last week. The good times came on Wednesday, Dec. 11, after the small cap biotech ...
View ArticleA Need to Know: Adding DNA and Geomedicine Data to Patient Records
Bill Davenhall It takes a lot of patience to be a patient. There are about 1.2 billion physician office visits annually in the United States, according to the National ...
View ArticleMy Top Picks in Bio-Venture Innovations, and Predictions for 2014
Standish Fleming I am a biotech VC, but not a techie. So I don’t follow stem cells, gene therapy, and other similar “blockbuster” technologies in the life sciences. Rather than ...
View ArticleRemembering James L. Vincent, Longtime Biogen Leader
Phillip Sharp and Victor McElheny Are they making innovators quite like James L. Vincent any more? This question, spurred by Vincent’s death on Dec. 5, has more edge these days ...
View ArticleTech Bubble Leaks Air, Healthcare Bests Biotech, & More for 2014
Michael A. Greeley The coming year will see some good news and some bad news in tech. Here are five predictions. • IPOs: This past year witnessed an ...
View ArticleScientific Reproducibility: Raising the Standards for Biomedicine
Glenn Begley The vast majority of findings published in high-profile biomedical research publications can’t be reproduced by independent laboratories. Multiple groups have come to this same shocking...
View ArticleBad Statistics, and Bad Training, Are Sabotaging Drug Discovery
Stewart Lyman One of the most widely read college textbooks in the 1960s and ‘70s was How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff. Despite the humorous title, the serious ...
View ArticleU.S. Biomedical Research at a Precipice
Justin Chakma [Editor's Note: this post was co-authored by Justin Chakma, Dr. Reshma Jagsi, and Stephen M. Sammut.] Since 1950, U.S. government funding has supported research underlying ...
View ArticleWelcome to Zappos-Style Health Innovation
Rushika Fernandopulle Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh’s effort to revitalize downtown Las Vegas includes last month’s launch of a new clinic, run by Iora Health and spearheaded by physician Zubin Damania. ...
View ArticleUsing Cutting-Edge Science and Technology Against an Age-Old Disease
Steve Reed When I started working on the research and science of leprosy more than a decade ago, people thought this chronic infectious disease would eliminate itself and burn out ...
View ArticleIn California, Walgreens & Walmart Are Rethinking Retail Health
Zachary Landman On January 1, 2014, a bill signed by Governor Jerry Brown fundamentally transformed how pharmacists operate in California. The new law allows pharmacists in the most populous state ...
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