Monthly Archives: April 2011

Blackberries, Multi-tasking, and Information Overload
April 28, 2011

Two recent observations prompted me to think about a topic broader than just the life sciences: the information intensity of the world we live in and some of the unhealthy behaviors it has fostered. I met with a biotech entrepreneur

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Bubbles? Big rounds? Not in the Life Sciences
April 26, 2011

There’s been talk about a “bubble” in venture capital recently.   If there is one to debate, its not in the life sciences. While we’ve been relatively steady on an annualized pace in 2009 and 2010, we are down considerably

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Academic-Pharma Deals: A threat or opportunity for VC?
April 19, 2011

Academic-industry partnerships are popping up all over the place these days to fund early stage programs as part of ‘”open innovation” initiatives and “external sourcing” of new pipeline projects.   Here’s a non-exhaustive list of a few such deals this year

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Monsanto & Atlas: Exploring “seeds” together
April 14, 2011

Today we announced a novel alliance with Monsanto to identify new life science technologies and explore the potential for creating/investing in new seed-stage startups around them.  It’s an exciting collaboration that brings a complementary set of interests, capabilities, and access

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CROs as “change-makers” in the Pharma ecosystem
April 13, 2011

Contract Research Organizations (CROs) have historically been sleepy fee-for-service partners for the drug industry, widely disregarded as not innovative, and their scientists certainly not treated with the same professional respect as their counterparts in Pharma R&D. But this is clearly

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Glimmer of hope: Biotech IPO Class of 2010
April 6, 2011

Several recent stories from WSJ and VentureWire have highlighted the challenging performance of the IPO markets for biotech in 2011.  It has indeed been tough: more shares offered at lower prices = more painful dilution.  From a pricing perspective, the

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Tranzyme’s IPO: Not an April Fools joke
April 2, 2011

Tranzyme just got public and will trade on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol TZYM on Monday. Unfortunately the pricing wasn’t an April Fools joke.  They had to sell 53% of the company in the IPO in order to raise under $50M

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Avila: “Bond, Covalent Bond”
April 1, 2011

Jus Singh doesn’t look much like James Bond, but he’s nearly as cool (see pic below). He’s the founder of Avila Therapeutics, a company we’ve backed that is focused on the discovery of targeted covalent inhibitors. When he and Roy

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