US Stimulus package for Life Science VC's

According to Money Tree report of Price water Cooper house there was 33% decline in the funding for life sciences industry in Q4 of year 2008 and number of deals count also reduced to 185 deals which is 22% less from Q3 of 2008. After this huge economic melt down in Q3 of 2008, federal administration in United States has been planning for Stimulus package for life sciences industry based VC's. And yesterday a report was published about this stimulus package for life sciences industry based VC’s.

There are many criteria’s to be followed for applying for this stimulus package.

Each VC firm will be entitled to receive federal money based on the size of the funds that it manages and those VC firms are only eligible which are managing funds of more than $30 Million and have been operating their business for at least last 5 years.

The VC stimulus fund will be implemented by Department of the Treasury, the Department of Commerce, or another federal agency capable of managing the program.

Note: For this Program the federal government will not use its power to influence investment decisions made by VC firms which accept stimulus package. All investment decisions and strategies will be previewed by the general partners managing the government-backed firms.

India next Biotech Hub by Year 2020!!!!

Yesterday I was reading an article where it was written that Biotechnology revenue for India is going to reach to $2 Billion by year 2010, In India Department of Biotechnology (New Delhi) has taken many initiative for pooling up rich talent and provide platform for young budding entrepreneurs, Biocon (Bangalore based biotechnology company) also recently formed an alliance with Indian School Business (Hyderabad) and it was informed that Biocon is going to invest around $2 Million for developing new ventures and idea generation in the field of Biotechnology.


What we are not considering is that though we have fund allocation for start-ups but theses companies do need basic equipments for developing their Research and Development? Do we have companies in India which can supply used instruments or auction sites related to resale of the same?

This concept of reselling of used instruments is quite successful in United States and there are many companies which have developed in an around west coast in United states. Why don't we take initiative to develop this concept in India? These companies will not only support the development of more research companies but will lead to employment generation in our country where more than 10,000 Biotechnology graduates pass every year, let's strive to make India next Biotech Hub by year 2020 :)

Biocon Story...................................

Year-1980 (Bangalore- India): 5 people collaborated to start a company in a garage, out of the 5 there was one girl who had just finished her MS from Australia and was looking for better job opportunities in India, later on the company went on to be known globally as Biocon....and out of the 5 collaborators most of us know only about Kiran Shaw Majumdar who is face of Biocon to the global scenario.

What I like about this strong lady is that she is "Brand Equity" in herself, Kiran Shaw Majumdar later on also initiated Bio spectrum ( India’s Biotechnology Magazine), Bangalore Bio and bioinformatics centre in Bangalore and is also associated with many other things. She is also part of Forbes Top 100 most influential woman's global list.....Kudos to her...............

Glaxo emerging market portfolio...........

GSK is exploring in a big way in the emerging markets, firstly last month it signed an alliance with Dr Reddy's of India for marketing 100 branded products in the generic segment then secondly it went on to set up manufacturing plant in Singapore and china for production of H1N1 vaccine. Last but not the least it is venturing into Middle East market by buying Bristol-Myers Squibb's 11 branded generics drugs in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Libya and Yemen for $23.2 million.

Its time for Sanofi and Astrazeneca to rethink for their portfolio.......

Biocon Colloboration with Mylan Pharma

From past two months I was expecting Biocon to tie up for some sort of bio similar collaboration, I thought it was going to form alliance with any one of the top 5 pharmaceuticals in United States as posted by me in my blog on June 14th, 2009. But it went on to form alliance with Mylan Pharmaceuticals (third largest generic pharmaceutical company), now the next companies to watch are Intas Biopharmaceuticals and Nicholas Piramal :)

Big Daddies alliances with Generics.......

Recently a new trend has been observed in pharmaceutical Mergers & Acquisitions. Many big daddies like Pfizer and GSK are strategically forming alliances with generic companies in the emerging markets.

Sanofi aventis is also planning to form alliances with some big generic companies and venture into these niche markets.

I am waiting to hear news about BMS (Bristol Mayer Squibb) M&A activity in Eastern Europe, middle east and some Latin American countries.

DBT (Department of Biotechnology) .......let's praise for this initiative

Bharat Immunological and Biologicals Corporation Limited (BIBCOL) in association with DBT (Department of Biotechnology) of India is developing dispersible zinc tablets. The formulation is for children and infants. These tablets are being made in such a way that they disintegrate rapidly when mixed in a teaspoonful of clean water or expressed breast milk.

Clinical trails have been conducted and it has been clearly shown that Zinc treatment is a highly efficacious treatment in acute diarrhoea and those treated for 10 to 14 days also showed greater resistance to episodes of diarrhoea.

Best feature of the collaboration is that DBT (Department of biotechnology) of India is taking steps to popularize the product among various state health departments and these medicines will be supplied for free in states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Assam.

GSK .........filling its pipeline

GSK over the past one year has made several mega deals for Cancer treatment, Yesterday again it signed a new collaboration, in which it will utilize technology from Chroma therapeutics from UK. In this deal GSK will pay chroma $1 billion in fees, milestones and options. The money will be used to advance Chroma's CHR-2797 into a late-stage cancer study and to move further another compound CHR-2845 toward clinical proof-of-concept.

It is notable that with these series of M&A and collaboration, GSK is filling its pipeline for cancer treatment for the coming decades and will thus become one of the prominent player for cancer therapeutics domain.