The biotech IPO bonanza appears to be continuing into 2014, with over thirteen offerings already this year.  We’re just now completing the busiest two week period in biotech IPOs ever.  Another dozen or so companies appear likely to price IPOs

While all eyes have been on the raging IPO market in biotech over the past year, the private biotech M&A market has continued its fourth straight year of impressive results. Yesterday, HBM Partners released their always-excellent annual report (here) on

The annual biotech pilgrimage to San Francisco has come to an end, and the upbeat, optimistic sentiment from #JPM14 bodes well as a barometer of the healthcare industry. Amidst the presentations and partying, there was lots of bullish thinking about

Today Zafgen announced its initial results from proof-of-concept study in patients with an obesity-related orphan disease called Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). The news was also covered by Andrew Pollack in the NY Times this morning (here) so I won’t bother with

Today, we are excited to announce that we’ve successfully exited Arteaus Therapeutics to Eli Lilly (see announcement here, here).  It’s fair to say it’s been a superbly executed example of R&D externalization and a win–win for Lilly and Arteaus. Before

Next week kicks off the biggest healthcare investor meeting of the year in San Francisco.  It’s a giant circus of activity revolving around the Westin St Francis in Union Square, with more than 10,000 people gathered from biotech, pharma, startups,

Tis the season for reflecting and predicting, so I figured I’d follow the custom and share some of my thoughts about the state of biotech in 2013 and the year to come. Reflections on 2013. The Biotech IPO Returns.  This

Seed-led venture creation is our focus at Atlas, and, with the closing of our new fund, 2013 has been a very active year for us.  As part of a year-end reflection, it’s a good opportunity to present a quick sketch

The past year has certainly been the most exciting one for Biotech IPOs since 2000, with dozens of new offerings and compelling therapeutic narratives.  But focusing on these new IPOs misses an equal if not more exciting story: the significant

In the tech-dominated venture capital world, 2013 could be called the year of the crowd.  With the JOBS Act and the emergence of credible platforms like AngelList, crowdfunding has come into the mainstream in a meaningful way. Social media, software,

The broad underperformance of the venture capital asset class during the past decade is widely discussed; there’s a frequently-cited assertion that U.S. venture returns trailed the overall public equity stock market in the 2000s. Few if any published analyses have

Scientific reproducibility hit mainstream this month with a feature article and editorial in The Economist; they highlight issues around the failure to replicate peer-reviewed research, academic biases found in science, use of scarce resources in national science budgets, and even share a primer in statistics