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Biogen Idec’s scientists have a vision for regenerative medicine, and it has nothing to do with what’s been written and said about embryonic stem cells.
Deep in Biogen’s pipeline, on the verge of entering clinical trials, are a pair of regenerative medicines that the company hopes will become trailblazers in the world of neurological diseases. [...]
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The global cleantech industry stayed on a bull run despite a shaky economy in 2008, but the momentum is bound to slow down this year. That was the key finding from a report released yesterday by Portland, OR-based Clean Edge, a consulting firm.
The three major clean energy sectors—solar photovoltaics, wind power, and biofuels—saw their combined [...]
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Focus groups are such a standard part of our market-driven culture that they’ve long since become the subject of parody. Decision-makers are seen as being afraid to act without consulting them; surely, no political party would pick a candidate, no legislator would introduce a big policy initiative, and no movie studio would green-light a big-budget [...]
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Qualcomm said today the Korean Fair Trade Commission has made allegations about “the lawfulness of certain business practices.” The company says the allegations, set forth in a case examiner’s report, relate to Qualcomm’s integration of multimedia technologies into its chipsets, which are widely used in cell phones, along with “rebates and discounts provided to its [...]
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Entrepreneur resource site Seattle 2.0 has announced it is hosting a startup awards ceremony on May 7 at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. Nominations are open from now until March 25 in 10 categories including best startup, best venture capitalist, best angel investor, and best startup technologist. Finalists will be selected by a panel [...]
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The Obama campaign, and subsequently his administration, had been hinting for a long time that it would allow researchers to use federal funds to study human embryonic stem cell “lines” which had, under the policies of President Bush, been legal to study only with private funding. Considering the relatively small number of scientists [...]
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Enclarity, a healthcare IT company based in Aliso Viejo, CA, announced today it has closed a $5.5 million Series C round led by Bellevue, WA-based Ignition Partners and Boston, MA-based Bain Capital Ventures. The funds will be used for R&D and product development. Enclarity makes software that helps companies manage healthcare provider information and records.
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A survey released today by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) says San Diego is the best midsize city in the United States for remote working. The nationwide survey commissioned by the Redmond, WA, software giant found that U.S. employers generally support remote-working programs, although just 39.4 percent have a policy that details how their employees can [...]
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Seahorse Bioscience, a North Billerica, MA-based maker of instruments for studying mitochondrial function in cells from people with various health problems, announced yesterday that it has acquired BioProcessors Corp., a Woburn, MA, company that makes automated cell-culture equipment for pharmaceutical research. Seahorse didn’t say how much it paid for BioProcessors, but it did reveal that [...]
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[Updated at 2:30 pm with additional commentary. See details below]
After President Barack Obama signed a new executive order yesterday that clears the way to resume federal funding for stem cell research, we asked some local Xconomists and other biotech leaders for their reaction. The president’s order reversed eight years of federal funding restrictions imposed by [...]
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It was a very quiet week for deals in the Northwest, with just a trickle of activity in software, security, and biotech.
—Seattle-based Haute Secure, a software firm focused on computer security against malware, raised about $1.6 million in Series A funding. Investors in the round included Silicon Valley firms Baseline Ventures and Sherpalo Ventures.
—LookStat, a [...]
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For entrepreneurs and investors alike, it was a sad day back in January, when Y Combinator founder Paul Graham announced he would stay in Silicon Valley year round and give up splitting his startup incubation activities between Mountain View and Cambridge, MA, where Y Combinator has traditionally held forth each summer. On his website, Graham [...]
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Flameouts are the norm for any company that dares to try to stimulate the body’s immune system to fight cancer cells. Cell Genesys, Genitope, Favrille, and Antigenics have been added to the long list of companies that have stumbled in this promising field that hasn’t yet produced a single FDA-approved therapy. One of the sector [...]
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The digital broadcast center for Qualcomm’s MediaFLO mobile TV service is a hushed, dimly lit room in San Diego that is dominated by 24 flat-screen, rear-projection screens mounted along one wall. The engineers in the room face these ever-changing displays at work stations equipped with even more flat-panel screens, so the darkness is illuminated by [...]
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The old joke about management consultants is that they’ll look at your watch, tell you what time it is, and hand you a bill for $50,000.
But if you’re a healthcare company and you hire Scientia Advisors, here’s what’s more likely to happen: they’ll look at your watch, notice that it’s running slow, take it apart, [...]
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In Finland I am a reporter for Ilta-Sanomat, Helsinki’s second-largest newspaper. I write about Finland’s Nokia a lot, so I may have a different perspective on Qualcomm, the San Diego-based chipset maker.
For us Finns, Nokia is a larger-than-life, close-to-home success story. We speak the same strange language and it’s our only global giant. In the [...]
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San Diego-based Leap Wireless (NASDAQ: LEAP) today is launching its Cricket unlimited wireless service in the greater Philadelphia area. That’s the second major market the low-cost wireless provider has entered since January, when Cricket began service in Chicago. The company, which announced its move yesterday, is now forecasting 5.3 million subscribers this year. At the [...]
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Lots of creative entrepreneurs are popping up in the Northwest cleantech business, so we invited three of them to explain their ideas at our upcoming Xconomy Forum, The Rise of Cleantech in the Northwest, on March 26. These new special guests will offer up expertise in biofuels, energy storage, and conservation—some of the region’s key [...]
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In the burgeoning software hub of Portland, OR, one company is breaking new ground today. Jive Software, a maker of “social business software” that helps employees communicate with each other and manage their work information, is releasing a new product called SBS 3.0. The software is targeted to businesses, and its goal is to let [...]
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Henry Chesbrough, the UC Berkeley business professor who wrote the influential 2003 book Open Innovation, argued that companies need to do a better job of incubating, cataloguing, and licensing the knowledge and inventions they have in-house, and of bringing in intellectual property from outside, if that’s what’s needed to jump-start product development. But while many [...]
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Marcelo Calbucci’s Seattle 2.0 index of local startups’ websites is out for February, and shows little movement at the top. Zillow, Pet Holdings, iLike, BuddyTV, and Robot Co-op have the top five sites, based on traffic estimates. Calbucci points out a few sites in the top 20 that were not there a year ago: BigOven, [...]
Burlington, MA-based Veracode, which tests corporate software for back doors and other security holes by analyzing its raw binary code, has collected half of a $10 million third financing round, according to a regulatory filing cited by PE Hub. The investors for the round include Atlas Venture, .406 Ventures, Macrovision, Polaris Venture Partners, and Symantec. [...]
Stemgent, a startup in Cambridge, MA, and San Diego that makes consumable materials for stem cell research labs, has raised $14 million in venture capital, according to PE Hub. The company’s backers include HealthCare Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures, according to PE Hub. CEO Ian Ratcliffe didn’t immediately return a phone call seeking comment about the deal. Stemgent [...]
Seattle-based Haute Secure, a maker of security software that protects computers against malware, has raised about $1.6 million in Series A funding, according to PE Hub, which cites a regulatory filing. Investors in the round include Silicon Valley VC firms Baseline Ventures and Sherpalo Ventures.
Last week, we published a series of three stories documenting the companies and organizations in the Pacific Northwest that are focused on alternative energy and cleantech. We organized the lists by geography, breaking out separate lists for companies in Washington, Oregon, and British Columbia. Now we can take a step back, analyze the trends in [...]
San Diego’s Victory Pharma, a venture-backed pharmaceutical company that specializes in treatments for pain, said today it has raised $45 million in a secondary investment round. The investment was headed by Essex Woodlands Health Ventures of Palo Alto, CA, and included existing investor Ampersand Ventures of Wellesley, MA.Victory, which acquired its lead drug product in [...]
“Robot coming through…Robot.” That was the cry, heard throughout the day Saturday at Boston University’s Agganis Arena, scene of the Boston regional finals of the annual FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics competition. The robots were constantly on the move as teams ushered them back and forth from the competition area—think basketball, [...]
Surface Logix got a new CEO on board last fall, and five months later it has nailed down a load of new cash. The Brighton, MA-based biotech company, which uses an unusual chemical trick to treat obesity and diabetes, has secured $20 million to see if it can prove its experimental drugs work in human [...]
Most of the teams that gathered at the San Diego Sports Arena last week came from the American Southwest—from places like Flagstaff, AZ, and El Centro, CA. One team came all the way from Pennsylvania. Another came from Brazil. But these teams didn’t come to the arena to play hockey, football, or some other sport. They [...]
Most doctors in the U.S. have never heard of Athenahealth, the Watertown, MA-based firm offering Web-based software for managing billing, electronic medical records (EMRs), and other functions in physician practices. But the federal government plans to invest $19 billion to make funds available for doctors to switch from the usual paper-based systems to electronic medical [...]
It’s hard for any company to raise capital in this recession, but several San Diego life sciences startups disclosed last week they had done just that. A few bright spots also appeared during a local seminar on mergers and acquisitions—so let the news light your way. —A big deal on the other side of North America last [...]
No way would American consumers ever switch to online banking. It’s too risky, people used to tell David Cerino in the 1990s. Travel? Same story. Consumers would never voluntarily put their credit card numbers into a website that could get hacked. Turned out the switch to online banking and travel took less than four years, as [...]
San Diego’s Cypress Bioscience (NASDAQ: CYPB) and New York’s Forest Laboratories (NYSE: FRX) said Friday their launch of a new drug for treating fibromyalgia, which was expected to be available this month, has been delayed by several months. The companies now say they expect to ship the recently approved drug milnacipran HCL (Savella) to wholesalers and [...]
Cell Therapeutics has eliminated 34 jobs in connection with the sale of its lone approved drug, Zevalin. The Seattle-based biotech company (NASDAQ: CTIC), which has run dangerously low on cash, made the disclosure Friday afternoon in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The cuts represent about 28 percent of the company’s workforce, and [...]
First of all, the terms “downturn” and “recession” don’t do justice to the current climate, says early-stage tech investor Andy Sack. As he puts it, “This is the seminal event of our lifetimes. This is our World War II. I guarantee I’ll be talking to my grandchildren about the Depression of 2009-10: ‘Make sure you [...]
Seattle-based BuddyTV has rolled out a fantasy league where TV fans can bet on a roster of contestants from reality shows like American Idol, Survivor, and Dancing with the Stars. The move is an effort to make the site, which is attracting more than 6 million visitors a month, more sticky. BuddyTV was founded in [...]
Reading, MA-based Vitalize Consulting Services, which manages IT implementation projects for big healthcare companies, announced today that it has acquired rival r3 Health Partners of Santa Ana, CA. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Vitalize is backed by SV Life Sciences, Ferrer Freeman and Company, and Bank of America.
This week saw news of two interesting acquisitions and a couple of huge venture financings, among other deals cut by New England tech and life sciences firms. — Burlington, MA-based Nuance Communications (NASDAQ:NUAN), after a series of unsuccessful offers begun last summer, has finally convinced the board of the Canadian firm Zi (NASDAQ:ZICA) to accept Nuance’s [...]
Driving down Prospect Street in La Jolla one day in January 2008, Jay Lichter got so dizzy he had to pull over. After a stop in the ER, he ended up in the office of Jeff Harris, the chief of ear, nose, and throat surgery at the UC San Diego. The diagnosis: Meniere’s (Men-yay’s) disease, [...]
File this under “no surprise there”: GlassHouse Technologies, the Framingham, MA, IT consulting company that filed for a $100 million initial public offering in October 2007, has now pulled the offering, according to an SEC filing cited by Reuters. The firm cited “market conditions” in its decision. GlassHouse has continued to raise money and add [...]
Does Microsoft innovate? What impact is it having on the startup community these days? Say what you want about the company, but its ex-employees are on a tear. In the past few months, we’ve seen a spike in the number of startups formed by ex-Microsofties who have recently left the company. With the specter of its [...]
Nowhere but America makes it possible for a company to pursue its dreams for 28 years without making a profit. Even in the most optimistic times, it’s hard to explain. So how can it possibly be, in the depths of recession, that things are looking up at Waltham, MA-based ImmunoGen? This company has been around since [...]
Like any entrepreneur, Lou Ryan has a job that’s roughly akin to kindling a blaze from a faint spark. In Ryan’s case, though, it might be more like trying to rebuild a fire that was started in 1995. Ryan, 54, is the software industry veteran (and former venture partner at Menlo Park, CA-based Sand Hill Capital) who [...]
I titled my January 23 column “E-Book Readers on the iPhone: They’re Not Quite Kindle Slayers Yet.” How quickly technology marches ahead. In the weeks since then, three very compelling new options have arrived for people like me who want to read e-books but balk at the price tag on Amazon’s Kindle 2, the [...]
Amazon announced today a new service whereby customers can trade in used video games for store credit on any eligible items—not just games. The move is seen as a challenge to retailers with existing trade-in programs like GameStop, Electronics Boutique, and Toys “R” Us. Last month, Amazon officially entered the downloadable casual games market, launching [...]
Today, President Obama appointed Vivek Kundra federal chief information officer, which is a new administrative position in the U.S. government. Kundra, currently the District of Columbia’s chief technology officer, will be in charge of policy and strategic planning of federal investments in information technology. Kundra, 34, has previous experience as an executive at the DC-area [...]
I just learned that there is a very interesting angel investing conference, happening as I type this, in Silicon Valley. The confab, bringing together angels and entrepreneurs, was organized by Paul Graham, of Y Combinator. It is live streaming here on Justin.tv. A parade of speakers seems to be imparting some great advice on angel investing. [...]
Proteon Therapeutics says it has closed a $38 million Series B round of financing to fund development of its drug for kidney disease patients on chronic dialysis—and the Waltham, MA-based company has struck a separate deal that gives Swiss drug giant Novartis an option to buy the firm if the drug, the lead treatment in [...]
Here at Xconomy, we love our iPhones and Blackberries and Windows Mobile smartphones, and we love the local companies that create cool software and services for them. In fact, we love them so much we’re organizing an April 7 conference on “The Future of Mobile Innovation in New England“—and we’re looking for companies who want [...]
Spark Capital of Boston and Grandbanks Capital of Newton Center, MA, are among the investors in a $12 million Series D round announced today by SendMe Mobile, a San Francisco startup that sells ringtones, games, wallpaper, and other content to mobile phone users. Triangle Peak Partners led the round, which also involved True Ventures and [...]