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The Burrill Weekly Brief | December 27, 2010

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Prometheus Ruling Boosts Patents on Diagnostics

A U.S. Federal Court of Appeals has ruled that Prometheus Laboratories' test for determining the proper dose of a drug for a specific patient with certain gastrointestinal ailments is patentable. Prometheus had charged in a lawsuit that the Mayo Clinic infringed on two of its patents underlying its test, but a lower court ruled the patents were invalid because they fai led to meet the standards of what is patentable. The decision comes at a time of heightened legal activity around the question of patentability for diagnostics. We spoke to Ken Chahine, visiting professor of law at the University of Utah, about the ruling, what it means for the diagnostics industry, and what effect it will have on other cases winding their way through the courts. Read More Here

Partner Content

Queensland's Next Smart Move
Further growth of the industry will be facilitated by the establishment of a life sciences industry organization.
Queensland's life sciences industry has experienced substantial growth in recent years. The Queensland Life Science Industry Report 2010 indicates that total employment has grown 27 percent since 2007 to around 20,000. Additionally, total annual revenues for the Queensland life sciences industry have grown 58 percent since 2007 to approximately $5 billion (AUD 5 billion).

By The Numbers

REVA Medical Debuts—in Australia
Outlook for IPOs next year is hopeful.
Life sciences companies looking for cash are often told to go where the money is. REVA Medical did just and went to Australia. The San Diego medical device company raised $84.8 million and began trading on the Australian Stock Exchange under the symbol RVA. REVA filed a prospectus both with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Australian Securities & Investments Commission. Read More Here

Biotech Industry Market Cap: $377.17 billion (up 0.4 percent for the week ending 12/23/10)

Performance of Select Blue Chip Biotechs
COMPANY
MARKET CAP
($B)
CHANGE IN
SHARE PRICE (%)
Amgen $53.58 -1.24%
Gilead $29.44 -2.48%
Celgene $28.09 0.72%
Biogen $16.02 -1.35%
Genzyme $18.43 -1.99%

Biotech dips before holiday break
Moving into the holiday period, the Burrill Biotech Select Index dipped 0.5 percent for the week. Shares of Gilead Sciences slipped 2.5 percent following its announcement that it was halting phase 3 clinical trials of ambrisentan in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis due to lack of efficacy. Genzyme's shares increased 2 percent this week. The company provided an extensive briefing on the market potential of alemtuzumab for multiple sclerosis at an event for investors and analysts in New York. Biogen Idec said that it will purchase a subsidiary of Swiss company Neurimmune in a deal that could be worth as much as $427.5 million. The agreement gives Biogen the rights to three drug candidates for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The company's shares closed down 1.35 percent.

For the week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.7 percent and the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.9 percent. It was the fourth week of gains for the Dow as investors remained in an upbeat mood about the state of the economy.

 

INDEX 12/31/09 12/17/10 12/23/10 % CHANGE (WEEK) % CHANGE (YEAR)
Burrill Select 312.47 370.57 368.75 -0.49% 18.01%
Burrill Large Cap 461.85 531.18 533.74 0.48% 15.57%
Burrill Mid-Cap 166.01 222.19 223.49 0.59% 34.62%
Burrill Small Cap 88.12 91.88 95.28 3.70% 8.13%
Burrill Genomics 159.87 159.87 168.19 5.20% 5.20%
Burrill BioGreenTech 126.80 147.65 150.95 2.24% 19.05%
Burrill Diagnostics 147.96 158.12 159.58 0.92% 7.85%
Burrill Personalized Medicine 91.71 106.81 107.31 0.47% 17.01%
Canadian Biotech 40.35 56.45 56.39 -0.11% 39.75%
NASDAQ 2269.15 2642.97 2665.60 0.86% 17.47%
DJIA 10428.05 11491.91 11573.49 0.71% 10.98%
Amex Biotech 941.92 1301.21 1312.86 0.90% 39.38%
Amex Pharmaceutical 309.21 306.23 306.93 0.23% -0.74%

Why You Will Soon Spit on Your Blackberry
The Burrill Report's Publisher G. Steven Burrill discusses the transformation of medicine
A short video clip from the World Health Care Congress 2010 Read More Here

Brave Combo
Sanofi and Merck Serono to jointly study paired experimental cancer therapies as the FDA issues new guidance for codevelopment of two or more experimental drugs for use in combination.
Sanofi-Aventis and Merck Serono have said they will jointly study combinations of experimental targeted cancer drugs in the hope that pairing such compounds would provide more effective treatments than either individually. Read More Here

Novartis Invests $500 million in Russia's Healthcare Industry
Pharma will build a new manufacturing plant and expand its R&D; efforts in the country.
Novartis is investing $500 million in Russian pharmaceutical infrastructure, R&D; partnerships, and public health development over the next five years as it aims to strengthen its position there. Its investment comes at a time when Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has warned multinational drug companies that they will face severe restrictions if they fail to develop local production. Read More Here

Sanofi-Aventis Signs $800 Million Cancer Drug Deal
Avila Therapeutics' targeted drug technology adds another arrow to Sanofi's quiver for targeting cancer.
Sanofi-Aventis is banking up to $800 million that Avila Therapeutics' targeted drug technology will lead to better drugs to treat cancer. The French biopharma entered into a worldwide strategic alliance with the private, Boston area biotech to discover drugs for the treatment of cancer. Sanofi will have an exclusive license to develop and commercialize the compounds resulting from their efforts. Read More Here

Burrill Report Poll:
What kind of year will 2011 be for biotech? Tell us what you think.

Chronic Fatigue Alleged Culprit Questioned
New research shows virus linked to the disease is a lab contaminant.
When researchers had discovered a virus to help explain a perplexing illness known as chronic fatigue syndrome, it provided hope for diagnosing and treating the disease. But a new study says that the research was wrong. It concludes the cell samples used to determine that the virus XMRV was connected to the disease were contaminated. Read More Here

Pondering Synthetic Biology's Future
Commission finds much work ahead to define boundaries, debate.
Synthetic biologists envision a future in which human-engineered organisms and biological systems revolutionize the production of clean energy, new vaccines, and smarter manufacturing processes. Now, the U.S. government's taken a first pass at establishing ground rules for the scientific quest to create life from scratch calling for transparency, vigilance, and fairness as the field develops. Read More Here

Pfizer and Adolor End Collaboration to Develop Pain Meds
The weekly round-up of failed trials, missed targets, and other business mishaps.
Adolor and Pfizer will end their alliance to develop two of Adolor's experimental pain drugs, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported. The two companies since December 2007 have been developing ADL-5859 and ADL-5747, which are delta opioid receptor agonist compounds. The agreement between the two companies called for Pfizer to pay Adolor $30 million in upfront fees and up to $232.5 million in milestones if the development of the compounds was successful. Adolor said clinical evaluations in multiple indications failed to provide compelling evidence for continuing development of the drugs. Read More Here

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