1) Globe’s owner unveils site focused on health, life-sciences – Boston Globe, 11/4/2015
Boston Globe owner John W. Henry on Wednesday will formally launch STAT, an online health and life-sciences publication that will cover stories across the country.
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2) With Spark moving in, the Bay State is becoming the world’s gene therapy hub – BBJ, 11/4/2015
Spark Therapeutics may not be a well-known company the same way that Baxter International, Shire and AbbVie are, but the announcement this morning that the Philadelphia-based firm is opening a local office is at least as important for the local biotech cluster as those big pharma giants’ expansion here.
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3) Shire ramps up buying spree with $5.9 billion deal for Dyax – Boston Globe, 11/2/2015
On Monday, Shire unveiled a $5.9 billion agreement to buy Burlington’s Dyax Corp., which is developing a promising drug to treat a rare disease called hereditary angioendema.
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4) Medical first: Gene-editing tool used to treat girl’s cancer – STAT News,11/5/2015
In what’s being billed as a medical first, scientists in London have used a new kind of biological scissors in a last-ditch effort to cure a child with otherwise untreatable leukemia. They edited genes in immune cells to make them hunt down and destroy the malignant blood cells that threatened the year-old girl’s life.
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5) Myths And Facts About Specialty Drugs – Forbes, 11/3/2015
The ongoing debate over specialty drugs — reflecting conflicting motives of buyers and sellers — neglects important insights about the impact of these new technologies, their value to society, and the economics of medical R&D. We here disentangle the facts from the myths surrounding these products.
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