Pharmacyclics, Gates, Ikaria & More
Summary
On the nonprofit front, the San Francisco women’s health firm Medicines360 has a new FDA approval and a unique business model, while in Seattle the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made its largest biotech equity investment so far.The company began as a spinout of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle with hopes of developing a “hibernation on demand” drug, but pivoted to a treatment for so-called “blue baby” syndrome.Investors didn’t seem to mind, boosting Orexigen shares to close Wednesday at $8.49 apiece, perhaps because the disclosure was related to a patent filing that hinted at new uses for Contrave.—Four West Coast women and life science industry veterans, including the new CEO of Novato, CA-based Raptor Pharmaceutical (NASDAQ: RPTP), talked this week at the CalBio conference in San Francisco about the gender gap in both the biopharma and the venture worlds.—Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) continued its cancer-related dealmaking, paying Danish firm Bavarian Nordic $60 million for the option to license BN’s Phase 3 immunotherapy for prostate cancer.