Recent posts and comments

• GM Savors A123Systems and Coskata Deals Amid Dreams of Clean Vehicles That Can’t Crash

  When General Motors unveiled its lavish 330-acre, Eero Saarinen-designed technical center in 1956, company president Harlow Curtice cruised to the podium in a shark-finned, bubble-domed Firebird II gas turbine experimental car.... Read more »

• Biogen Idec Announces Its Own Director Slate—Digs in Against Icahn

  Biogen Idec’s battle with Carl Icahn is heating up in advance of the firm’s upcoming annual meeting—for which a date has yet to be announced. The Cambridge, MA-based biotech giant today... Read more »

• BSX Snares CryoCor for $17.6 Million

  Boston Scientific will acquire San Diego-based CryoCor, with which it has an existing agreement to develop treatments for cardiac arrhythmia, for approximately $17.6 million, the company announced today. Under the... Read more »

• Aileron Raises $10 Million

  Cambridge-based biopharmaceutical company Aileron Therapeutics, which is developing peptide drugs for the treatment of cancer and other diseases, has raised $10 million in a private placement of preferred stock, the company... Read more »

• The Funded Opens Individual VC Ratings to Public View

  Gossip and the inside dope are hard to resist—especially when they pertain to people who might hold your company’s fate in the palm of their hands. So, when you think about... Read more »

• Life Sciences 2028—Three Snapshots of the Future

  A genetic disease probability chart for each person. Drugs prescribed, based on genetic profiles, for those most likely to respond well. The integration of molecular and cellular biology with engineering to... Read more »

• Twist of Fate—How A Band of VCs Recruited a Scientific Dream Team to Control Our Cells’ Destinies

  “Like all VCs,” Amir Nashat is saying, “we come late to the story.”

  Nashat is talking about the formation of Fate Therapeutics, and in one sense what he’s saying is... Read more »

• Icahn Turns Up Heat, Files Suit to Force Biogen Idec to Turn Over Records of Failed Sale

  Activist investor Carl Icahn launched another salvo in his battle to force a sale of Biogen Idec (NASDAQ: BIIB), filing a suit yesterday in a Delaware court demanding that the... Read more »

• Iomega Accepts $213M EMC Purchase Offer

  It’s official. Just weeks after EMC sweetened its previously spurned purchase offer, San Diego-based storage maker Iomega has formally accepted a takeover bid from the Hopkington, MA-based data management and infrastructure... Read more »

• New IDG Capital Fund Thinking Big, Thinking Global

  No press release. No fanfare. Just Pat McGovern talking to VentureWire. And so, the existence of IDG Capital was brought to public attention yesterday.

  The IDG chairman is forming the new... Read more »

• A Word About World Wide Wade—the Debut

  Xconomy is all about hyperlocal coverage of the innovation community in greater Boston and New England. But we also know that our readers have many interests that reach far beyond our... Read more »

• Harvard’s Guru of Tech Transfer: More Seed Funding, Industry Deals Afoot—and the Social Mission is Key

  Harvard has taken a bit of a bashing over the years on the tech transfer front. After all, MIT, the champion of university technology transfer and licensing, is right down the... Read more »

• Lattice Engines Nets $1.7M in Series A Round

  Boston-based Lattice Engines, a maker of business decision analytics software, has completed a $1.7 million Series A funding found led by Battery Ventures, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory... Read more »

• EMC’s Pricey New Offering for Chinese Consumers and Small Businesses—Bad Guanxi?

  Updated, April 5, 2008—We’ve written a few times about EMC’s (NYSE:EMC) carefully crafted strategic push toward cloud computing and software as a service offerings—and how that relates to... Read more »

• It’s Official: IPOs and M&As Plummeted in First Quarter—New England Exits Hard to Find

  Updated and corrected, April 1, 5:15 pm—see note below

  It’s not like we needed a financial report to tell us that things were rotten for investors looking for an exit—but the... Read more »

• Vertex Jumps More Than 25 Percent on Hepatitis Drug Data

  Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) of Cambridge, MA, saw its stock soar today after preliminary data from a small ongoing trial of its oral hepatitis C drug Telaprevir were released in... Read more »

• FIRST Robotics Update—Menino Wowed, Big Crowd, Really Loud

  Saturday’s regional high school robotics competition held at Boston University’s Agganis Arena event set records for attendance, mayoral wowing, and sci-tech luminary gazing. Two teams from Massachusetts, one from New Hampshire,... Read more »

• Microsoft Boosts Kerberos Consortium

  Microsoft has joined the MIT Kerberos Consortium as a founding sponsor, nudging the organization closer to its goal of establishing Kerberos as a universal authentication platform for computer networks, MIT officials... Read more »

• FIRST Robot Finals Rock Agganis Arena

  I have to admit the sight of legendary MIT engineering prof Woodie Flowers being lowered from the Agganis Arena ceiling over a sea of robots and screaming fans as the Mission... Read more »

• IRobot CEO Angle Lands Role in MIT Blackjack Movie

  If you’re headed out to catch 21 on its opening night, keep your eyes peeled for a real-life MIT celebrity among all the Hollywood celebs posing as MIT card counters. IRobot... Read more »