By the time you read this, I’ve probably already wrapped up my work as a correspondent for Xconomy, turned in my key to office on Rogers Street in Cambridge, MA, and taken a deep breath in anticipation of my exciting new role as an executive editor for the life sciences group at FierceMarkets.

I’m really not being modest when I say that I don’t expect my departure from Xconomy to qualify as anything close to an event [Editor's note: Ryan is, indeed, being modest---we're going to miss him like crazy!], and Xconomy has a great life sciences reporting team in place with or without me. But I spent about 33 months at Xconomy, mostly covering the biotech and healthcare IT scenes in the Boston area, and I thought a proper goodbye post would be appropriate. It’s also an opportunity for me to brag a bit about some of the cool stories that we did during my stint with Xconomy. (Still, I promise to keep this farewell relatively brief.)

Before I talk about those stories, I want to say thanks to Xconomy. I feel plain lucky that Bob Buderi, Xconomy’s founder and editor-in-chief, called me on my cell phone in late July 2008 to ask me if I was interested in working for his startup media company. I got that call while I was literally carrying my box of personal stuff out of a building on Federal Street in downtown Boston after my last day as the biotech reporter for Mass High Tech, and I was still wondering at the time whether I was crazy for moving with my wife to Vermont, where I would try my luck as a freelancer. Thanks to Bob and Xconomy co-founder and executive editor Rebecca Zacks, I was given a shot to stay on the Boston biotech beat.

In those first few months at Xconomy, I chased down a news tip from Bob and broke a little story about the big $400 million endowment that philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad gave to their namesake research center, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. (The experience told me that my sources still worked, even when I was up in Vermont.) Around the same time, I started working more closely with Luke Timmerman, Xconomy’s National Biotech Editor, who joined Xconomy via Bloomberg several months before my arrival. Luke writes terrifically detailed and compelling news copy at speeds that would rival fictional Clark Kent’s fastest work at The Daily Planet. Luke also never hesitated to share tricks of the trade with me, and I’ll try to never forget those lessons. I learned a bunch from the other editors as well.

I don’t have a “top 10″ stories list or anything to share with you, but I’m very proud to have had the opportunity to be the first reporter to provide what I would call in-depth coverage of many healthcare-related startups in the Boston area. Some examples include stories about KEW Group (most recently), Seventh Sense Biosystems, Life Image, Momelan Technologies, and Vedanta Biosciences. I also got to do some memorable stories that involved big companies such as Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB), Genzyme, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK), and Novartis (NYSE:NVS). The only regrets I have are getting beat on certain Boston biotech stories, yet I feel like I did about as much as I could while covering the beat mostly from my home office in a little college town some 200 miles from Kendall Square.

If you’re still reading this nano-memoir, then perhaps you’ll be interested to know that I’ll still be following the Boston biotech scene as well as the life sciences industry in other geographies in my new role at Fierce. I’ll also be in Boston and other major hubs of the biotech industry to cover stories and attend meetings. And I plan to continue to provide Twitter updates under my @ryan_mcbride handle.

So perhaps this isn’t really a goodbye as much as a note of thanks to the editors at Xconomy and to you the audience, with whom I aim to keep in touch through my work at Fierce.

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Cambridge, MA-based Sedo, which provides an online marketplace for Web domain names, said today that it brokered UK-based Media Corp.’s sale of the “gambling.com” domain for $2.5 million to an unnamed British firm. It’s the largest sum paid for a domain this year, according to the broker. Sedo (which Xconomy’s Wade Roush profiled back in November 2007) said that this deal is the third-largest that it has brokered after the $13 million and $3 million sales of “sex.com” and “vodka.com,” respectively.

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Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:VRTX) faces a test today for its experimental drug for hepatitis C virus, telaprevir, as the FDA Antiviral Drugs Advisory Committee meets today in Silver Springs, MD, to review the firm’s application for approval of the treatment. NASDAQ has halted trading of the Cambridge, MA-based firm’s common stock today, according to Vertex. Yesterday the same FDA panel voted unanimously in favor of recommending approval of Whitehouse Station, NJ-based Merck & Co.’s (NYSE:MRK) hepatitis C pill boceprevir, and many industry watchers are expecting Vertex to have similar success today. An FDA staff review released on Tuesday gave Vertex’s hepatitis C pill some high marks as a treatment for the liver disease.

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Cambridge, MA-based biotech Genzyme, now a unit of Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE:SNY), has amended its patent infringement lawsuit against its competitor Anika Therapeutics (NASDAQ:ANIK) related to Anika’s osteoarthritis treatment, Monovisc. Genzyme also filed a new complaint in U.S. District Court in Boston that includes a newly issued patent, according to Anika. Genzyme, the world’s largest maker of rare disease drugs, makes a product for knee joint pain from osteoarthritis called Synvisc-One that competes with Anika’s Monovisc. Both products are single injections of hyaluronic acid-based treatments. Bedford, MA-based Anika said in a statement yesterday that it plans to “vigorously defend the lawsuits and the Monovisc franchise.”

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A new cancer care startup called KEW Group has been quietly operating in the Boston area and entered advanced talks to raise a sizable amount from venture investors. With an ensemble cast of founders from Harvard and elsewhere, KEW plans to provide community oncology clinics with information technology-supported services to make evidence-based medicine, such as genetic testing, part of routine cancer care.

Concord, MA-based KEW (pronounced like the letter “q”) has been in the formative stage for more than a year. Jeff Elton, a former chief operating officer at Novartis Institutes for BioMedical Research in Cambridge, MA, is the new company’s co-founder and chief executive. A few other big names from Boston biotech and business are rallying behind the new company. Raju Kucherlapati, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a co-founder of Millennium Pharmaceuticals, is the new company’s co-founder and chairman, bringing biology and drug development expertise. He’s joined on the KEW board by John Glaser, the former chief information officer of Partners Healthcare in Boston, who is now chief executive of Siemens Health Services. And from the business strategy side, Clayton Christensen, the renowned Harvard Business School professor and author of “The Innovator’s Prescription,” has also gotten involved.

KEW aims to enable community oncologists to deliver the same level of evidence-based care as specialists at research hospitals. While academic research hospitals such as Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have stellar reputations for providing cutting-edge cancer care, only about one out of five cancer patients in the U.S. gets treated at a research hospital. The majority of patients get their care at community oncology clinics like the ones KEW is targeting. Community oncologists, unlike specialists at big research hospitals, generally see patients with many forms of cancer. They are faced with a plethora of information on the complexities of each cancer type that have been uncovered through years of genetic studies. At a research hospital, on the other hand, a specialist might be an expert in treating cancer of one specific organ and only see patients with, say, breast cancer or lung cancer.

“The idea was, can you equip [cancer doctors] wherever they are, whether it’s in southern Illinois or Arkansas, and make them as proficient in how they interact with their patients as the best specialists at the top centers anywhere,” KEW’s Elton says. “That’s really what we’d like to do, but in a very practical, economical, and seamless way.”

As part of KEW’s strategy to build a network of community oncology clinics, the company has plans to merge with … Next Page »

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SR One, the independent venture arm of London-based drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK), has established a San Francisco office after a long history of backing West Coast biotechs such as Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) and Idec Pharmaceuticals (now part of Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) of Weston, MA), the group announced today. Simeon George, a partner at SR One, is leading the venture group’s San Francisco office. SR One now has offices in London, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Christoph Westphal, the president of SR One, is expected to leave his post at SR One later this year and is now a partner and founder at Boston-based venture firm Longwood Founders Fund.

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Biogen Idec’s (NASDAQ:BIIB) stock price is soaring this morning after the Weston, MA-based biotech company reported a bump in first quarter revenue and new details about a successful late-stage clinical trials for its oral multiple sclerosis drug.

Shares of Biogen were up more than 22 percent to $105.83 as of 10:23 am Eastern time. The company reported that its revenues for the first quarter increased 9 percent to $1.2 billion, aided by increased sales of its big-selling multiple sclerosis drugs natalizumab (Tysabri) and interferon beta-1a (Avonex). Also, executives during a call with investors reportedly gave more vivid details about the benefits of its oral MS drug, dimethyl fumarate (BG-12), than were provided earlier this month when the firm announced that a late-stage study of the drug was a success.

Biogen, the world’s largest provider of multiple sclerosis drugs, is aiming to extend its franchise with an oral MS pill. Its existing therapies for the disease are injected, and an oral pill could offer greater convenience to patients. In September, Swiss drugmaker Novartis was the first to gain FDA approval for an MS pill, fingolimod (Gilenya), for relapsing forms of the disease. Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ:TEVA) is also in the running with an MS pill called laquinimod, which is in late-stage development.

Biogen said this morning that the firm’s oral MS drug reduced the proportion of patients who suffered relapses of the disease by 49 percent after two years compared with those on a placebo, and patients on the drug also showed a 38 percent reduction in disability progression, Reuters reported. These details build on what the company said on April 11 about the drug’s performance in a pivotal Phase III trial of 1,200 patients called DEFINE, which met its primary and secondary goals. The company is also conducting a separate Phase III trial of the drug called CONFIRM, the results of which are expected in the second half of this year.

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BG Medicine (NASDAQ:BGMD) took the long road to becoming a public company, scrapping its first attempt in 2008 and then spending just more than a year to wrap up its second IPO campaign this past February.

In a recent interview, Pieter Muntendam, the CEO of the Waltham, MA-based medical diagnostic company, told me how BG Medicine weathered the rough IPO climate and shared the company’s outlook for its main product: a test that assesses the prognosis of heart failure patients.

The public markets seem loath to buy into a life sciences company IPO. The select few firms that have actually completed an IPO have typically had to drop the asking price for their shares before buyers would commit. BG Medicine was no exception. The firm settled for $7 per share in its public debut in February, roughly half of what the company had previously sought for its stock, according to regulatory filings.

There was also some confusion about BG Medicine’s IPO plans in December when the company failed to price its shares on schedule. That sparked at least one media report that BG Medicine had again withdrawn its IPO.

In fact, the company never withdrew its IPO. Muntendam explained that the company decided not to price its IPO in December because of timing, with many people closing their books toward the end of the year.

“The biggest surprise for us was when … Next Page »

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Humedica, a Boston-based clinical informatics company, has raised $20 million in a round of equity financing, according to an SEC filing. The firm, which previously raised $30 million from Bain Capital Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and the investment bank Leerink Swann in summer 2008, came out of stealth mode in September 2009. According to its SEC filing for this latest round, all of the company’s previous backers are represented on its board of directors. Paul Bleicher, who is listed as a director of the company, was founding CEO and chairman of Phase Forward, the Waltham, MA-based provider of clinical trials software that tech giant Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) bought last year in a deal valued at $685 million.

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Ariad Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ARIA), a Cambridge, MA-based developer of cancer drugs, said today it extended licenses to its cell-signaling regulation technology to three separate groups, all of which are using the technology for different purposes. Bellicum Pharmaceuticals of Houston, TX, is developing the technology for its experimental cancer vaccine and cell therapies; Washington, DC-based ReGenX Biosciences is using the technology to advance gene therapies; and Clontech Laboratories, a Mountain View, CA-based provider of research reagents, is licensing the technology for the research market. Some of the intellectual property for the technology comes from Harvard University and Stanford University. Ariad did not disclose specific financial figures from the licensing deals.

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Investors are rewarding Bluebird Bio for wracking up accolades with its experimental gene therapies for serious genetic diseases. The Cambridge, MA-based biotech firm has brought in $30 million in a Series C round of funding, just over year after investors pumped $35 million into the firm in its second-round financing.

ARCH Venture Partners joined the investor syndicate at Bluebird, and Steven Gillis, a managing director at ARCH, took a seat on biotech’s board of directors. The new round also drew investments from previous Bluebird backers Third Rock Ventures, TVM Capital, Forbion Capital Partners, and Easton Capital Investment Group. Nick Leschly, president and CEO of Bluebird, says that the company hadn’t exhausted its cash from its previous financing prior to closing this latest round of funding, but the additional capital will help the firm advance its clinical development plans, as well as invest in its technology.

Bluebird (formerly Genetix Pharmaceuticals) has helped change the headlines about gene therapy, from those of yesteryear that highlighted dangerous side effects, to ones describing renewed promise in the field. In September, the prestigious journal Nature ran an article about how the company’s gene therapy for an inherited blood disorder called beta-thalassemia provided significant benefits for a man in his early 20s with the disease. There are also four patients who have been treated with a version of the firm’s therapy for childhood cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (CCALD)—a genetic brain disorder also known as “Lorenzo’s Oil” disease. And the firm revealed data in May 2010 that showed its treatment had stabilized CCALD in two patients who had been treated three years earlier.

With its new financing in hand, Bluebird is planning to increase enrollment in an ongoing Phase I/II trial for its beta-thalassemia treatment over the next 12 months to about 10 patients. The treatment might also be effective in treating sickle cell anemia, and the firm plans to test it in people with that disorder too. Toward the end of the year, Leschly says, the firm aims to begin a clinical trial in the U.S. and Europe for a CCALD treatment. The trial would follow the ongoing pilot study in CCALD patients. In the meantime, the company plans to invest further in its core gene therapy technology, which Leschly says could be used to treat a variety of severe genetic diseases.

“The idea here is really to accelerate our … Next Page »

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Cambridge, MA-based Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:ALNY) has found another partner to help it deliver its gene-silencing drugs to tissues deep in the body. Precision NanoSystems, of Vancouver, British Columbia, has agreed to lend Alnylam its expertise in using its so-called small lipid nanoparticles to potentially deliver RNA-interference (RNAi) drugs, the companies said today. The tiny particles could help advance Alnylam’s gene-silencing drugs through the liver, which has proved a difficult barrier to homing in on tissues deeper in the body with such treatments.

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Cambridge, MA-based Atlas Venture and the agribusiness giant Monsanto (NYSE: MON) are working together to find interesting life sciences investments to complement Monsanto’s agriculture business, Monsanto said today. It’s another case of venture firms working with large companies at an early stage.

While no financial terms of the agreement were disclosed, the companies called this deal a “multi-year collaboration.” St. Louis-based Monsanto says it wants Atlas’s help in scouting investments in the areas of genomics, informatics, and biology. In return, Atlas says it will gain additional technology capabilities and valuable insights from an industry heavyweight that it can use during its own investment process. It also wouldn’t be surprising if Monsanto chose to make a strategic investment or two in early-stage companies found in Atlas’ portfolio.

We’ve seen big companies working closely with venture firms and startups an early stage before. For example, Boston-based PureTech Ventures has formed collaborations with Big Pharma companies to support its portfolio firm Enlight Biosciences, which develops technologies to advance drug companies’ research and development productivity and efficiency. At six-year-old Aileron Therapeutics, a developer of so-called “stapled peptide” drugs, the company has taken investments from the VC arms of four Big Pharmas (Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and Roche) and has two of them (Novartis and Glaxo) represented on its board of directors, according to the company.

“By applying Monsanto’s research-based approach to innovation in agriculture to evaluating new life sciences technologies, we’ll be able to access technology platforms and deep expertise right from the beginning of the company building process,” Jean-Francois Formela, a partner at Atlas, said in a statement. “The collaboration is truly synergistic and leverages each group’s core competency and expertise.”

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Taris Biomedical, an MIT spinout focused on treating bladder diseases, has brought on Third Rock Ventures as its new investor and lead backer in an $18.3 million Series B round of financing. Sarma Duddu, CEO of Lexington, MA-based Taris, says that the funding will be used to advance the company’s lead treatment, which holds the promise to be used for a variety of bladder ailments, into clinical mid-stage trials designed to show whether it works in humans.

Boston-based Third Rock—which made headlines earlier this week by leading a $40 million investment in Blueprint Medicines, Cambridge, MA, cancer drug developer—joined previous Taris backers Flagship Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, and Polaris Venture Partners in this round. Cary Pfeffer, a partner at Third Rock and former Biogen Idec (NASDAQ:BIIB) executive, has taken a seat on Taris’s board in connection with the financing. Taris, which was co-founded by MIT materials science and biotech inventors Michael Cima and Bob Langer, previously raised $15 million in a Series A round in 2008.

“We’re exciting about Third Rock because they have a track record of investing in highly focused, product-driven companies,” Duddu says. “What is particularly interesting is the way they bring in their own development expertise.” He added that Third Rock partners and co-founders Mark Levin, Kevin Starr, and Robert Tepper—a trio who previously held the CEO, COO, and R&D president titles, respectively, at Millennium Pharmaceuticals—bring a lot of experience in building companies.

Taris is getting a financial boost from its VCs at a key time in the young company’s history. In March the company said it began Phase Ib clinical testing for the lead use of its drug-delivery device for treating interstitial cystitis, also known as painful bladder syndrome. The study will show whether its treatment, which involves putting the device in the bladder and leaving it there for two weeks to continuously deliver a common anesthetic called … Next Page »

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Nano Terra, a Brighton, MA-based company that works with industry on surface engineering and nanotechnology projects, said today that it has acquired the drug developer Surface Logix. The terms and details of the deal were not disclosed. Harvard University chemist George Whitesides (an Xconomist) is a founder of both Nano Terra and Surface Logix. “Surface Logix is an excellent fit for Nano Terra since our business was also built on intellectual property from the Whitesides lab,” said Myer Berlow, CEO of Nano Terra, in a statement. “We think we can achieve significant synergies through our proven co-development model. This acquisition opens the door to the use of Nano Terra’s technology in a variety of healthcare products.”

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Michelle Browner saw firsthand what huge challenges lie along the way to developing a new drug during her 18 years at Swiss healthcare giant Roche. Now, Xconomy has learned, she has taken the CEO job at Boston-based Enlight Biosciences, a firm that was founded to aid Big Pharma with some of its biggest research and development problems.

Browner, who was most recently global head of emerging science and technologies in Roche’s partnering group in Basel, Switzerland, seems suited to head a company supported primarily by six of the world’s largest pharmaceutical players: Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT), Eli Lilly & Co. (NYSE:LLY), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ), Merck & Co. (NYSE:MRK), Novartis, and Pfizer (NYSE:PFE). Browner took over as CEO of Enlight last week and has relocated to Boston.

David Steinberg, the founding CEO of Enlight and a partner at Boston-based venture firm PureTech Ventures, is continuing to serve on Enlight’s board of directors along with his other duties as a partner at PureTech.

PureTech, which specializes in building biotech startups from scratch, announced the formation of Enlight in 2008 with Eli Lilly, Merck, and Pfizer on board as financial supporters as collaborators. Enlight is somewhat unique in that, unlike biotechs formed to develop their own drugs, the company focuses on advancing core technologies that could help its pharma supporters develop new products in a more efficient and effective manner. For Browner, Enlight’s mission complements her experience in keeping Roche at the cutting edge of new technologies shaping the pharmaceutical industry.

“When I heard that Enlight was looking for a CEO, and they expressed interest in meeting me, I was … Next Page »

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Aveo Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:AVEO), a Cambridge, MA-based company with a drug in late-stage development for advanced kidney cancer, said today that it has recruited biotech bigwig Henri Termeer, the outgoing chairman and CEO of biotech drug maker Genzyme, to join its board of directors. Termeer, who joined Genzyme in 1983 and built it into an industry standout, plans to step down from his CEO role at the company now that French drug giant Sanofi-Aventis (NYSE:SNY) has completed its $20.1 billion buyout of the biotech firm. Aveo CEO Tuan Ha-Ngoc, a biotech veteran himself, has known Termeer for decades. Aside from his unmatched experience in the industry, Termeer’s mere presence on Aveo’s board should raise the firm’s profile as it moves ahead with development of tivozanib, a drug that aims to inhibit the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors. Tivozanib is in a pivotal Phase III clinical trial comparing it to the approved drug sorafenib in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma, an aggressive form of kidney cancer.

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[Updated. 4/8/11. 8:09 am Eastern. See updates to section on On-Q-ity.] T2 Biosystems has chosen deadly blood-borne yeast infections as the lead targets of its system for rapidly and accurately diagnosing diseases. And the Lexington, MA-based firm is revealing results this morning from lab experiments that show the potential of its diagnostic for Candida infections to improve upon the current culture-based methods of spotting the fungal invaders.

The company says that its magnetic biosensor approach was able identify five species of Candida—the most common and deadly form of hospital-acquired fungal infections—from whole blood samples and provide a result in less than two hours. This is much faster than the two or more days it can take to conduct blood culture tests in which the fungi are grown and analyzed to provide a result. Shortening the time needed to diagnose patients’ specific yeast infections enables doctors to put them on the proper antifungal treatment quickly, potentially saving their lives, John McDonough, T2 Biosystems’ CEO, said.

The firm is planning to make the Candida test the first application of its diagnostic system, which has the potential to be used in detecting a wide variety of molecular biomarkers for diseases. The firm plans to seek FDA clearance for its magnetic biosensor system and Candida test in 2012. McDonough says that the company is also pursuing other tests for use with its system, including one for bacterial infections, but he declined to provide specifics about the type of bugs or timing of the commercial release.

T2 Biosystems, which has raised about $31 million from investors since it was founded in 2006, has been one of the high-flyers among developers of advanced diagnostics. The firm has engineered a desktop diagnostic system that uses magnetic resonance—using magnets that are about four inches in diameter as opposed to large magnets used in bulky in MRI systems—and nanotechnology to detect all manner of biological substances in a range of samples types such as blood, saliva, and urine. The small size, speed of results, and broad applicability of the system give it the potential to transform how diseases are diagnosed, the company claims.

Meanwhile, On-Q-ity has revealed research of its improved method of … Next Page »

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New York is famous in the business world for its large companies in a variety of industries. For the partners at the seed-stage venture fund Founder Collective, however, the focus is on the small tech startups in the city and beyond that have the potential to rapidly grow in value.

In fact, managing partners David Frankel and Eric Paley, among other partners of the fund, formed Founder Collective in 2009 as a continuation of their success in backing each others’ startups and other young companies for several years. And while the firm’s $50 million fund might seem small to the bigwigs on Wall Street, we’re living in a world where tech upstarts are launching products and gaining real customers on budgets of less than $1 million.

Founder Collective, with offices in Cambridge, MA, and New York City, has made more than 50 investments in tech startups around the country, and its partners have made bets on 20 or so firms in New York, according to Paley and Frankel. Though Frankel and Paley have been involved in firms outside of tech, their fund focuses on software and Web startups that make efficient use of capital and for which relatively small investments can carry the companies to major jumps in value. (So, obviously, this excludes capital-intensive businesses like drug developers.)

While Frankel and Paley both keep homes in the Boston area, they have partners in New York, like Hunch co-founder and CEO Chris Dixon, who spend most of their time in operational roles at startups. (Hunch, a New York City-based startup, says that it personalizes the Internet by helping people find recommendations on all sorts of topics.) Frankel and Paley, who are the only partners who are full-time dedicated to Founder Collective, each serve on multiple boards of directors in New York, giving them a close view of what is happening on the ground in the city’s startup scene.

“There’s been, and I think Chris (Dixon) has been very involved in this, a renaissance in … Next Page »

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On the heels of a favorable FDA advisory panel vote on its experimental antibiotic, San Diego-based Optimer Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:OPTR) says today that Cubist Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:CBST) has agreed to help sell the drug in the U.S.

The deal calls for Lexington, MA-based Cubist to co-promote the Optimer antibiotic, fidxomicin (Dificid), for two years; the drug is under review at FDA as a potential treatment for C. difficile infections. Optimer, which is now in the process of building a sales force, has agreed to pay Cubist quarterly fees that amount to $15 million per year as well as $17.5 million in additional fees to Cubist if certain sale levels are reached during the term the deal, according to the companies.

For Cubist, this deal could give its existing U.S. sales force another product to market in addition to the company’s antibiotic daptomycin (Cubicin), which is approved for treating certain infections caused by such bugs as the notorious Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Still, Optimer’s antibiotic has to pass muster with the FDA, which is expected to say by May 30 whether the drug can be marketed in the U.S. An FDA advisory panel unanimously endorsed the safety and effectiveness of the antibiotic yesterday, but the group voted 7-6 against Optimer on whether the drug reduces recurrence of “C. diff” infections. My colleague Luke Timmerman spoke to Optimer CEO Pedro Lichtinger after the FDA panel votes yesterday about the company’s plans to discuss how best to explain the benefits of the drug to doctors.

In today’s announcement about the Cubist deal, Lichtinger explained how the collaboration benefits his company as it prepares for the marketing of what could be its first approved product in the U.S.

“Cubist has a proven track record and well established relations with all stakeholders involved in the antibiotics space. We believe this collaboration will maximize the impact of and de-risk Dificid’s U.S. commercial launch, assuming approval,” said Lichtinger, in a statement. “We also believe this collaboration with Cubist will allow us to accelerate formulary adoption, expand our market reach and penetration to up to 2,000 hospitals, comprising over 90% of U.S. hospital [C. difficile infection] cases, and commit resources to long-term care facilities that comprise approximately one-third of all CDI cases. In addition, this provides the opportunity to capture the undiagnosed CDI market segment which some estimate to be as many as three million cases per year.”

Optimer says that there are an estimated 700,000 cases of “C. diff” infection in the U.S. annually. The bugs infect the inner lining of the colon and cause inflammation, diarrhea, and, in the worst of cases, death. Optimer’s drug has a novel mechanism to selectively kill “C. diff” and reduce impacts on healthy bacteria.

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