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1
Aug
2022

A Glimpse Into the Adjacent Possible: Incorporating AI Into Medical Science 

The implementation of emerging technologies requires front-line users to figure out what to do with the technology – how to adapt the technology to the problems users are actively trying to solve.    The most impactful use cases often are not immediately obvious – for example, Edison envisioned the phonograph would be predominantly used to record wills.    Moreover, effective adoption typically requires...
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19
Jul
2022

James Mutamba of Arrakis on Negotiating a Big Amgen Deal at Warp Speed

James Mutamba is the chief business officer of Waltham, Mass.-based Arrakis Therapeutics. It’s a biotech developing small molecules against RNA targets. Arrakis struck its first major pharma partnership in 2020 with Roche. During the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference this past January, Arrakis announced another multi-target collaboration with Amgen to discover and develop small molecule RNA degraders, a new drug class...
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10
Jul
2022

Innovators Require An Exception-Oriented Mindset

Living in innovative domains like biomedical research requires an appreciation for the exceptional, the outlier. You might even argue that the goal of innovators – at least those who hope to see their ideas gain acceptance, or their inventions adopted – is to institutionalize the exceptional and make it routine.  In the Perez model of technology adoption, this is the...
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1
Jul
2022

An Open Letter from Female Biotech Leaders on Post-Roe America

[Editor’s Note: this letter was drafted by female biotech leaders in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision. It was co-signed by more than 65 female biotech executives as of July 1. They’re listed at the end.] Friends and colleagues, legislators and elected officials We join the resounding millions in chorus to express our profound dismay and disappointment at the...
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27
Jun
2022

Nucleate Doubles in Size, Enabling Young Scientists’ Entrepreneurial Dreams

Academia has a tradition of doing nothing, or next to nothing, to educate and encourage young people to learn about entrepreneurship. But whether academia wants it or not, it’s coming. Young scientists are taking matters into their own hands, organizing themselves in many major research hubs. Nucleate, the nonprofit providing free resources to empower a new generation of biotech entrepreneurs,...
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27
Jun
2022

What We Saw at BIO: The Second Hurdle

More than 14,000 people attended the annual #BIO22 meeting in San Diego, meaning there are at least 14,000 versions of what happened. But unless you have the emotional intelligence of a rock, you felt the unease, if not outright panic, of an industry with a fast-evaporating cash runway. No one really knows what to do about it. If they say...
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26
Jun
2022

Women’s Rights Are Under Attack, and Biotech Can Respond  

On Friday night, after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, my extended family gathered around my mother’s dining table. We were supposed to be there to celebrate my 18-year-old niece’s graduation from high school. We ended up talking late into the night, discussing the implications of the Court’s majority opinion which will greatly restrict access to safe...
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21
Jun
2022

Why Kymab Agreed to be Acquired by Sanofi

UK-based Kymab made headlines back in January 2021. Sanofi agreed to acquire the antibody drug developer for $1.1 billion upfront, plus $350 million in potential milestones. The main attraction for Sanofi was KY1005, a monoclonal antibody targeting OX40L, a regulator of the immune system. Five months before the deal, Kymab announced it hit both primary endpoints of a Phase 2a...
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