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FDA Gives Nod to Momenta’s Anti-Clotting Generic, Ingenix Acquires Picis, Millennium Harnesses BioScale’s Protein-Measuring Technology, & More Boston-Area Life Sciences News
This week saw a long-awaited FDA approval for a Boston-area drug maker, speculation about a possible buyout of a local biotech giant, and some in-depth profiles on other key life sciences players.
—Hospital software maker Picis, of Wakefield, MA, said it is being acquired by Ingenix, an Eden Prairie, MN-based healthcare intelligence and analytics firm. The companies didn’t disclose financials details of the transaction, but Ingenix said it will maintain Picis’ locations in Wakefield and throughout the U.S. and Europe.
—Cambridge, MA-based Momenta Pharmaceuticals nabbed a long-sought FDA approval for a generic version of the anti-clotting drug it developed with Novartis unit Sandoz. The regulatory approval proves that Momenta (NASDAQ: MNTA) can make equivalents of more complex drug mixtures, which pose a greater challenge for would-be generics makers than do more conventional small-molecule pills, Luke wrote.
—Ryan took a look at RainDance Technologies, a Lexington, MA-based company developing next-generation genomic analysis technology. The startup’s first commercial product is a system that conducts thousands of DNA experiments simultaneously, which has caught the eye of research houses and pharma companies.
—Cambridge-based BioScale has flown relatively under the radar while developing a method of measuring biological samples using sound wave technology, Ryan wrote. But the company has caught the eye of another Cambridge biotech player: Millennium, The Takeda Oncology Company, which is using BioScale’s technology to measure cancer-related proteins for its drug research. The access comes as part of BioScale’s beta release of its technology.
—Following last week’s talk of a potential acquisition of Genzyme by drug giant Sanofi-Aventis, Ryan asked readers to weigh in on how much they thought Cambridge-based Genzyme’s stock would be worth in a buyout. Their answers averaged out to $76.29 per share, for a total value of about $20.4 billion. That’s well above the $70 per share that the Sanofi (NYSE: SNY) board authorized the company to offer for Genzyme (NASDAQ: GENZ).
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LS9 Shows Recipe For $50 Oil: Genes That Convert Sugar to Diesel in One Step
LS9 is on a quest to make renewable fuel at $50 a barrel, and today it is revealing at least part of the scientific road map it’s been following to get there.
The South San Francisco-based biofuel company is reporting today that it has discovered novel genes from strains of cyanobacteria that are the basis for a one-step process that converts sugars into alkanes—the primary component of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. The discovery and methods used to find these genes are being disclosed online today in Science magazine.
The paper is an important step for LS9, which has already gotten its share of attention because of its ambitious science, prominent founders, big money backers, and the enormous societal problem it is seeking to solve. The company was founded in 2005 by UC Berkeley’s Jay Keasling, Chris Somerville of the Energy Biosciences Institute, and Harvard University’s George Church. LS9 has raised more than $45 million since its beginning from Flagship Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Lightspeed Ventures. The people and the money have rallied behind the idea of swapping a few enzymes inside bacteria so that instead of converting sugars into fatty acids, they could become super-efficient engines for converting sugars into fuels.
LS9 has talked generally about its concept before, but today’s paper in Science is the first to show in detail how a handful of people at the company actually identified the genes in publicly available databases. Competitors like Cambridge, MA-based Joule Biotechnologies and several academic labs have also been on the hunt for these genes, but LS9 says it was confident enough to lay out its scientific methods in a top journal because the patent applications have already been filed and it believes it owns the process.
“It’s a major achievement,” says Andreas Schirmer, the associate director of metabolic engineering at LS9, and the study’s lead author.
These are still very early days in the renewable fuel business, and LS9 has only performed small-scale runs with this process in 1,000-liter tanks at its South San Francisco-based facility. A much more important test for the business will come later this year, as it seeks to reproduce the same process at industrial-sized scale, as I described in a company profile last month. And this is far from the end of the road. LS9 is actively working now to better characterize and optimize the bacterial enzymes that are produced by the genes to create an ever-more efficient process that can really hum at commercial scale.
Cyanobacteria
But today’s news is about the science, so that’s what I asked Schirmer about the most. For more than two decades, scientists had sought to enable natural organisms to convert biomass into alkanes. There are examples in nature of organisms that can pull off this nifty trick in trace quantities, but nobody had been able to pinpoint the genes that carry the instructions for making enzymes that carry out that task.
The LS9 team benefitted from the era of genomics, in which scientists now have public access to vast databases of genome sequences for all sorts of species, including many different strains of cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae). The company’s scientists looked at some of these bacteria that made alkanes, and some that didn’t, and compared their genomes for differences. That helped narrow down the search for the right gene considerably, to make the experiments go quickly, Schirmer says.
In the end, LS9 identified two key enzymes at the heart of the process for creating alkanes. Once those enzymes were identified, it was really just the beginning. The bacteria strains …Next Page »
Comments | Reprints | Share:Xconomy Readers Set $20B Pricetag on Genzyme—Is That Too Rich for Sanofi-Aventis?
We asked our readers to chime in this week on the value of the venerable biotech Genzyme (NASDAQ:GENZ), which has reportedly become an acquisition target of the French drug giant Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE:SNY). Well, the results are in, but the question remains how our readers’ predicted price will match up with what Sanofi offers, and whether that offer will be enough to persuade the powers that be at Genzyme—especially company chief Henri Termeer—to sell.
Our readers sent in the Genzyme stock price that they felt best reflected the company’s value in a buyout, and the average price from our first 100 respondents was $76.29 per share. (See our graph below for a distribution of prices that people submitted.) Thus, our readers think that Genzyme, the world’s biggest maker of drugs for rare diseases, is worth about $20.4 billion. That’s a good deal more than the $70.24 price of Genzyme stock as of 10:31 am Eastern time today, and it might be more than Sanofi wants to part with to own the biotech company.
Sanofi’s board has authorized the company’s executives, led by CEO Chris Viehbacher, to formally offer up to $70 per share or $18.7 billion for Genzyme, Thomson Reuters reported this morning. If it were up to our readers, Genzyme’s Termeer will say “no thanks” to Sanofi’s offer. And according to a Bloomberg News report, Termeer already passed on an informal offer from Sanofi last week, and sources tell the news service that Genzyme is worth up to $22 billion or $80 per share in a takeover.
Genzyme, which had 2009 revenue of $4.5 billion, makes several high-margin drugs for rare illnesses like Gaucher’s and Fabry diseases that would make nice additions to almost any Big Pharma company’s menu of products. (Reports say that other potential Genzyme bidders include British drug behemoth GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) and New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ). On the other hand, Genzyme’s manufacturing woes in recent years, especially at its Allston Landing factory in Boston, present any prospective buyer with some unwanted baggage to inherit in a takeover. Genzyme already paid $175 million in fines to the FDA this year for messy drug-vial-filling operations in Allston, and the agency is threatening the firm with further expensive penalties if it doesn’t clean up its act.
After major shareholders complained about the company’s handling of the manufacturing problems, Genzyme cut deals with activist investors Ralph Whitworth and Carl Icahn this year. Whitworth and two Icahn associates have taken seats on Genzyme’s 13-member board of directors.
Very quickly, we will learn what the Genzyme board’s appetite is for selling the company. In most such cases, it all comes down to how much.
Comments | Reprints | Share:Storwize Bought By IBM
Storwize, a Marlborough, MA-based maker of technology for the real-time compression of data, has agreed to be acquired by IBM (NYSE: IBM). The companies did not reveal the financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close third quarter of this year, but previous press reports have priced the transaction in the neighborhood of $140 million. IBM says the Storwize technology will better enable it to help clients handle large amounts of data, for functions such as analytics. Storwize investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, Tamares Group, and Tokyo Electron Device Limited, according to the company’s website.
Comments | Reprints | Share:Massachusetts Startup Investing Surges to $307M in June, Led by $60M Boston-Power Deal
It wasn’t just temperatures that were heating up in Massachusetts in June. Venture investing in the Bay State’s tech and life sciences startups soared to $307.1 million, brought in through 31 equity-based deals.
For several months this spring, venture investing in the region hovered in the neighborhood of $200 million, according to data provided by our partner, private company intelligence platform CB Insights. A very small part of the increase in June is an artifact of a change in the way we’re putting the list together—we previously reserved the “under the radar” deals worth less than $1 million apiece for a separate list. But the inclusion of those smaller transactions only accounted for an additional $4.1 million and 7 deals.
The real boost came from some mega-deals that went to companies in sectors beyond healthcare—breaking another trend from the past few months, when life sciences companies usually nabbed the top funding spots on our monthly roundups. The big winner in June was Boston-Power, a Westborough, MA-based maker of advanced lithium-ion batteries. Greg reported on this growth equity Series E round when news of it first hit, noting that Boston-Power plans to use the money to expand into international markets, boost production of its battery technologies, and build up its Boston-Area presence. The company is in the early stages of a foray into the electric utility markets, with technologies out to store energy from renewable sources.
Boston-Power was the only company in the energy sector to attract funding last month, but the $60 million deal still made energy the runner-up industry for dollars raised in June. June’s energy investment was also a twenty-fold increase from the $3 million the sector raised in May. Healthcare topped the list for dollars raised by sector in June, with nearly $165 million brought in across 14 equity deals. Ryan wrote about the top healthcare deal in June, $29 million for Cambridge, MA-based FoldRx Pharmaceuticals, a drugmaker that’s soon to file for FDA approval of its first product, a treatment for the neural disease TTR amyloid polyneuropathy, which causes sufferers to lose control of movement in their arms and legs.
There were also a few interesting companies in the smaller deals section of the June investing list. There’s JamHub, a Whitinsville, MA-based startup that’s making what it calls a “silent rehearsal studio” and brought in a $370,000 equity deal last month. Users plug their instruments into the company’s device and can listen and jam out at top volume with their headphones on, while the rest of the world remains undisturbed by the volume that typically accompanies band rehearsals. Check out the demo here.
It seems that startup funding in June followed a trend that we’ve reported in other stories on venture investing in Q2 2010: the dollars are way up this year compared to last. This year’s June numbers are more than double the $145 million that Massachusetts startups pulled in during the same month of 2009.
See below for the full list of Massachusetts equity investments in June.
There were also another seven non-equity deals, that brought in $27.3 million in June. See below for the breakdown.
Comments | Reprints | Share:Aircuity, Focused on “Not Using Energy You Don’t Need,” Tracks and Streamlines Building Ventilation
Given that the air system at Xconomy’s offices seems noisy and erratic most days, I wasn’t that surprised to hear that most buildings are over-ventilated (a bit of information I picked up from Aircuity president and chief operating officer Rob Brierley).
But for businesses running their air systems on overload, this can be more than uncomfortable—it can be costly and harmful to the environment. That’s a problem that Newton, MA-based Aircuity is trying to fix with its ventilation control system, called OptiNet.
Aircuity’s system continuously monitors and samples air particles and sends them to a building’s data center via structured cables that keep the components of the air sampled intact. The data collected is designed to feed directly into systems, built by companies like Honeywell, that typically control ventilation in these large buildings. Based on how a sample matches up with the air quality settings the building system is programmed to meet, these systems can then more intelligently adjust their ventilation. It can also catch harmful levels of substances like carbon monoxide or organic compounds, helping facilities managers directly target the problems.
“We do with air packets what data networks do with data packets,” says Brierley, likening Aircuity’s system to how a data network packages different elements of data together to send them more efficiently to their designated targets. OptiNet tracks building air quality based on parameters like carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide content, dew point, particle content, and total volatile organics composition. Originally Aircuity shipped its technology in stand-alone units for remote sampling and air monitoring, but has since shifted to permanently installing the systems in buildings to interact with ventilation controls.
Aircuity targets customers with buildings whose conditions are continually changing throughout the day due to shifts in occupancy. Those fall into five categories: commercial office buildings, research facilities, hospital and healthcare settings, colleges and universities, and public assembly, which covers facilities like government buildings, conference centers, arenas, and museums. The Aircuity system has been implemented at roughly 120 sites, Brierley says. That includes Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and New York City’s Bank of America Tower, which has nabbed LEED platinum certification, the highest LEED green building rating based on environmental performance and sustainability.
The data monitored in buildings with the Aircuity system are uploaded via an Internet connection to a knowledge center, which Aircuity also monitors remotely for all of its customers, Brierley says. The building systems automatically adjust ventilation based on this data, but Aircuity tracks the information as an additional watch-dogging measure, Brierley says.
Typically, most of these buildings pump too much air through their vents because …Next Page »
Comments | Reprints | Share:New CEOs For Boston-Area Mobile Companies
We tracked a duo of new CEO announcements today, both at companies in the mobile sector.
—Aylus Networks, a Westford, MA-based developer of technology to help mobile operators manage video data on their networks, announced Mark Edwards will be joining the company as CEO. Edwards comes from the helm of mobile device management software company Mformation Technologies. He replaces founder Shamim Naqvi, who will serve as chairman and chief technology officer at the startup, which raised $5.7 million in November.
—Waltham, MA-based Pyxis Mobile, a maker of enterprise platforms for managing mobile applications, said it is bringing on Steven Levy to take over the role of CEO from Bob Mazzarella, who will stay on as chairman of the company’s board. Previously, Levy co-founded and led Macgregor, a maker of order management systems.
Comments | Reprints | Share:Protecting Consumers From Their Own Genetic Data Will Come at a Cost
Last week’s U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing into the direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing industry was a vicious affair, with more than a whiff of the show trial about it. Representatives from testing companies 23andMe, Navigenics and Pathway Genomics faced a barrage of questions about the accuracy and utility of their tests, made all the worse by the fact that most of the Committee’s members seemed unable to distinguish between the more responsible companies in the field and the scammers and bottom-feeders. (Lawyer Dan Vorhaus has a thorough summary of the hearing here.)
And the news for direct-to-consumer companies just kept getting grimmer: the star attraction of the hearing was a new report from a sting operation by the US Government Accountability Office, which detailed the results of anonymous purchases of kits from four DTC testing companies as well as assessments of marketing from 11 other companies approached by the GAO “both by phone and in person” without purchasing kits. While all the companies are listed as anonymous numbers in the report, the first four were revealed in the hearing as the four most prominent personal genomics companies: 23andMe, deCODEme, Pathway Genomics, and Navigenics. The remaining 11, which appear to mostly occupy a far less reputable corner of the industry, currently remain nameless.
The report details a litany of complaints—ranging from the flimsy to the serious—about the marketing, reporting and scientific basis for the companies’ operations. More damagingly, it also includes covertly taped conversations between GAO employees and several DTC companies, now published by the GAO on YouTube. In the tapes, a representative from one company (apparently Navigenics) offers terrible advice to a customer about the implications of breast cancer risk predictions, and a call center operator from another company (apparently Pathway Genomics) enthusiastically promotes non-consensual DNA testing for a customer’s fiance. The remaining companies on the tape, who offer a variety of scientifically bizarre claims to the undercover GAO operatives, aren’t members of the first four (reputable) testing companies, but rather of the still-anonymous 11.
There’s no denying it: the tapes are pure gold for the critics of the DTC testing industry. In the first and third clips, a couple of poorly-trained call center operators at otherwise reputable companies nonchalantly produce stakes that will now be driven into the heart of the DTC genetics industry, over and over again. The remaining three clips appear to depict scam operations—nothing like the products offered by 23andMe, deCODEme, Pathway or Navigenics—that will nonetheless be effectively conflated in the public mind with DTC genetic testing as a whole.
A one-sided attack
The report itself includes some nonsensical complaints. For instance, the fact that “one donor who had a pacemaker implanted 13 years ago to treat an irregular heartbeat was told that he was at decreased risk for developing such a condition.” The tests are clearly labelled as providing a probabilistic risk prediction, not a diagnosis. The GAO criticism is like claiming that the link between smoking and lung cancer is spurious because one individual with lung cancer never smoked.
Others criticisms are more justified. For instance, the differences in the risk predictions offered by different companies to the same individual is a problem that has been raised periodically since the industry’s inception. There’s a clear need for industry-wide standards for marker inclusion and background risk figures. This isn’t disputed by the companies themselves, who in fact have been pleading for the FDA and the NIH to provide official guidelines in these areas; nonetheless, the companies deserve a substantial share of the blame for not resolving these issues earlier.
But overall, the document is obscenely one-sided. It conflates responsible companies offering scientifically valid products with small-time con artists. It ignores …Next Page »
Comments (1) | Reprints | Share:Sales downturn continues to hinder small-business hiring
Bank of America boosts small-business lending by $9 billion
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Health care exchanges could help calm partisan fighting
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