.gen Technologies Inc.

Venture capital continued to flow in modest amounts to San Diego area biotechs last week…

Helixis Raises $5.5M | Xconomy

Nexus Biosystems Raises $5M | Xconomy

…while Arena with its potential obesity blockbuster Lorcaserin made $52.1M on a second stock offering.  Arena shares closed nicely up on the day.

Arena Raises $52.1M in Offering | Xconomy

Meanwhile, in a bit of twisted unintentional sadism, one local firm can’t even generate enough shareholder interest to liquidate and close up shop.

TorreyPines Delays its Dissolution | Xconomy

On a sad day for the local gaming industry, Midway Games (makers of Mortal Combat) announced Friday they would be closing their San Diego shop as parr of their acquisition by Time Warner.
 
http://www.xconomy.com/san-diego/2009/07/10/midway-games-closing-sd-studio/

Boston-based Immuneering has pulled together the most concrete business case I’ve yet seen for the sort of Personalized Healthcare system we’re trying to build with Healthcare IT plugged into bioinformatics and genomics. In a nutshell:

 1. Take a drug like Novartis’ Proleukin, which has a one in ten chance of giving a long-lasting remission to kidney cancer or melanoma – BUT at a cost of $60,000 and with nasty side effects that may put patients in the intensive care unit.

2. Now build a $5,000 – $6,000 test that looks at proteins expressed on the surface of immune cells and inflammatory proteins in the blood, to predict whether that $60,000 Proleukin treatment will actually work for this patient.

Looks like the ideal win-win-win scenario. Patients win by gaining advance intel into whether a painful and expensive treatment is likely to do them more good than harm. Insurance companies win by weeding out patients who are likely to fail at a therapy in advance of investment. And Novartis wins by taking a drug that doctors might not prescribe today, knowing the potential downside, and making it far easier to prescribe to patients that will respond favorably.

Sound exciting? Sure does to me!

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2009/07/07/immuneering-led-by-young-ceo-and-mentor-aims-to-pick-which-cancer-drugs-should-work/

You know, today I took my Harley to the dealership and realized – to my huge dismay – that my Harley has a better electronic health record than I do.

•  I can walk into any Harley dealership in the world, and techs will have access to the full service and repair record of my motorcycle. My health records are moldering in insecure paper files in at least eight different institutions worldwide, where I am lucky to get and grant any access whatsoever.
• Every Harley dealership in the world knows that my motorcycle has never used synthetic motor oil, and switching to it now might cause engine problems. If I’m incapacitated, how will a doctor know about my allergy to penicillin.
• Harley-Davidson is able to track recurring problems in their motorcycles, and it performs free upgrades to fix serious issues. Without comprehensive electronic records, how can pharma companies and surgeons track the long-term effects of their therapies? No question, this contributes to the risks of developing new therapies that could benefit many.

For an extended discussion of the upsides and risks of building a learning, Internet-enabled healthcare system, I strongly recommend the Institute of Medicine’s Learning Healthcare System Concepts v. 2008 – linked below. It’s a real eye-opener on just what we are losing by relying on mouldering paper pulp as our health storage system.

http://www.iom.edu/CMS/28312/RT-EBM/56903/57305.aspx