SAN FRANCISCO – Imaging giant GE Healthcare is slated to spinoff from its parent company in an IPO. It reportedly filed confidentially with the SEC in mid-December and is slated to make its independent public debut in mid-2019. (See BioWorld MedTech, June 27, 2018.) Given this, the company opted to update investors at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference, although it avoided any discussion of the public offering or detailed financials.
SAN FRANCISCO – The name of the game thus far for Guardant Health Inc. has been precision medicine, using genomics to select the best therapy particularly for advanced cancer patients. But it's moving further into cancer recurrence monitoring – and even, ultimately, the Holy Grail of a liquid biopsy for cancer screening.
SAN FRANCISCO – Fingerstick-free continuous glucose monitors (CGMs) are a fast-growing segment, where Abbott has a first mover advantage. Dexcom Inc., of San Diego, gained its own label last year on this front and took the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference to highlight the perceived advantage of its G6 system over Chicago-based Abbott Laboratories' Freestyle Libre. These include the need for actively, rather than passively, gathering blood glucose data and the absence of alarms.
SAN FRANCISCO – It's quite difficult to maintain rapid growth as a company gets very large, since it takes more to move the needle on an increasingly bigger revenue base. But continuous glucose monitor (CGM) player Dexcom Inc. has managed to do just that so far – and its being richly rewarded by Wall Street for its performance and expectations going forward.
Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, likes to think big. It has poured billions into what it categorizes in SEC filings as "Other Bets" that encompasses several businesses such as venture firm GV, television gambit Access, self-driving car company Waymo and anti-aging drug developer Calico. But now it's seeking some financial help to support one of its biggest efforts on this front, med tech-focused Verily. Technology private equity investor Silver Lake led a $1 billion financing with participation by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and additional unidentified global investment management firms for an undisclosed stake in Verily.
Berkeley, Calif.-based Iota Biosciences Inc. has raised a $15 million series A round to get into a first-in-human pilot study for its bioelectronics implants. The field of bioelectronics aims to develop super tiny implants that effectively shift fundamental disease processes via neuromodulation, thereby potentially replacing pharmaceutical treatments with a safer, more effective, nonsystemic alternative.
