A great group of four researchers shared updates on their lab’s recent findings at this morning’s SciCafe in Boston.   Cancer, autoimmunity, stem cells – lots of great science. For those that don’t know SciCafe, here’s the background: Nature Biotech’s

Todd Zion, the founder of the adjustable insulin company, SmartCells, has done wonders for the Boston Life Science angel community – and reinvigorated their interest in funding therapeutics companies.  It’s a great story and Todd deserves the attention he’s been

Last week’s news about Orexigen’s Contrave obesity drug and its struggles with the FDA’s Division of Metabolic and Endocrinologic Products has left me puzzled.  Obesity is such an enormous epidemic, one has to wonder why the FDA is taking such

I heard AVEO Pharmaceuticals’ CEO Tuan Ha-Ngoc speak at Convergence last month and decided AVEO would be a superb company to profile as a way to highlight the triad we all dream of in biotech venture investing: great science, great

We all recognize that realizing value from a biotech company has historically been geared to one of two paths, IPO or M&A, and that they’ve both been getting tougher.  There’s been a number of articles recently about some of the

Matt Herper over at FORBES suggested I update and repost the “Glimmer of Hope” “Class of 2010″ biotech IPOs blog post, which I’ve now done, and the performance continues to impress: The average and median performance of this “Class” is 33%

Lots of great advice exists for tech entrepreneurs trying to pitch to VCs, but very little for the aspiring life science entrepreneur, especially for therapeutics startups.  Since that’s the type of deal we invest a good portion of our fund

Understanding the impact of different venture capital deal terms is not well appreciated by most Life Science entrepreneurs, especially in the early stage ecosystem.  Moreover, knowing what the “market rate” for these terms are is rarely data-driven and often more

Everyone knows that the biotech IPO market is and has been challenging.  But one of the most troubling developments, and the least transparent to the outside, has been the increased importance of significant insider participation to get IPO’s priced. In

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

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

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