Luke Timmerman
Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. Before joining Xconomy, he was the U.S. biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News, based in San Francisco. There, he led coverage of major medical meetings and broke news about the industry’s top companies. His stories appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and International Herald Tribune. Before that, his passionate coverage of biotechnology won many awards for The Seattle Times.
While at the Times, Luke was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, the Sigma Delta Chi prize from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers award, an honorable mention Gerald Loeb Award, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in public service. He was named one of the nation's top biotech writers in 2010 by FierceBiotech.
Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2005-2006, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. In his spare time, Luke enjoys distance running, mountaineering, and fantasy baseball. Having grown up in Wisconsin, he is, naturally, a lifelong fan of the Green Bay Packers and the Wisconsin Badgers.
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When you hear about personalized medicine, you might think first of the applications for cancer treatment, or maybe cystic fibrosis. But Dave Martin, the former head of R&D at Genentech,... Read more »
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Bonnie Ramsey said three years ago that a cystic fibrosis drug from Vertex Pharmaceuticals was a huge medical advance in the making, and would end up being an achievement on par with putting... Read more »
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[Updated: 1:25 pm] Vertex Pharmaceuticals is now officially more than just a one-hit wonder.
The Cambridge, MA-based biotech company (NASDAQ: VRTX), best known for its hepatitis C drug, has won... Read more »
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Pfizer was where Pedro Lichtinger learned about pharmaceutical marketing from people who did some amazing things. For starters, New York-based Pfizer (NYSE: PFE) turned an old-school antifungal medicine into a $1.6... Read more »
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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has joined with 13 pharmaceutical companies and leading public health organizations as part of a massive $785 billion drive to wipe out—or at least better control—10... Read more »
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Cell Therapeutics suffered an embarrassing defeat the last time it appeared in front of an FDA advisory panel and today the company made a move that will enable it to avoid another... Read more »
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Newt Gingrich comes across on TV as someone who radiates smugness. It’s that sense that he’s not just confident in his own abilities, but extremely satisfied with his talents and his... Read more »
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[Updated: 3:47 pm] Amylin Pharmaceuticals and Alkermes have gone to the FDA twice before to seek approval of their new diabetes drug, and been turned back, but now the... Read more »
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Bad news out today from Infinity Pharmaceuticals. The Cambridge, MA-based biotech company said it is halting a mid-stage clinical trial of its drug for pancreatic cancer early after learning that patients were... Read more »
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Prostate cancer was once a backwater for innovation, but suddenly it’s become one of the most competitive battlegrounds in all of biotech. And one of the darkhorses in this race, Bothell, WA... Read more »
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Steve Holtzman got his first taste of corporate venture capital back in 1987, when he raised money from SR One, back when it was part of an old company known as... Read more »
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Cambridge, MA-based Verastem, the biotech startup seeking to make drugs against cancer stem cells, found a way to rustle up enough demand from investors to complete its initial public offering.
The company... Read more »
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Avila Therapeutics, after just five years in business and $51 million in venture capital, made big news today when it agreed to be acquired by Celgene for $350 million upfront plus... Read more »
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Two of the scientific founders of a couple of Seattle’s best-funded biotech startups have come together in a new company that aims to create a valuable antibody drug candidates while burning through the least... Read more »
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San Diego-based Illumina, the market leading maker of DNA sequencing instruments, has just made it through a rough year, and now it may be entering its final chapters as an independent company.... Read more »
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Affymax shocked the world when an FDA advisory committee recommended last month that its anemia drug was good enough to earn a spot on the U.S. market. Now the Palo Alto, CA-based... Read more »
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Luke said: The following comment is from Krassen Dimitrov:
While your genome is an important determinant for your health status, other factors – environmental,...
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Vertex Pharmaceuticals went from king of the hill in the treatment of hepatitis C to yesterday’s news in about six wild months. But while many on Wall Street say Vertex’s big drug... Read more »
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Novo Nordisk, the world’s largest maker of diabetes treatments, is increasing its bet on Seattle’s biomedical research community.
Denmark-based Novo said today it is establishing a new center with 20 scientists in Seattle... Read more »
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Millennium is the house that Velcade built, and today it’s gotten the green light to start marketing what it considers to be a new and improved version of the hit drug for... Read more »
