There’s a new contagious condition circulating that has even infected the biotech sector: e-Distraction, with bad manner side effects of indecorum, insensitivity and more. The wealthy are often regarded as egocentric and out of touch with reality by the 99 percent. However, only 1 percent of us may be wealthy, but it seems like 100 percent of us behave as if we are too important to ever be out of touch with one another. Distraction is so rampant in society that it hardly even seems rude any more to multitask in conference sessions. There is so much competition for our...

I have a fondness for the movies and I perform a function in the biotechnology market, so it’s a bonus when I can combine the two. I’ve written about the correlation between the movie and drug businesses before, so indulge my latest diversion, as I reflect on recent events: Hollywood’s biggest night and biotech’s blockbuster performances. Even as the villainous economy brought drama to the world stage with its own tour de force production, the biotechnology market continued to receive generally positive-to-cautious reviews from industry critics and everyone else who had a speaking role in the market. Its performance and...

Generous valuations, early stage programs drawing VC attention, start-ups undaunted by an inhibiting economy, big pharma's bio-fixation, M&A activity's robust start and an FDA on a roll of approvals are some of the dynamics that have most – but not all – investors seeing the biotech market as a relative five-years-out investment haven, according to a panel at the BIO CEO & Investor Conference and also the results of a new BIO survey.

NEW YORK – Appropriately enough on Valentine's Day, there was news of a blossoming hook-up coming out of the BIO CEO & Investor Conference. The marriage of biopharma drugs and medical technology to develop the companion diagnostics market could be primed to deliver smart therapeutics and produce a family of hybrid products that have the capacity to prematurely discover disease, abort its onset or nurse its symptoms.

NEW YORK – An age-old problem with the business-as-usual model in the biotech market is that the objectives of the principal stakeholders are integrally at odds with one another. The executives, investors and researchers who make things happen in the drug development world all want to see their drugs approved or they want to experience an exit strategy come to fruition, but they have different ideologies on achieving that goal.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting kicked off the month of June as, arguably, the biggest event in the life sciences milieu, with 30,000-plus attendees and an inconsistent mélange of dispiriting and heartening news and data, while the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) concluded the month with half that attendance, but with immeasurably more enthusiasm, excitement and expectations. Don't get me wrong — both events are excellently produced and loaded with germane details; however, when my restless mind sees differences, nothing is above satirizing. It's like Halloween for the health care industry vs. a birthday celebration for biotechnology....

NEW YORK – Some of the most investment-ready emerging markets (EM) are in Latin America, particularly in Mexico and Brazil; not all the way around the world from the U.S., according to the consensus perspective of a panel at the inaugural Jefferies 2011 Global Healthcare Conference in New York this week.

Everyone loved my grandmother. That's why they were rather relieved to hear she had died. My grandmother spritely went about her business against the grain of at least six diseases and with the help of four surgeries, six prescription drugs and four medical devices after becoming a nonagenarian, but she also was mentally prepared for death, mainly because her joints, organs, bones, cells and her five senses were either abandoning or mocking her with frustrating and tormenting bouts of blindness, forgetfulness, ignored nerve center commands and pain . . . especially pain. She was putting up with a lot for...