by | March 19, 2012

How I stopped worrying and learned to love Twitter: Top Hundred Life Sciences Twitterers to Follow

By Steve Dickman, CEO, CBT Advisors

Amsterdam, Monday, March 19, 2012

Twitter last month hit a half-billion users and no wonder. What a valuable business tool! Adoption is accelerating in the biotech world. Initially I was skeptical – “What, me ‘tweet?’ You’ve got to be kidding!” But now I’m a believer.

Twitter has helped me find clients; introduced me to new and interesting people, increased the speed and accuracy of my responses to industry news; and given me ideas for blog posts. I’m even starting to say the dreaded word “tweet.”

For all the hype about Twitter’s role as a real-time wellspring of trivialities, and for all the righteous blather about its disputed role in fomenting revolution, the fact is that Twitter greatly enhances both my network and my appreciation for the news.

Now it’s time to give back, both live and online. Today (Mon. March 19, 2012), two Twitter veterans, Michael Gilman (@Michael_Gilman) of Stromedix (now Biogen Idec) and Simon Meier (@Venture_Invest) of Roche Venture Fund, and I will share some of Twitter’s benefits with the audience at a panel discussion at the BioEurope Spring conference (hashtag #BES12) in Amsterdam. This post will give my Boston Biotech Watch readers a quick way to increase the value they can derive from Twitter.

Below, my associate Ovid Amadi and I have created ten “Top Ten” lists of whom to follow on Twitter. Once you have opened a free account on Twitter, go to my feed and simply subscribe to whichever one of these lists you like. Or pick and choose among these top Twitterers as you build your own custom feed.

For those who cannot attend the session, you can still get an in-depth and hands-on intro to Twitter from this video, kindly posted by EBD Group after the “social media and biotech” panel that I moderated at the BioPharm America conference in Boston last September. On it, you will see how biotech execs and communications pros are using Twitter and other social networks to improve their access to industry intelligence, find jobs and project a strong professional image.

According to the invaluable summary graciously provided by blogger and tweeter Maude Tessier (@Maude_Tessier), “the savvy panelists made a compelling case for Twitter as:

An ideal source for real time data/news to inform business strategies

  • A helpful forum to poll the community on a subject
  • A platform to comment on the state of the life science industry
  • A way to better understand how people think
  • A tool to make new connections with companies and patient groups
  • A medium to build credibility for you and your organization.”

Another ringing endorsement for Twitter in life sciences came from Xconomy’s indefatigable Luke Timmerman (@ldtimmerman): http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/09/12/what-most-biotechies-are-missing-by-avoiding-twitter-a-huge-networking-opportunity/

I can enthusiastically vouch for all that. Twitter: it’s the bomb.

# # #

Ten “Top Tens” for Twitter in Life Sciences

Compiled and annotated by Ovid Amadi and Steve Dickman (@cbtadvisors), CBT Advisors

Each tweeter’s name and handle is accompanied by a brief description as well as a classification as “PERSP” – providing primarily perspective, commentary, and opinions on topics; “INFO” – providing timely factual information and news stories; or both.

CONTENTS
I. Genomics
II. Health IT
III. Investing/Finance
IV. General News
V. Biotech News
VI. Science
VII. Healthcare/Medicine
VIII. VC/Entrepreneurship
IX. Service Providers
X. Benchmark Biotech/Life Sciences Twitter Users
Appendix

I. Genomics

1. INFO, @genome_gov – National Human Genome Research Institute
- Provides useful information and headlines in concise uncluttered format.
- Does not draw upon a single resource.
- Includes technical, policy, and commercial headlines
- Moderate tweet frequency

2. INFO, @GenomeBiology – Genome Biology
- In addition to scientific news features multiple links to blogs and opinion articles
- High tweet frequency

3. INFO, @genomeresearch – Genome Research
- Covers broad range of genomics topics
- Presents some opinions and personality in posts
- Multiple retweets from a variety of sources
- Moderate tweet frequency

4. INFO/PERSP, @23andME – 23andME
- Offers perspective articles with less focus on news
- Includes social perspective on implications of human genomics advancement
- Limited self promotional content and maintains relevance of such posts
- Exhibits noticeable personality and tone.
- Moderate tweet frequency

5. PERSP, @dgmacarthur – Daniel MacArthur
- Postdoc in genetics whose interests extend well into societal and commercial realm.
- A member of the genomes unzipped project aiming to disseminate information on and analysis of the field of genetic testing.
- Participates actively in conversations, retweeting, and original links
- Maintained an active blog.
- Informal tone.
- High tweet frequency

6. PERSP, @genomicslawyer – Dan Vorhaus
- Editor of Genomics Law Report
- Offers unique perspective of legal advisor specializing in genomics and personalized medicine.
- Much of linked content includes personal/professional opinions with nuanced and detailed discussions.
- Clear conventional and twitter specific syntactical organization
- Moderate tweet frequency

7. PERSP, @MishaAngrist – Misha Angrist
- Explores ethical, social, and health implications of personalized medicine
- Recently published a unique text and maintains populated blog
- Generally maintains focus on relevant issues while expressing commentary
- Moderately high tweet frequency

8. INFO, @NatureRevGenet – NatureRevGenetics
- Provides “Ahead of Publication” notifications of pertinent scientific reviews (more tractable than primary article)
- Moderate Frequency, useful for those interested in details of scientific advance

9. PERSP, @DivaBiotech – Ruby Gadelrab
- Affymetrix employee with primarily genomics focus
- Presents appropriate balance of retweet and original content and extraneous information is minimally distracting
- Abundant dialogue and interaction
- High frequency

10. INFO, @Knome – Knome, Inc
- Life sciences company interpreting human genomes
- Very little self-promotion
- Very few retweeting and content is noticeably interesting/unique (less mundane compared to similar providers)
- Low frequency

II. Health IT

1. PERSP/INFO @jhalamka – John Halamka
-CIO of BIDMC
-Tweets are introductions to his very active blog (contains personal elements) and numerous insights into healthcare IT as a field and career.
- No retweets
- Moderate frequency

2. PERSP/INFO @ahier – Brian Ahier
- Maintains a well populated blog on healthcare IT
- Provides a large sum of content with brief commentary/recommendation
- Broad range of health IT topics punctuated with unrelated, but interesting information
- High frequency

3. PERSP/INFO @IyaKhalil – Iya Khalil
- Co-founder of GNS Healthcare
- Comments on a range of topics including data analytics, genomics, and the biotech innovation
- Personalized tone connotes author’s perspective
- High frequency

4. PERSP/INFO @john_chilmark – John Moore
- Maintains a thorough blog with frequent in-depth discussion
- Frequently expresses opinions in tweets with good balance of perspective in information
- High frequency

5. INFO @iHealthBeat.org – iHealthBeat.org
- Content rich and well focused on Health IT field
- Includes links to news, analysis, and editorials
- High frequency

6. INFO @HITNewsTweet – Healthcare IT News
- Content rich, relevant posts primarily to parent site
- High frequency

7. INFO/PERSP @JohnSharp – John Sharp
- Primarily focuses on patient/clinical component of Health IT
- Provides daily summary of news pertaining to electronic medical records
- Perspectives often found within links not twitter posts
- Moderate frequency

8. PERSP @Anthony_Guerra – Anthony Guerra
- Links to parent site (healthcaresystemCIO.com) that features interviews with health care CIO’s with deep commentary and analysis
- Moderate frequency

9. PERSP/INFO @DonFluckinger – Don Fluckinger
- Generally features recommendations for and analysis of health IT components
- Maintains analytical/critical approach despite large number of posts
- Views are sometimes shared in twitter conversations
- High frequency

10. PERSP/INFO @boltyboy – Matthew Holt
- Eclectic mix of health IT topics and the author’s opinions
- User personality is apparent
- High frequency

III. Investing/Finance

1. INFO @businessinsider – Business Insider
- Mix of business and financial news with topics for a general audience
- Links primarily to Business Insider website
- Posts are designed to attract attention with tint of sensationalism
- High frequency

2. PERSP/INFO @zerohedge – Zero Hedge
- Offers a particular mix of opinion and information with links to parent blog
- Zero Hedge blog authors maintains anonymity to protect site integrity
- Exhibits a clear and unique activist/sarcastic tone
- Primarily original posts
- High frequency

3. INFO @StockTwits – Stock Twits
- Provides a less pedestrian description of financial news for a more seasoned investor
- High frequency

4. PERSP @PIMCO – Pimco
- Consists entirely of comments by Pimco’s co-chief investment officers
- Bill Gross posts express opinions and news without links
- El-Erian comments via links to newly published articles
- Moderate frequency

5. PERSP @jimcramer – Jim Cramer
- Former hedge fund manager, Mad Money host, and TheStreet founder
- Offers commentary and dialogue with regular references to Mad Money program
- Style is tailored to educated but not expert audience with casual tone
- High frequency

6. PERSP @herbgreenberg – Herb Greenberg
- CNBC senior stocks commentatory
- Engages in dialogue with users
- High frequency

7. PERSP @DougKass – Douglas Kass
- Journalist and investment manager
- Opinions, dialogue for the more informed investor
- News is dispensed primarily via short descriptions rather than links
- High frequency

8. INFO @MarketWatch – MarketWatch
- Comprehensive news headlines from MarketWatch website
- High frequency

9. PERSP/INFO @BioRunUp – BioRunUP
- Specializes in biotech trading
- High frequency

10. PERSP @BiotechtraderHB – Tony Pelz
- Active dialogue discussing investment strategies and events in the biotech industry
- High frequency

IV. General News

1. INFO @WSJ – Wall Street Journal
- Wall Street Journal headlines
- High frequency

2. INFO @nytimes – The New York Times
- The New York Times headlines
- High frequency

3. INFO @nprnews – NPR News
- NPR News headlines
- High frequency

4. INFO @TheEconomist – The Economist
- The Economist headlines
- High frequency

5. INFO @washingtonpost – The Washington Post
- The Washington Post headlines
- High frequency

6. INFO @TheOnion – The Onion
- The Onion headlines
- High frequency

7. INFO @cnnbrk – CNN Breaking News
- CNN headlines
- High frequency

8. INFO @bloombergnow – BloombergNow
- Bloomberg headlines and editorials
- High frequency

9. INFO @digg – Digg
- Digg headlines
- High frequency

10. INFO @AJEnglish – Al Jazeera English
- Unique perspective on international events
- High frequency

V. Biotech News

1. PERSP/INFO @gautamkollu – Gautam Kollu
- VP Marketing at Exelixis
- Range of topics include development drug, capital markets, and cancer
- Succinct posts with commentary and relevant retweets
- Engages in dialogue regularly
- High frequency

2. PERSP/INFO @pharmalot – pharmalot
- Most original tweets link to a very active blog written by Ed Silverman
- Each morning provides collection of headlines from various sources
- Blog content highlights interesting events with author’s commentary
- Tweets offer provocative/intriguing introductions
- Moderate tweet frequency

3. PERSP/INFO @rleuty_biotech – Ron Leuty
- San Francisco Business Times Biotech reporter
- Links to blog compiling San Francisco Bay Area biotech stories running in the San Francisco Business Times and Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal
- Retweets from a diverse group of users
- High frequency

4. INFO @FierceBiotech – FierceBiotech
- Links to broad range of biotech science and industry news
- Concise tweets
- High frequency

5. PERSP/INFO @eyeonfda – eyeonfda
- Author, consultant/attorney Mark Senak, specializes in regulatory issues
- Perspective on impact and implications of regulatory events
- Includes many links to general biotech/pharma news
- Moderate tweet frequency

6. INFO @Genbio – GEN
- Links to Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News website
- Features biobusiness, drug discovery, omics, bioprocessing, and translational medicine
- Frequent use of twitter hash tag syntax
- High frequency

7. INFO @FiercePharma – FiercePharma
- Broad range of pharmaceutical industry news with occasional retweets
- High frequency

8. INFO @BioMedReports – BioMedReports
- Healthcare stock and investing headlines and related news
- Retweeting is rare
- High frequency

9. INFO @BioPharmaToday – Josh Berlin
- Elsevier Business Intelligence – publishers of The Pink Sheet, IN VIVO and PharmAsia News
- Focused on business development strategy, drug development, and regulation
- High Frequency

10. PERSP/INFO @reutersBenHir – Ben Hirschler
- Pharma, health and science correspondent for Reuters in London
- European news and perspective related to pharmaceutical industry
- Includes general worldwide financial/economic commentary
- High frequency

VI. Science

1. PERSP/INFO @NatureNews – Nature News & Comment
- News and opinion (not research articles) from Nature Magazine
- Engages in dialogue
- High frequency

2. PERSP/INFO @wiredscience – Wired Science
- Wired Science blog from Wired magazine
- Themed for general public and science enthusiasts
- Moderate frequency

3. INFO @sciam – Scientific American
- Scientific American article and blog posts
- Content from additional sources provided via retweets
- High frequency

4. PERSP/INFO @newscientist – New Scientist
- New Scientist Magazine covering space, tech, environment, health, life, physics/math, and science in society
- Includes original articles, blogs, and opinions
- Content from additional sources provided via retweets
- High frequency

5. PERSP/INFO @nytimesscience – New York Times Science
- Science, environment and space news from the New York Times
- Features articles, blogs, letters and opinions
- Few retweets
- High frequency

6. PERSP/INFO @carlzimmer – Carl Zimmer
- Prolific science writer, maintains blog “Loom” at Discover Magazine
- Covers broad range of science topics and news
- Frequent retweets and dialogue with users
- High frequency

7. PERSP/INFO @guardiansciblog – Guardian Science Blogs
- Science blogs from The Guardian covering general science, physics, and nature, and science in the general news
- Moderate frequency

8. INFO @DiscoverMag – Discover Magazine
- Discover Magazine content with additional sources
- Includes content about science and scientists
- High frequency

9. PERSP/INFO @NatureBiotech – Nature Biotechnology
- Journal covering the science and business of biotechnology
- Diverse content: research articles, science news, business news, and blogs
- Contains relevant retweets
- Moderate frequency

10. PERSP/INFO @mattwridley – Matt Wridley
- Author of books on evolution, genetics, and society
- Maintains and links to a blog: “The Rational Optimist”
- Provides content at the interface of science and its social implications
- Moderate tweet frequency

VII. Healthcare/Medicine

1. INFO @nytimeshealth – NYTimes Health
- Health news from the New York Times
- High frequency

2. PERSP/INFO @HarvardHealth – Harvard Health
- Links to Harvard Health Publications, news and information about treatments and disorders
- Includes “Ask Doctor K” section
- Moderate frequency

3. INFO @AmerMedicalAssn – AMA
- American Medical Association provides news and information relating to the health professions
- High frequency

4. PERSP/INFO @WSJHealthBlog – WSJ Health Blog
- Links to blog entries providing both information and commentary on health and health business topics
- Moderate frequency

5. PERSP/INFO @MayoClinic – Mayo Clinic
- Articles from the Mayo Clinic concerning health issues and treatments and advice
- Moderate frequency

6. PERSP/INFO @Health_Affairs – Health_Affairs
- News and opinions regarding health, healthcare, and public health/policy
- Moderate frequency

7. INFO @NPRHealth – NPR Health News
- NPR Health news articles ranging from research advances to social issues
- Moderate frequency

8. INFO @NEJM – New England Journal of Medicine
- Variety of content from the New England Journal of Medicine
- Moderate frequency

9. INFO @Lancet – Lancet
- Content from the Lancet Journal
- Moderate frequency

10. PERSP @PaulFLevy – Paul Levy
- Former CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA
- Authors prolific healthcare blog which is frequently the subject of tweets
- Moderate tweet frequency

VIII. VC/Entrepreneurs

1. PERSP/INFO @venturehacks – Venture Hacks
- Advice for startups
- News, employment, funding opportunities
- Much content provided via retweets
- Moderate frequency

2. PERSP @RealEndptsEllen – Ellen Licking
- Editor and writer for Value and Innovation Blog
- Each original post features author’s opinion or commentary
- Frequent retweets with new author comments
- Moderate frequency

3. PERSP/INFO @DavidASteinberg – David Steinberg
- Partner at PureTech Ventures, co-founder of 6 startups
- Early stage investment in novel therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and research technologies.
- Topics include general science, regulation, and biotech innovation/investing
- Primarily dialogue and commentary reflecting author’s view with occasional links
- High frequency

4. PERSP/INFO @bijans – Bijan Salehizadeh
- Managing Director at NaviMed Capital
- Late stage investors in medical technology, healthcare services and health IT
- Dialogue, retweets, and abundant commentary
- Moderate frequency

5. PERSP/INFO @GoogleVentures – Google Ventures
- Google’s venture capital arm
- IT/technology specific content in addition to general discussion on entrepreneurship and career resources
- Moderate frequency

6. PERSP/INFO @ScottKirsner – Scott Kirsner
- Boston Globe columnist
- Focused on start-ups, venture capital and innovation in New England
- Dialogue, retweets, and abundant commentary
- High frequency

7. INFO @BioStartUp – Ed Y Lu PhD
- Industrial researcher
- Links to news articles relating to medical innovation in research and business
- Concise tweets
- Moderate frequency

8. INFO @Sequoia_Capital – Sequoia Capital
- Venture firm in energy, finance, healthcare, energy, mobile, internet and technology sectors
- Provides promotional content and resources for entrepreneurs
- Moderate frequency

9. PERSP @msuster – Mark Suster
- Entrepreneur turned VC – blog Both Sides of the Table
- Primarily dialogue with recommended links to blog or via retweets
- Moderate frequency

10. INFO @peHUB – peHUB
- Venture capital and private equity headlines with links
- Concise tweets
- High frequency

IX. Service Providers

1. INFO @BostonBioTech – BBCR
- Boston Biotech Clinical Research – Clinical strategy and trial design specialists
- Links to content focusing on rare disease, orphan indication and clinical trials
- Moderate frequency

2. PERSP/INFO @PearlF – Pearl Freier
- Founder of Cambridge BioPartners, Inc
- Innovative networking, recruiting and strategic business development
- Primarily dialogue
- Moderate frequency

3. PERSP/INFO @Comprendia – Comprendia
- Biotechnology and life science marketing, social media and business development
- Engages in dialogue and occasionally posts links
- Moderate frequency

4. PERSP/INFO @ideapharma – IDEA Pharma
- Pharmaceutical design consulting company
- Commentary and links concerning innovation in biotech industry
- Technical and strategic approaches
- Moderate frequency

5. PERSP/INFO @biotechPatent – Brian R. Dorn, PhD
- Patent attorney working on biotech, biosimilars, nanobiotech, and phamaceuticals
- Moderate frequency

6. PERSP/INFO @ipwatchdog – Gene Quinn
- Patent attorney
- Provides news and commentary while engaging in significant dialogue
- Moderate frequency

7. PERSP/INFO @McKQuarterly – McKinsey Quarterly
- Business journal of McKinsey & Company
- Articles on aspects of managerial strategy
- Moderate frequency

8. PERSP/INFO @StevenRothberg – Steven Rothberg
- President of CollegeRecruiter.com
- Advice and commentary and employment searches and recruiting
- Moderate frequency

9. INFO @WJNPharma_Jobs – Wiley Pharma Jobs
- Pharmaceutical and biotech recruitment service
- High frequency

10. INFO/PERSP @achrismanEBD – Anna Chrisman
- EBD Group Senior Manager, Conferences and Program – facilitating strategic partnerships in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical industries
- Provides information on conferences, events, and partnerships
- Tweets are focused, concise, and clearly express opinions
- Relatively lower frequency of link tweeting; the tweet itself is often the extent of the commentary
- Low frequency

X. Benchmark Biotech Twitter Users

These are individuals in the biotech industry actively engaged in social and professional Twitter activity. While focused on the industry, they are engaged across a broad spectrum of topics and discussions.

1. Steven Dickman @cbtadvisors – Founder/CEO of CBT Advisors
2. Bruce Booth @LifeSciVC – Biotech VC
3. Cynthia Clayton @Alnylam – RNAi Biopharmaceutical Company
4. Adam Feuerstein @adamfeuerstein – Sr. Columnist TheStreet
5. John Fierce @JohnCFierce – editor FierceBiotech
6. Michael Gilman @Michael_Gilman – Founder/CEO Stromedix
7. Carlos Velez @LacertaBio – Pharma/Bio Business
Development, Licensing, & Consulting.
8. Daphne Zohar @daphnezohar – Founder & Managing Partner,
PureTech Ventures
9. John LaMattina @John_LaMattina – Sr. Partner PureTech
Ventures
10. Carol Gallagher @carol_gallagher – Past CEO of Calistoga Pharma
11. Richard Pops @popsalks – CEO Alkermes
12. Richard Heale @ThinkingPharma – CEO ThinkingPharma
13. Tim Walbert @HorizonPharmaCEO – CEO Horizon Pharma
14. David Williams @HealthBizBlog – Co-founder MedPharma
15. Bill George @Bill_George – former CEO Medtronic
16. Chris Hogg @cwhogg – CEO 100plus
17. James Tayloer @JTBiotech – CEO Precision Nanosystems
18. Tim Ravenscroft CEO @Lentigen – CEO Lentigen
19. John Halamka @jhalamka – CIO of BIDMC
20. Omar Ishrak @MedtronicCEO – CEO Medtronic

Appendix: Approach

These “Top 10” Twitter lists represent groups of Twitter users who in sum create a thorough and diverse ensemble of twitter users in a specific subject area. The lists were compiled for an audience of life science professionals and are partially based on the preferences of our “Benchmark Biotech Twitter Users” as well as the authors’ own preferences. Each tweeter’s name and handle is accompanied by a brief description as well as a classification as “PERSP” – providing primarily perspective, commentary, and opinions on topics; “INFO” – providing timely factual information and news stories; or both.

# # #

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by | March 13, 2012

Can the Amgen Takeout of Micromet Juice German Biotech? Can Anything?

By Steve Dickman, CEO, CBT Advisors

Now that Germany has had its first billion-dollar biotech exit, it seems it would be about time for the beleaguered German biotech sector to enjoy a welcome jolt of juice. Amgen plans to lay out $1.16 billion in cash to acquire Micromet (NASDAQ: MITI) in a deal announced on January 26.

Generally, big exits create new opportunities. As a wishful example, consider the impact of the upcoming monster $10 billion IPO of Facebook, which will likely spark financially secure engineers to start new companies and multimillionaire founders to start new venture funds.

So is it time to celebrate in Germany? Not exactly. But there may be some good news for German biotech if we dig deep enough. I believe that the Micromet acquisition and other recent successes could serve as a valuable proof-of-concept for biotech products and technologies “made in Germany.” There are plenty of seedlings growing up from German universities and spinning out of existing companies. This is a good time to focus on them.

Tough trickle-down

Amgen’s big-ticket acquisition will likely not translate directly into a rash of new startups. The techniques used in inventing Micromet’s products – bispecific antibodies for systemic treatment of cancer and other severe diseases – are not easily transferred. Amgen has said that it intends to retain virtually all two hundred employees located at the Munich site. Some itchy would-be founders may eventually leave but the short-term impact will be limited.

More difficult for the German biotech scene, Micromet has not been a purely or even mostly German company for a long time. Its January, 2006, reverse merger with the failed California biotech CancerVax gave it a NASDAQ ticker symbol and a U.S. headquarters. The company raised $328 million in total of which $264 million came in PIPEs and follow-ons following the CancerVax merger. There was also approximately $60 million cash on hand at CancerVax when the companies merged.

Despite its impressive size, the Micromet exit is surprisingly no more than “a mediocre hurrah” for local VCs, one Germany-based VC investor told me. “VCs here have mixed feelings about this deal since … very few investors [who made initial investments into the company] were able to make money.”

Dollars slipping away

Why not? Clinical trials were going to be expensive. Likely acquirers were far away. Some funds faced restrictions on cross-border or public investing. Others simply did not have the money to push a company so far towards clinical proof-of-concept. The lack of local capital threatened to leave the company unable to prove the value in its innovative products. Hence, many of the gains were made by investors in public shares such as crossover funds and hedge funds.

Before I unveil my modest proposal for how to help the next crop of projects and companies in Germany, let’s look at where we are, how we got here and then I’ll return to where we can go next.

Bye-bye bubble

The world’s biotech boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s proved to be too much of a bubble for many German companies and investors. Some early companies were not built for sustainability and after some 2000-era fairy-tale financings on Frankfurt’s Neuer Markt, public biotech investors in Germany were badly burned. They have largely not returned.

The situation is not much better for venture capital funds. Otello Stampacchia, managing partner at Omega Funds, one of the institutional investors with the longest-term stake in Micromet, said that the VC shortage afflicting Europe is “particularly bad in Germany. Compared to what has happened, say, in the UK, there has been a colossal shrinkage.”

What is left in Munich, Berlin, Stuttgart, Heidelberg and other fertile biotech regions is both promising and problematic: truly world-class science; experienced entrepreneurs and employees; over eight hundred companies; and a severe lack of both venture and growth capital. Hence, in Micromet’s case, the truly creative solution of a reverse merger in 2006 and the successive financings in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010.

MITIgating factors

The company’s big exit, albeit on a leukemia product not yet been approved by FDA, is a beacon of light for German startups. I asked eight venture and public investors in Germany about the acquisition’s impact and the response was one of optimism tempered with caution. “The general message is positive, namely, that German biotech is capable of turning cutting-edge basic research into a full-blown company,” said one financial VC in Munich.

The capital shortage that Micromet encountered in Germany is emblematic of issues faced everywhere by therapeutics startups: the more innovative you are, the tougher it is. It takes more time than a VC fund lifetime of ten years for such technologies to reach Phase 3 or commercial status or achieve a big exit. A typical timeline is fifteen years. (Micromet was founded in 1996.)

Micromet rings the bell

Micromet rings the bell

Now that Micromet has proven the case for innovative biotech products nurtured in Germany, the burning question for investors, one of them told me, is “whether deals like the Micromet M&A creates more international VC activity in Germany.” With IPO markets shuttered and little in the way of growth capital, I suspect that the answer is likely “not anytime soon.”

But even if traditional VC does not return in significant amounts to Germany, some of the near-ripe fruit there is worth watching. Those companies include two that had the honor of presenting at the 2012 JP Morgan Healthcare Conference: NOXXON, based in Berlin, which is carrying out multiple clinical trials in a variety of high-value indications for its exciting spiegelmer technology; and Probiodrug, based in Halle, which is pursuing a unique and highly interesting approach to treating Alzheimer’s disease by attacking the underlying disease biology in a novel way. A third company, Curetis in Stuttgart, announced in November that Roche Venture Fund had made an investment alongside a Netherlands-based financial VC fund, Forbion. Curetis’ technology can rapidly identify pathogens causing hospital-acquired or severe community-acquired infections like pneumonia by bringing highly multiplexed PCR reactions into the hospital lab.

Those are just the most advanced companies. There are many more behind them and their technologies and approaches have much to offer. (Affimed in Heidelberg and Synimmune in Tübingen are just two examples in the bispecific antibody space.) Consider the technology areas in which German companies have thrived: they are mostly intricate (like Micromet’s bispecific antibody technology or Curetis’ 50-analyte PCR); they are more likely to be enabling technologies than therapeutic products (one local expert estimated that only fifteen or twenty of those eight hundred companies are working on therapeutic products that they themselves intend to develop); these enabling technologies cost $10 million to $50 million (or more) to develop; and, once mature, they will turn out to be highly valuable to big industrial companies in pharmaceuticals and related sectors like diagnostics. Stellar examples, aside from Micromet, are easy to spot:

MorphoSys: inventor of an antibody generation technology, this venture-backed startup nearly succumbed in the early 2000s to the same shortage of capital that forced Micromet out of Germany, then “went public on a hope and a prayer,” according to one investor. “Now it’s a real company,” he said, with a recent market cap of $420 million.

Direvo: an enzyme engineering business for protein therapeutics sold in 2009 for $230 million to Bayer Schering; the original technology was spun out into the “new Direvo” and is now in innovative use for industrial enzyme development; like the original Direvo, it is based in Cologne.

Jerini: a therapeutics company in Berlin acquired by Shire in 2008 for € 328 million ($521 million).

Brahms: a molecular diagnostics company acquired by Thermo Fisher in 2009 for $479 million.

MTM Laboratories: a molecular diagnostics company in Darmstadt acquired by Roche in 2011 for up to € 190 million ($269 million).

No one doubts Germany’s ability to generate attractive up-and-coming academic projects and small companies.  As one investor put it, “the start-up scene is healthy and ‘well-seeded’ by various grant systems like GO-Bio and government-affiliated institutions such as High-Tech Gründerfonds.”* The bottleneck is capital.

Pharma to the rescue?

Last time I checked, the pharmaceutical industry was shutting down internal research and scouring the world for innovation. Some pharma CEOs are saying that pharma should not invest in internal R&D at all any more. By contrast, pharmaceutical companies are beefing up their corporate VC activities. I count no fewer than twelve VC funds affiliated with pharmaceutical companies, some of which have roots in Germany (Boehringer Ingelheim) or German-speaking Europe (Novartis) and some of these have a strong interest in clinical diagnostics (Roche).

All these funds need look no further than Germany. What a fit! On top of the fertile environment for technologies, labor is relatively cheap. As I learned as a venture capitalist in a Germany-based fund, the cost of a laboratory worker in Germany is roughly half of the cost in the United States and the quality of their work is as high if not higher.

And the managers needed to bring technology platforms to proof of concept are present in larger numbers than at any time in the country’s history. They have worked by the dozens in German companies that have had solid exits – starting with Micromet and extending to Brahms, MTM Laboratories, Direvo, Jerini and MorphoSys – and strong sales – Evotec, Miltenyi and Qiagen in addition to the local pharmaceutical industry (Bayer Schering, the former Sanofi Aventis, and Boehringer Ingelheim).

The growth capital bottleneck should present no major obstacle to corporate venture investors who are both investing more and also increasingly working side-by-side in companies such as Aileron Therapeutics and Celladon Corporation, US-based companies that have attracted four corporate VCs each.

If pharma is the investor then the exit could well be integration into one or another pharma company’s own research efforts. Investing with the aim of achieving technical proof of concept in therapeutics or early commercial validation in the case of non-therapeutic platforms would alleviate the need for fifteen years of funding. The “harvest” could come much earlier. But who knows? Once investors see that their efforts are being rewarded, they might choose to let the companies carry on independently, issuing technology dividends and financial dividends alike.

What’s missing is a catalytic action on the part of those VCs, especially corporate VCs, already active in Germany together with the German government. A government co-investment growth fund of € 200 million or € 300 million, actively managed and investing in each deal alongside a minimum of two corporate or financial VCs, could make a huge difference. The seedlings are beginning to grow. Time to water them.

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Disclosure: Steve Dickman or CBT Advisors have worked recently with Curetis, Direvo and Probiodrug and previously with Evotec, Jerini, MorphoSys and NOXXON.

*GO-Bio has financed thirty-four projects in four rounds, leading to fifteen companies. High-Tech Gründerfonds, also based in Berlin, which finances high-tech startups including those in medical technology- and healthcare-related fields, has been active since 2005 and recently began investing a second fund of € 288.5 million.

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by | February 15, 2012

Biogen Idec Lets Stromedix Do the Hard Part

Stromedix’ Exit to Drug’s Source Shows Why We Need VC More Than Ever

by Steve Dickman, CEO, CBT Advisors

February 14, 2012

For anyone wondering about the value that can be added by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to the drug discovery and development process, look no further than Stromedix. This venture-backed company in Cambridge, MA, was acquired today by Biogen Idec for $75 million up-front and up to $487.5 million based on the achievement of certain development and approval milestones. The driver for the acquisition is a monoclonal antibody known as STX-100, about to enter Phase 2 in the tough indication of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a nearly always fatal disease characterized by lung scarring. STX-100 is one of several early entrants in the race to apply modern biologic therapies to fibrosis and its challenging biology.

Now let’s consider the value-add. First the return. As of early 2011, Stromedix had raised $29.4 million plus at least an additional $5M in debt financing in September, 2011, most of which has likely not been drawn down. (Stromedix investor Bruce Booth of Atlas Venture states in his blog post that the total cash in, including the debt facility, was $38 million). That makes the up-front price worth about 2X to the Stromedix investment syndicate, which includes NLV Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Red Abbey Venture Partners and Frazier Healthcare Ventures as well as Atlas Venture. Considering that most of this capital did not flow in until the 2008 Series B round, that’s not a bad internal rate of return (IRR) for the investors. If STX-100 hits any milestones at all, that return will rise, of course, possibly to an impressive 5X or even, in the unlikely event that all milestones are achieved, 19X. For the venture investors, the combination of certainty of the initial exit and possible upside later – with no more board meetings to attend! – makes this deal a sweet one.

Stromedix logoBut the deal becomes even more impressive – and instructive – when one considers that the asset STX-100, which comprises essentially the full value of Stromedix, was in-licensed from Biogen Idec back in 2007 for a price that I’ve heard was less than $5 million and perhaps even less than $2 million up front. This would fit with the company’s financing history. Before the 2008 $25 million Series B round, less than $5 million had been raised, some of which went to pay salaries, rent and development costs. So not much of this could have paid for the asset. One assumes that Biogen Idec had some milestones and royalties coming to it from the initial licensing deal and that these were negotiated away as part of the sale transaction. But the fact remains: Biogen Idec gave up the asset for a very low price and is buying it back for a much higher one. Why?

Read the rest of my post on Xconomy here or click/copy-paste the link:

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/02/14/biogen-idec-lets-stromedix-do-the-hard-part/?single_page=true

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by | January 17, 2012

“Quant” VC Correlation Ventures: VC’s New “Dream Date”

Those venture capitalists lucky enough to remain in the drastically smaller pack are constantly cruising for the perfect co-investor. Like the perfect spouse, it’s hard to imagine finding it all in one person:

  • Quick decision. Even if it is a no, I want to hear it quickly.
  • Ready money. If it is yes, please be ready to close very soon.
  • No diligence. If a lead investor has already “kicked the tires” on the deal, don’t you do it too. Trust their diligence. Don’t bother our key customers or partners.
  • No backtalk. We already have plenty of board members and lots of opinions. Be a board observer. Or, better yet, trust us. Don’t come to the board meetings at all.
       When Managing Partner David Coats and his colleagues founded San Diego-based Correlation Ventures, they had sat on the other side of the table – lead investors looking for co-investors. When they went looking for a fund concept, applicable in both life sciences and high-tech VC, that would both be new and would match the needs of the market, they decided to explore how such a “perfect” co-investor could also make money. They deployed heavy-duty predictive analytics on what they claim is one of the most complete databases of venture capital financings and outcomes, including the fifty thousand deals in their database – ninety per cent of VC deals closed since 1987. This information was scrounged the hard way, according to this recent post on the Nature blog site: Correlation forged relationships with Dow Jones and multiple VC firms to access historical non-public data. That way, they were able to find a mathematical model, described below, that should lead to a strong return while still offering all the advantages listed above.

        Fund-raising went surprisingly well, given the current constrained environment. Correlation Ventures blew past its $150 million target and raised $165 million. This amount will be invested over three to four years in up to fifty companies in chunks as small as $250,000 or as large as $4 million over the lifetime of a company. The list of limited partners (LPs), whose identities were not disclosed, reads like a who’s who: endowments, pension funds, family offices and individuals. I chatted with Coats at Convergence Forum in Chatham, MA, in May, 2011 and again at the JP Morgan conference last week. He said that the fund-raising was so successful in part because of the early and enthusiastic support of thirty top-tier venture fund partners who themselves wrote checks. That sort of endorsement opened doors with limited partners.

Correlation had a first closing in 2010 and started investing then. Two of its first thirteen investments are in the healthcare space, one in medical devices and one in therapeutics.

Lies, damn lies and…

So what’s the secret sauce? Statistical analysis. Correlation feeds in data on all the variables, including co-investors, the level of management experience, and, especially outcomes such as internal rate of return and multiple. Correlation then runs multiple regression analyses and identifies those variables that account for the most variance.

Cartoon on regression analysis       Surprisingly, success in individual deals does not correlate all that well with the “top-tier” nature of the VCs involved. “When you look who the winners are in VC,” Coats explained, “the industry is not nearly as concentrated [at the top tier] as some assume.” Coats is defining winners as investors whose deals generate large cash on cash multiples. In actual fact, he said, “The winners are widely dispersed and the distribution is not random. When you actually look at the data, every year there are hundreds of financings generating large multiples. Most, however, are small deals that are not even led by the top sixty VCs.” And in many of these deals, the lead investor winds up looking for a co-investor to fill out a round. That’s where Correlation comes in.

       It expects to push aside funds that might have contended for the open slot but would not make as quick a decision and that would not in any case have been as cost-effective for LPs. This implies that Correlation takes less carried interest and lower fund fees than “active” funds, but the fund understandably chooses not discuss its fees publicly.

The surprising distribution of success poses a dilemma for limited partners, who tend to invest again and again with those funds that have made them money. This is generally a rational hypothesis, Coats agrees, and a disproportionate number of Correlation’s investments are with top-tier firms. In that regard, Coats admits, Correlation is acting like a limited partner, maximizing relationships. However, Coats and his partners decided to broaden their fund diversity and go after the long tail of investors and deals that are not necessarily in the spotlight.

“The big ‘aha,’” he explained, was realizing that “many big [returns] come from financings that are undersubscribed or take a long time to close.” This is due to a pair of what Coats calls “natural inefficiencies.” One inefficiency arises when funds without long track records find good deals and have trouble finding appropriate co-investors. Another occurs in deal selection by funds that may not be seeing the best opportunities. In a conservative time like the past five years, these inefficiencies would seem to have increased as funds become more conservative about who they follow into deals and as there are fewer and fewer “blue-chip” co-investors to choose from.

The beauty of the Correlation model, according to Coats, is that “the top fifty VC firms could shut down and we believe we would still generate strong returns.” There would be enough deal flow and plenty of winners. It certainly is an alternative approach to an otherwise confounding market in which much of the VC muscle now seems to be concentrated at the top.

Piggybacking to success

Won’t this model, if successful, spawn competitors? And will the inevitable rise of additional “quant” VC funds piggybacking on the success of others distort the market in ways that limit or even destroy the yield? Look at what the Moneyball approach did to major league baseball: the team that applied the statistical analysis of player performance, the Oakland Athletics, had an initial advantage despite having less to invest in superstar players. This worked fine until their approach was cloned by virtually every other major league team, returning the Athletics to mediocrity and the league to its previous imbalance of power.

Perfect date image

But will he give me deal flow in the morning?

There will be imitators. In VC, every new fund concept that makes money attracts them. Just look at the proliferation – some would call it an explosion – in royalty-based funds (for example, the new billion-dollar fund raised by Cowen earlier this month). What about the overall impact if copycats generate “clean-room” (reverse-engineered) co-investing models and what if every syndicate starts to have a quant fund as a co-investor? Predictably, Coats had a statistical answer for this. “We have already modeled what we think will happen to the VC industry with our success. Obviously there is greater unpredictability” if and when that happens.

It is too early to say for sure whether the Correlation model – or that of another new fund, Ulu Ventures in Palo Alto, which uses Bayesian analysis to predict the success of internet-enabled consumer and business service companies – will prove successful. After all, plenty of confounding factors not predictable by any model contribute to make investing risky. The risks are especially pronounced when the exit takes several years and the capital needs are as high as they are in life sciences. Holding times for VC-backed healthcare companies are up over five years now, according to this analysis by Silicon Valley Bank.

Some VCs I know see Correlation as a threat, at least to their egos. Others raise the specter of quant-based models such as the notorious Long-Term Capital Management, whose derivatives investing nearly brought down the world financial system in 1998. Please comment, publicly or privately – if there are enough comments, I will post a summary.

To me, their concern seems overblown. The model will work, or it won’t. Either way, Correlation will put more money into the market at a time when it is sorely needed. If the fund succeeds, and I tend to believe that it will, then the impact will be self-limiting. Some VC-backed companies will refuse to take additional money and those that do will not take so much that the market will be warped. One VC summed it up nicely: Correlation’s approach does not have to outperform that top ten or fifteen per cent of VC funds, which will likely keep doing better by actively selecting the best deals. It just has to perform well enough to deliver consistent “bottom of the top quartile” returns to its LPs.

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by | November 8, 2011

Startup Targets Sweet Spot for Consumer Health: Connecting You With Your Data

By Steve Dickman, CEO, CBT Advisors

One secret to both improving consumer health and making money in healthcare IT is the feedback loop: providing a person with her own data as a way to improve compliance and performance. Once she knows, for example, that this meal or that workout leads to success, there is a strong incentive to follow a regimen, make appropriate changes, and then look again. Until recently, feedback loops were clunky. A daily weigh-in. An annual physical. But consumers – dieters, runners, the health-conscious – want much more frequent, high-quality and personalized feedback.

Boston-area newco Segterra is forging new territory with its product www.InsideTracker.com. Segterra is the first to offer healthy consumers a regular glimpse of their own biomarker data coupled with data-driven recommendations for diet and exercise. In exchange for a one-time payment ranging from $169 to $249, InsideTracker provides a blood test (performed at work or home if you are in Massachusetts) and compares the results for key markers with population norms. As Segterra CEO Lee Gartley stated last month in the Boston Globe’s InnoEco blog, “…the online test results ‘show you your levels on a set of biomarkers that we’ve identified as being important for overall health and fitness, like glucose, cholesterol, calcium, and vitamin D… Your levels of creatine kinase, for instance, can tell you whether you have muscle damage from biking too far or bench-pressing a few too many pounds. The report can also suggest foods that can counteract low levels of a particular vitamin or mineral, or ways to vary your exercise regimen for the best results.”

"The Measured Life"The founders of Segterra learned from the positive examples of successful HIT startups FitBit and RunKeeper. Each of these also depends on consumer’s own data to provide recommendations and create a feedback loop. But unlike these other companies, Segterra collects data that consumers could not measure any other way and then applies its analytics to that data in ways that will yield increasing benefits the more consumers sign up.

Given the growing number of tools available, we expect this trend of self-measurement to surge.

As an advisor to this company, I have a stake in their success. But this in turn provides a special opportunity for my readers. Respond in the comments and include your email address and I will send you a discount code good for $50 off the first test. Don’t worry, I will not publish your email address. I’ll certainly be interested in your experience with InsideTracker. (The service works for those who have access to a clinical lab in the United States – stay tuned for international offers).

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by | October 31, 2011

Partnering360: A New Social Network Aims At Biotech – And Succeeds

By Steve Dickman, CEO, CBT Advisors
October 31, 2011

We recently test-drove a new social network for biotech and pharma executives that meets a real need. The new network is called Partnering360. It was launched today by conference organizer EBD Group to coincide with the start of the BioEurope conference in Düsseldorf.

Yet MORE social networks? After Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Foursquare, Quora (for nerds), Mindbloom (for spiritual networking), Xing (for silent Europeans) and Google+ (no one has figured out yet what this one is for), hasn’t that trend peaked? We think it hasn’t and P360 demonstrates why that is the case.

Before detailing what makes this network look like it will be a winner, let’s think about this apparent paradox: an organization that makes its business out of in-person partnering events is joining the headlong rush into online social networking. What are they thinking?

The thinking is actually quite clear. The people who attend partnering events are a self-selected group. They already want to be with each other. They are interested in meeting more people like them in social as well as professional settings. And their organizations often insist that they use the in-person partnering events to broaden their networks in hopes of landing new opportunities. In-person networks get bigger not just through actual partnering meetings but also via social connections – meeting at breakfast, at coffee breaks or at the evening mixers.

But those connections are often fragile. Sometimes they are not immediately work-related. And unless one is a stickler for saving and logging business cards in a contacts database and then following up, the fleeting contacts can easily be lost.

Enter Partnering360. The only participants in this network are people who have attended this group’s events – 14,000 of them at the outset. (Additional industry players may be able to join by invitation later.) Participation is not mandatory but in the early going, Anna Chrisman of EBD Group told me, hardly anyone is opting out. (Good move making the opt-in the default – that makes the platform much more useful). So there is less worry than usual about meeting the “wrong” kinds of contacts e.g. time-wasters. The “right” contacts are all there. And the software, similar to that of LinkedIn, makes it easy to find people and request to connect with them.

The Partnering360 platform, which has been months in the making, grew out of the observation by those at EBD Group that conference participants had flocked to the online partnering platform, called PartneringONE, which had been set up for the group’s frequent events. But the participants had no way to maintain their connections from one event to the next. And PartneringONE’s default was to inform all members of a company’s delegation of each member’s online contacts. That was not a recipe for taking advantage of the serendipity of chance or social meetings.

The rest of the platform is much like LinkedIn, to which some of its content can be linked. It avoids some obvious pitfalls: it costs nothing (charging for this would be a non-starter). It integrates with both LinkedIn and Twitter instead of trying to compete with them. It allows for uploading of a profile photo and other information. If you are on PartneringONE, your profile information will automatically be imported.

Research has shown that one key to benefiting from social networks, online or in-person, is the so-called “weak” connections. As consultant Stuart E. Jackson put it in a mid-October article in Bloomberg Business Week, “The power of weak connections rests on … the assumption: Don’t worry … about having a small number of close friends. Instead, concentrate on making a much larger number of acquaintances—who might be called ‘not-so-close friends.’”  The reason is that this richer and more diverse set of contacts can be a source for all sorts of useful connections. That, of course, is where LinkedIn and social media tools like it come in.Before he started doubting the political import of Facebook and Twitter here, the New Yorker’s Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this power in his prescient 1999 story “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg” and the point was driven home by social network mavens Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler in their popular book Connected and Christakis’ entertaining TED talk.

Networks that enhance existing professional networks get a +1 (aka a thumbs up) in my book. Here are some areas where this one has room to grow:

  • More promotional information. No, I don’t mean ads. Partnering360 is ad-free and it had better stay that way to maintain its value. But just like web sites, information companies want to share is valuable. Chrisman said that there is a plan to add paid video captures of company presentations and I believe this will be welcomed by the community.
  • Real discussion groups. In my view, LinkedIn has failed at this. It seems like every group I join is soon swamped by unwanted, often overly promotional posts. Or the group goes silent. Twitter does this well but the discussions die off because they are too public and limited to 140 characters. The exclusive nature of P360 should lend itself to some productive discussions. I hope this functionality is added soon.
  • Links to more platforms. I dissed Quora above but in fact it can be useful. Google+ also has promise and shares with Partnering360 some degree of self-selection.

Of course, Partnering360 faces some of the same limitations that any online medium does: this material is legally discoverable. It’s semi-public. It certainly does not enjoy the protection of the high walls of a company’s intranet. Its main challenge is how to get above and stay above the noise. But given how regularly the partnering events occur and how often my readers and I find ourselves attending them, I suspect that this platform is here to stay.

END

Full disclosure: I was a moderator of a social network-related panel (video here) at an EBD event earlier this year and I will moderate another one at BioEurope Spring in Amsterdam in March, 2012.

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by | September 23, 2011

Big Pharma Attempts to Extend Own Lifespan by Activating Sirtuins

Sirtuins can’t extend the life of a fly. Can they extend the life of a pharmaceutical company?

By Steven Dickman, CEO, CBT Advisors

Can drugs that supposedly “activate” a controversial target – sirtuin proteins – stop or even reverse the aging process? A new report this week said “No.” According to this report, published Wednesday night in Nature, sirtuin activators do not extend lifespan in roundworms and flies and earlier studies that said they did were flawed. Nonetheless, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into developing drugs to hit these targets – more about their findings below – and if the drugs work, for whatever reason, the scientific squabbles will not matter.

I recently had the chance to hear Harvard professor David Sinclair talk publicly about his and GSK’s research into sirtuin activators. Sinclair was the scientific founder of Sirtris and he reported at a forum on longevity in Cambridge, MA, that GSK has high hopes of near-term confirmation in mice that some sirtuin activators do extend lifespan. Based on its continued investment, GSK still believes that the $720 million acquisition of Sirtris in 2008 was a smart one.

To read the rest of today’s post, visit Xconomy here or copy-paste the link:

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2011/09/23/big-pharma-attempts-to-extend-own-lifespan-by-activating-sirtuins/

 

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by | August 24, 2011

How Google+ Could Transform Healthcare and Medicine

By Rich Whalley* and Steve Dickman

What could Google do if it had access to everyone’s health data?

You’re probably already thinking a few things:

  1. There’s no way I’m giving Google my personal health data.
  2. Didn’t Google already try to do this with Google Health?
  3. Won’t this take the “don’t” out of Google’s “don’t be evil” motto?

But bear with us. Imagine a healthcare system 10 years in the future that would make Obama proud.

I go to the doctor and find out that I’m at risk for developing type II diabetes and need to craft an effective set of measures to minimize my risk. I find out that there are multiple recommended approaches, including preventative medicines. We log in to my Google+ health data page and go through the extensive record of my diet, lifestyle and exercise data, as well as my genome. From this, we determine how my response is likely to compare to that of the average person at risk for diabetes.

Even if Obamacare is ultimately upheld, it’s hard to imagine that the government alone is capable of unifying and analyzing all this data through the implementation of electronic health records. A better solution may come from the private sector, where all the necessary tools are already developed. As we know from Wikipedia, the most comprehensive, cost-effective data sets often come from user-generated data.

In comparison to Wikipedia, and Google+, Google Health was never positioned to gain a large enough user base. Google Health also lacked the right social tools to become popular enough to generate anything like “big data.” Google+, by contrast, will likely gain mass adoption because of the Gmail user-base and Google’s recent moves in the smart phone space. Google’s core strengths—aggregate data analytics, Web app and smartphone integration—give it the inside track to become the ultimate user-generated health resource.

But how to proceed? Letting it grow organically might ultimately lead to a flop the way it did with Google Health. Instead, we have a few suggestions to take on and neutralize the privacy issue and grow via a clever acquisition. That way, Google can realize its full potential as a neutral data gatherer and let its users benefit from the analysis.

To read the rest of today’s post, visit Xconomy here or copy-paste the link:

http://www.xconomy.com/national/2011/08/24/how-google-could-transform-healthcare-medicine/

*Rich Whalley is an associate at CBT Advisors, a boutique consulting firm in Cambridge, MA. Rich graduated from MIT in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry.

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by | July 20, 2011

Google Health is Dead, Long Live Google+

A Boston Biotech Watch guest post by Rich Whalley*

(Cross-posted to The Health Care Blog on July 20, 2011)

Now that Google has put its ill-fated Google Health project to rest, we are wondering who will make the next big attempt to establish a personal health record (PHR) platform for healthy people. Many have tried and many have failed, and there is still no popular platform for gathering, analyzing and sharing health data.

Adam Bosworth founded Google Health in 2006 to provide an online place for consumers to store their own health data. Bosworth left shortly thereafter and went on to found Keas, a SF-based web startup which takes a more social approach to tracking one’s health via a competitive point system. In a recent interview on TechCrunch, Bosworth spoke about why he thought Google Health had failed, “It’s not social,” and “Google didn’t push to see what they could do that people would want.”

Google Health failed in part because the user interface did not motivate most users to upload their health data. By contrast, one of the fastest-growing health sites on the internet, PatientsLikeMe.com, has built its online health community to an impressive 105,000 subscribers, focused first on patients suffering from chronic diseases like ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). The implied reward for this was high given the unmet health need, so it was an easy choice for patients to take the time to enter their valuable data. Healthy people have no such incentive for using PatientsLikeMe, but many seem to want to get in on the action. Armed with smartphones and social network memberships, a new health-savvy generation is looking to catalyze the growth of a new movement.

For every startup entering this field, the million dollar question is “just how easy can we make it for people to enter data and track their health?” It practically has to be automated in order to go viral, a prerequisite for aggregating the “big data” that could lead to marketable conclusions. There is a new line of VC-backed startups tackling this daunting task.

Withings internet-connected scale

Coming to a Twitter feed near you

Withings, based in France, has produced a Body Mass Index (BMI) weight scale which tracks BMI via iPhone or computer and even sends automatic tweets. Americans can get in-shape, and French people can laugh at the tweets of overweight Americans. With all parties happy, why haven’t we seen more development in this area of diagnostic innovation for healthy people? For one, there’s a large VC question around whether or not these startups can make a large ROI with their one-trick ponies. Won’t they be killed off by apps or hardware add-ons created for next-generation smart phones?

Consider Fitbit, a small, lightweight device that functions as a pedometer that tracks sleep and burnt calories throughout the day. One could argue that a small body clip is much more comfortable to wear than an iPhone 4, but Fitbit is primarily a consumer software play. Its hardware is no more than a tricked-out accelerometer, not unlike the ones found inside Nintendo Wii controllers. Recalling Flip Video, I can’t help but think the VCs at Softtech and True Ventures are losing some precious Fitbit-measured “actual sleep time” over certain prickly questions. Will next-gen smart phones eventually eat up FitBit’s market? Will Fitbit be lucky enough to get an exit before time runs out?

Sleeping Guy

Looking to share data on a universal personalized health platform? Dream on!

Withings, despite being partnered with the late Google Health, seems to have a flop-proof strategy of targeting diagnostic applications that are unlikely to be eaten up by new-fangled mobile devices. They recently released an FDA-approved blood pressure monitor that connects directly to the iPhone, and more impressively, already have two products on the market – with a baby monitor expected to hit the market later this year. While they may not be making big returns just yet, they might be able to become a leader in this space by putting up a solid enough barrier to entry.

What would need to happen for these companies to really take off? It’s probably going to involve a concerted effort from players in social networking to form better integrated health networks – a place for the data to live. Even though Google Health flopped, Adam Bosworth seems pretty confident about his new gig, but Keas is not exactly going viral just yet. So who’s left to take charge of the movement?

Google Health recycled

Is Google Health really going to waste, or will it be strategically recycled into a 100% post-consumer product?

PatientsLikeMe is currently limited to the chronically ill, and Facebook doesn’t seem to be making strides in this direction anytime soon. One of the most promising new platforms is Google+, termed “the Facebook killer.” If successful, Google has a golden opportunity to use Google+’s platform to provide a framework for people to manage personal healthcare data. For example, Circles allows users to select specific people and groups for sharing personal data of all varieties, including health data. Importantly, the platform can aggregate anonymized data across a very large user base. Will Google+ eventually become the personal health data platform? I would love to see this happen, but so far there is no hint that anyone at Google is working on healthcare apps for Google+. We can’t wait to see some startups tackle this. It’s only a matter of time.

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by | April 20, 2011

Exosomes: The Little Vesicles That Could

A Boston Biotech Watch guest post by Dima Ter-Ovanesyan*

When I mention to other biologists that I work on exosomes, I am used to getting blank stares. Exosomes, also sometimes called microvesicles, are small lipid vesicles secreted by all cells. Like many dark corners of biology, the exosome field is a province of a few experts and is still largely unknown to the mainstream. But thanks to some exciting early results and a long list of potential medical applications, exosomes are beginning to move out of the shadows and into the light. Exosomes were the subject of two sessions at the annual American Association of Cancer Research (AACR)  meeting earlier this month. In January, the first-ever conference on exosomes brought together more than two hundred researchers from around the world. And now even the popular press is picking up on the applications of exosomes to RNA interference (RNAi) drug delivery and diagnostics in fields ranging from cancer to diabetes.

The concept of cells budding off small particles was actually first mentioned in Charles Darwin’s The Variation of Plants and Animals Under Domestication in 1868 and exosomes were first observed by electron microscopy in the 1980s. For twenty years after that, exosomes were thought by many to be nothing more than “cellular trash bags” that dump proteins deemed to have outlived their “use-by” date. This changed a few years ago, though, when a number of independent studies showed that exosomes actually contain not only protein but also RNA. This discovery opened the possibility of using the RNA in exosomes floating around in bodily fluids to learn all kinds of secrets about the cells that release them.

Charles Darwin

There first (as usual)

I learned about the diagnostic potential of exosomes in early 2009 when a venture capitalist asked my opinion on a business plan. The company, called Exosome Diagnostics, was being spun out of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) to develop new diagnostics based on analyzing the RNA in exosomes isolated from blood and urine. At the time, I was an undergraduate at MIT working on microRNAs. After reading the business plan, the patent filing, and the underlying scientific publication, I called the VC back. “This could be HUGE,” I told him. “We should get in on this,” he replied, and promptly forgot all about it. I did not. After graduation, I opted to learn more about exosomes through a brief stint at the Curie Institute in Paris. I then joined Exosome Diagnostics, which by then was flush with a $20M Series A.

The company’s platform is based on the work done at MGH, which showed that mutant RNA transcripts derived from key genes can be detected in exosomes released by cancer cells. Johan Skog and colleagues had shown that by isolating exosomes from blood and looking at the RNA inside, they could tell whether a patient’s tumor contained mutant EGF Receptor (EGFR) – establishing the proof of principle for exosomes as companion diagnostics. Oncologists could use them to peer into the genetics of tumor and decide whether a patient would be a good candidate for EGFR-inhibiting drugs such as Tarceva® and Iressa®. As pharma companies move increasingly towards targeted cancer therapies coupled to companion diagnostics (think PLX-4032, Plexxikon’s BRAF inhibitor for melanoma, or Crizotinib, Pfizer’s ALK inhibitor for lung cancer), the appeal of a blood or urine test instead of a biopsy to analyze specific mutations is not hard to see. This is particularly advantageous in cancers where obtaining a biopsy is difficult, like brain cancer or lung cancer.

I think that companion diagnostics in cancer are just the tip of the iceberg for exosomes in diagnostics. Several recent studies have shown that different levels of certain RNAs in exosomes and other vesicles isolated from blood correlate with different disease states. In other words, exosomes have RNA “signatures” for different diseases. One recently published study , for example, showed that a specific microRNA in vesicles derived from diabetics’ blood was elevated compared to vesicles taken from non-diabetics. Amazingly, the researchers also showed that this biomarker could potentially be used to identify patients who will get diabetes before any clinical symptoms occur. Although the test in the paper was not yet sensitive enough for the clinic, the results raise the intriguing possibility of using RNA signatures to predict disease, not just diagnose it.

Several reports at the January exosome conference highlighted diagnostic applications of profiling exosomal RNA in different diseases:

  1. Signatures of mRNA isolated from exosomes in the blood could be used to classify brain tumors based on aggressiveness.
  2. A specific microRNA isolated from exosomes in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) was found in brain trauma patients but not in healthy controls.
  3. Certain microRNAs isolated from exosomes in the blood of pregnant women could be used to predict premature births.

Although larger studies will be needed to confirm these effects, I imagine that, in the not too distant future, exosomes will join the list of proteins and metabolites currently profiled during routine blood draws. Through methods such as high-throughput sequencing, the RNA inside exosomes (dare I say “exo-transcriptome”?) will be analyzed and will prove spectacularly useful in helping physicians assess and track patient health.

Exosome Micrograph

I spy a novel class of biomarkers (Image courtesy Johan Skog and Casey Maguire, Massachusetts General Hospital)

Exciting as the potential of exosomes is in diagnostics, you may be wondering what they actually do. Are the different RNA profiles in exosomes more than a correlation? Do exosomes actually contribute to disease? This was an intense topic of debate at the exosome conference, and, after listening to four days of presentations on the topic, I would venture to say that we still really don’t know. The fact that exosomes contain RNA raises the extremely intriguing possibility that cells throughout the body communicate by sending each other little “packages” of RNA, and the RNA can then perhaps act in the recipient cells – be translated into protein in the case of mRNA or repress the expression of other genes in the case of microRNAs. And, if this is the case, one could imagine hijacking this pathway to deliver therapeutic RNAs and thereby overcome an enormous roadblock.

The main obstacle to realizing the tremendous potential of RNAi therapeutics is the challenge of delivery. Whether or not exosomes are actually used to transfer RNA between cells remains to be proven, but results presented at the exosome conference and recently published by a group at Oxford made the first attempt at this approach. Led by Matthew Wood, the group loaded modified exosomes with an siRNA designed to knock down the BACE1 gene implicated in Alzheimer’s Disease.  Although they used healthy mice as models, the researchers demonstrated proof-of-principle by showing reduced levels of BACE1 in the brain. Of course, it would be reassuring to know what exosomes actually do in the body before injecting them into patients, especially given that exosome-based drugs would be complex biologics composed of several different proteins, not just lipid vesicles. As we learn more about the biology of exosomes, however, I could imagine scientists designing exosome-mimicking particles with the minimum necessary components to carry the RNA therapeutic to its designated site in the body.

As evidenced at the exosome sessions at the AACR meeting, there is increasing interest in exosomes secreted by cancer cells. Cancer exosomes have been found to contain oncogenic mRNA and proteins, and it is thus tempting to speculate that exosomes may have a role in modifying the tumor microenvironment and helping the cancer spread. If true, one could even imagine using therapeutics to specifically target cancer exosomes. Unlike with the use of exosomes for diagnostics, however, the use of exosomes for therapeutics will require scientists to uncover some of the fundamental biology of what exosomes are and how they function. Luckily, as evidenced by the excitement at the exosome conference, there are at least two hundred of them up for the challenge.

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*Dima Ter-Ovanesyan (dimatero@gmail.com) graduated from MIT in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science in Biology. At MIT, he worked on RNAi screens in cancer with Michael Hemann and microRNA targeting with Chris Burge and David Bartel. He was also an associate at CBT Advisors. He currently works at Exosome Diagnostics.

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