TOP 20 Biotechnology VC Deals

Today Fierce Biotechnology Published report on TOP 20 VC deals. Following were included

1. Clovis Oncology - $146.30 million
2. Zogenix - $70.96 million
3. BioVex Group - $70 million
4. Pacific Biosciences - $68 million
5. Hyperion Therapeutics - $68 million
6. Anacor Pharmaceuticals $50 million
6. Proteon Therapeutics $50 million
6. PTC Therapeutics $50 million
9. Virdante Pharmaceuticals - $47.75 million
10. Cempra Pharmaceuticals - $46 million
11. Complete Genomics - $45 million
11. SFJ Pharmaceuticals - $45 million
13. Amyris Biotechnologies - $41.75 million
14. Kolltan Pharmaceuticals - $40.50 million
15. Ironwood Pharmaceuticals - $40 million
15. Epizyme - $40 million
15. Adamas Pharmaceuticals - $40 million
15. Aileron Therapeutics - $40 million
15. Regado Biosciences - $40 million
20. GlycoMimetics - $38.98 million

Major Venture capital funding was in cancer, then there were many inflammation, malaria, neural disorders and blood disorders and two of the venture funding out of 20 were for gene sequencing.

Read more: http://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-20-biotech-venture-capital-deals-2009?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal#ixzz0gaW1X3fa

Kooky Inventions.....................

Today after such a long time got opportunity to read book That Calcutta....Those Bongs .......right now just finished first chapter and then in meanwhile was reading some industry updates then this article in Forbes about kooky invention caught my attention, Kooky means crazy and in this article they have described around 15 crazy things created.

For more information:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/22/kookiest-inventions-patent-entrepreneurs-technology-patent_slide_4.html

Thermo bids for Millipore

Today both Bloomberg and Reuter's reported that Thermo (with current market cap of around $20Billion) has already made an offer to acquire Millipore with current market cap of around $5 Billion, with this bid of whooping $6 Billion Thermo will expand its portfolio from being instruments and consumable company to filtration expert for both bio pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical. This deal will give an edge to Thermo in comparison to its competitors like life technologies.

Start up funding ......................

We have watched movies about how to loose guy in 10 days or win a guy and today while I was going through Forbes update and got to look at it...
1. Bootstrapping
2. Friends and Family
3. Small Business grants
4. Loans
5. Incubators
6. Angel Investors
7. Bartering
8. Venture Capitalist
9. Commit to Major Customer
10. Partnering
What else for start up funding?

Read more in http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/12/funding-for-startups-entrepreneurs-finance-zwilling.html

Virtual Pharma companies

Past week after coming from a 3days trip from Luck now life was bit hectic and during the weekend was reading about virtual pharma and biotechnology service providers, In the past decade we had quite huge number of virtual companies in Bio-informatics related Drug Discovery (early 90s) to the completion of human genome project in year 2000 and then from initial 2000 we had more companies blooming up in the field of knowledge process outsourcing (Market, competitive and business intelligence) and CRO's , overall these virtual companies have become backbone for pharma industry for lead generation to drug's brand equity.

Pfizer Discount coupons

Pfizer has been heavily backing on its growth in emerging markets, earlier last year it came out with plan for subsidised medicine in United states and this year it has started the concept of discount coupons in the emerging markets, it has subsidised the price of its branded products to 50% with this Pfizer has targeted 500,000 patients in its belt so. it is planning to have the same card programs in Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela. Big pharma GSK and BMS have already started this discounted medicine in India....Now after FMCG discount retail we will have more to watch in Pharma sector.

Phrama Update- from City of Nawab's ......................

I am  at present here in city of Nawab to attend my   high school friend marriage and in  my free time thought of  writing my  3rd love after my work and  food which is intellectual  drivers...for  the past one year  I have observed that all  the major top 10 pharmaceuticals are rather cutting down their respective sales strength or rather their Research and Development expenditure companies in this list includes Pfizer,  Astra, GSK, Sanofi,  Bristol Mayer Squib to name a few and all these companies are  driving to restructuring and cost cut to save their cash  flow to  amount worth 30 to 40 Billion  so that  in next decade they may in license more drugs  in phase  III late stage  for cancer and neuro degenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's , then enter into new therapeutic area

Wharton Update.........

Wharton business school has recently published article about the current drive of the pharmaceutical industry, the changes happening in the pharma business model, pros and cons of the pharma business models, pharma merger and acquisition trends, how is the deal flow happening.......

Read more in http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2424

Top 10 Pharma deals -2009

1. Pfizer and Wyeth - $68B
2. Roche and Genentech - $46.8B
3. MercK and Schering-Plough - $41.1B
4. Novartis and Alcon - $28.1B
5. Sanofi-Aventis and Merck - $4B
 6. GlaxoSmithKline and Stiefel Labs - $3.6B
7. Warner Chilcott and P&G - $3.1B
8. BMS and Medarex - $2.4B
9. GlaxoSmithKline and Brazil - $2.2B
10. Roche and PTC Therapeutics - $2B

Read more: http://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-reports/top-10-biopharma-deals-2009#ixzz0eKQg0a6I

BMS Update

BMS for long time has been reserving its cash for one medium size pharma or biopharma deal, last year during Q1-2009 it had cash reserves of $4 Billion and now Q1 2010 it has announced that it has cash reserves worth $ 10 Billion, Last year the major deal in its kitty was of Mederex and this year we have to watch which therapeutic area it is going to invest its dollars.......