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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Mark Twain used to toss around a saying about three kinds of lies. There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. This week in biotech, we saw some statistics that could lead some... Read more »
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Infinity Pharmaceuticals released some preliminary data last June that suggested it may be onto something for pancreatic cancer, and now it has gathered a bit more evidence to support its case.
The... Read more »
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[Updated: Noon, 1/21/12] UCSF could end up being a much more independent institution if chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann gets her way.
That’s according to a story today in the San Francisco Chronicle,... Read more »
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Veracyte has been gaining momentum the past few months with a new molecular diagnostic for thyroid cancer, and today it’s taking another step ahead by forming an alliance with Genzyme, the maker... Read more »
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The drug that made Millennium into a biotech power is on the verge of getting a subtle but meaningful upgrade, just in time to help the company fend off a serious new competing therapy... Read more »
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[[Correction: 11:20 am ET]] It’s never been easy to make a buck in biotech venture capital, but there used to be more predictability and logic to it, according to Clarus... Read more »
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Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals is getting rid of about one-third of its workforce, as it looks to save cash for clinical trials that it hopes will prove the value of its... Read more »
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Biotech companies once dreamed of building soup-to-nuts operations that put everything under one corporate flag. You’d have research, development, marketing, manufacturing all together in one big team of bright people taking... Read more »
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Alan Frazier has been on record for a long time saying that the traditional biotech venture model is broken, and in severe need of updating. He’s been working on a new strategy... Read more »
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One of the co-founders of HealthTech Capital, Don Ross, offered Brian Glaister a blunt assessment last summer when the young entrepreneur came pitching a new device to help disabled people walk.
Ross responded... Read more »
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Johnson & Johnson’s West Coast research leader, Diego Miralles, has met with a lot of biotech entrepreneurs who are curious about what J&J is doing to foster more startups at its facility... Read more »
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Bayer and Onyx Pharmaceuticals looked like they hit gold last fall, when a study of 760 patients showed that one of their new cancer drugs was able to help patients with colorectal... Read more »
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Medivation’s long shot for Alzheimer’s came up short today. The San Francisco-based company (NASDAQ: MDVN) said today its Alzheimer’s drug candidate dimebon failed in a pivotal clinical trial. Medivation and its... Read more »
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Chris Viehbacher has seen plenty of ideas come and go from people trying to shake up the pharma R&D model. No matter how much people have tried to fix things, it... Read more »
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Luke said: Lisa—thanks much for this post. It reminded me how strange it felt to be one of about five guys in...
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Seattle Genetics is getting some new warnings, including one new language about a potentially deadly brain infection, put into the FDA-approved prescribing information of its lone marketed product.
The company (NASDAQ: SGEN)... Read more »
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Forma Therapeutics has the hot hand among biotech startups in the early days of 2012. Today, it is announcing it has struck its second alliance with a Big Pharma company that wants... Read more »
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Canaan Partners was fortunate to raise its last big venture fund just before the global financial crisis hit in 2008, and now it has a real reason to be thankful again.
The Menlo... Read more »
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Like a lot of biotech executives focused on developing drugs, Martin Tolar has long been skeptical of the value of genomics in bringing about personalized medicine. But over the past few months... Read more »
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Bayer has been working hard the past couple years to get its finger on the pulse of innovation in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, and today it’s making another move in... Read more »
