Recent posts and comments

• With An Offering Worth Up to $80.5 Million, Gomez Could Help Revive the Moribund IPO Market

  “IPOs: Back from the Dead?” BusinessWeek asked this morning—and, as if to answer, Lexington, MA-based Gomez filed for an offering worth up to $80.5 million dollars. (And if that combination... Read more »

• Concert Strikes a Chord With Investors, Abiomed Scores a Win with Medicare, Epix Snags $7.5M from GSK, & More Life Sciences News

  Is it Wednesday again already? Must be time for some life sciences news…

  —Lexington, MA’s Concert Pharmaceuticals raised $37 million in one of this year’s biggest Series C rounds in New... Read more »

• Mascoma Teams with GM, Moldflow Melds with Autodesk, Concert Scores Some Heavy-Duty Cash, & More Deals News

  Last week saw several very large financing deals. Perhaps those depressing Q1 numbers gave investors a little kick in the rear?

  —Concert Pharmaceuticals of Lexington, MA, raised a hefty $37 million... Read more »

• Three Luminaries, Two Third Revolutions, and One Nice Suit: An Xconomy Forum on the Future of Life Sciences in New England

  Leave it to a Nobel Laureate to out-quip the famously quippy Noubar Afeyan. It happened while Bob was in the middle of his (probably unnecessary) introductions of the three luminaries who... Read more »

• InfraReDx Gets FDA Nod for Artery-Imaging Tool

  Ten-year-old InfraReDx of Burlington, MA, has gotten clearance from the FDA to market a catheter-based tool that lets doctors peer into the plaques on the walls of coronary arteries and determine... Read more »

• ZS Genetics Enters the X Prize Fray, Biogen Falls on Rituxan News, Acusphere Takes a Step Toward Clinical Finish Line, & More Life Sciences News

  While we were gearing up to discuss the future of life sciences in New England (more on that soon), here’s what was happening in the present.

  —Cambridge, MA-based Constellation Pharmaceuticals picked... Read more »

• iRobot v. Robotic FX, Redux

  Mine-detecting robots, Delorean-driving trade-secret-swiping engineers, dumpster-diving detectives. Ring any bells? When last we wrote about the iRobot-Robotic FX case, just before Christmas, Burlington, MA-based iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT) was riding off... Read more »

• Retail Convergence Meets Up With Some Cash, TheStreet Takes to Geezeo, GSK Lifts a Glass to Sirtris, & More Deals News

  It was a big week for Boston-area life sciences (especially for Sirtris and Resolvyx), but a couple of local Internet firms closed some sweet deals as well.

  —Newly formed Boston-based e-commerce... Read more »

• Startup Seals Deal With MIT on Wound-Sealing, Self-Assembling, Nanoscale Technology

  A super-stealthy MIT spinoff is poking its head out today to announce that it has finalized a licensing agreement with the Institute. The pact gives Arch Therapeutics rights to a family... Read more »

• GSK Takes Sirtris and Taps Alnylam Venture, FDA Deals Genzyme Drug a Blow, Resolvyx Finances Fish-Oil Drugs, & More Life Sciences News

  Spring has definitely sprung for New England life sciences firms—there are new financings, partnerships, acquisitions, and the like cropping up all over. Let’s start with the big one.

  —Sirtris Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:... Read more »

• FDA Decision a Blow For Genzyme—and Biogenerics?

  I’m always hesitant to try to read the tea leaves on the future of biogenerics—those would-be lower-cost copies of protein-based biotech drugs. After all, the question of if, when, and how... Read more »

• With a $25 Million Bankroll and Technology “Fully Baked” by Biogen Idec, Stromedix is Heading into the Uncharted Territory of Fibrosis

  Michael Gilman sounds just a touch frazzled when he first picks up the phone. The co-founder of Cambridge, MA’s Stromedix has been chained to his desk for days, attending to all... Read more »

• Dynogen, Apex Call Off Reverse Merger

  Waltham, MA-based Dynogen and Apex Bioventures Acquisition (AMEX: PEX) have agreed to call off the $98 million reverse merger they originally announced in February. Citing market conditions, the firms said... Read more »

• A Lawsuit for Biogen, A Suitor for Millennium, The Suits Who Made Their Own Fate, & More Life Sciences News

  First Carl Icahn stirred the Biogen Idec pot again, to nobody’s surprise, then Takeda swept one of the area’s mainstay companies off its feet—to everybody’s surprise. It’s been an exciting week... Read more »

• Entrepreneurs at Three Massachusetts Colleges Rake in the Prize Money

  While the rest of us have spent the last few days getting ready to turn our money over to state and federal governments, several area colleges have been giving theirs to... Read more »

• Bob Metcalfe’s First PowerPoint Ever: The Ethernet Inventor Unveils the “Enernet”

  Despite having sat on the board of Forethought, the software company that developed PowerPoint before being acquired by Microsoft in 1987, Bob Metcalfe never actually learned to use the program. Until... Read more »

• Millennium Makes a Surprise Exit, EMC’s Persistence Pays Off, Quantum Dots a Vision to In-Q-Tel, & More Deals News

  This last week saw several sizeable takeover agreements (and a few smaller ones) inked. Here’s more on those and the rest of the recent deals news.

  —Hopkinton, MA-based EMC’s second takeover... Read more »

• Diomed to Sell Assets to AngioDynamics for $11M

  Following on last month’s announcement that it had filed for bankruptcy and planned to sell off its assets, minimally invasive medicine firm Diomed (AMEX: DIO) of Andover, MA, now says... Read more »

• Inotek Consolidates, Bids CEO Adieu

  Drug developer Inotek is closing several international offices and selling its Israeli manufacturing plant in an effort to focus its resources on four of its main clinical and preclinical programs, the... Read more »

• Takeda Takes Hold of Millennium for $8.8 Billion

  For months now we’ve been hearing rumors about big pharma planning a shopping spree among Cambridge’s biotechs, but I’ve got to admit we didn’t see this particular deal coming. Millennium... Read more »