Building boom meets maturing biotechs’ needs

Looking for biotech work?...go west, young man/ lady...

Even with some 1 million square feet of biotech office or R&D space on the Peninsula’s leasing market today, developers plan on bringing another 2.3 million square feet to the market over the next year or two.

The reason, say developers, brokers and biotech leaders, is simple: There’s still a need for space to match a maturing Bay Area biotech community. Still, developers are moving cautiously, building mostly to suit tenants and not getting too far in front of an industry known for stunning successes and equally brilliant burnouts.

“There’s always opportunity out there,” said Jennifer Von der Ahe, a project manager for Chamberlain Associates, which is developing more than 185,000 square feet in South San Francisco for neurological drugs maker Elan Corp.

“Biotech is not going away.”

link to full article

Even India is slowing down!!!

Biotech growth slows for first time in 5 years

Bangalore: After five straight years of rapid expansion, India’s biotechnology industry slowed to 20% growth in the year to March, down from more than 30% in the previous years, largely due to a rising rupee and price pressures in the global market.

link to full article

Has Biotech gone the way of Big Pharma?

Think Big Pharma has problems with their pipeline?...

Check out this report recently published by Ron Rader of the Biotechnology Information Institute

The report focuses on recent approval trends for biotech products with current approval data thru 2007...and, quite frankly, the news is not good...

Ron is also publishing reports detailing industry information for the biotech market sector...

Researchers Restart Rat Heart

This story is a bit creepy, actually

There are other companies pursuing similar ideas...Tengion , for instance, is making good progress...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Researchers seeking new treatments for heart disease managed to grow a rat heart in the lab and start it beating.

"While it still sounds like science fiction, we've hopefully opened a new door in the notion that we can build these tissues and one day provide options for patients with end-stage disease," said Dr. Doris Taylor, director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair at the University of Minnesota.

"We're not there yet, but at least now we have another tool in our tool belt."

Taylor led the team whose research appeared in Sunday's online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.

Scientists have worked for years for ways to grow body parts. Many efforts have focused on heart valves as an alternative to the plastic or animal valves that wear out after being implanted in humans.

An estimated 5 million people live with heart failure and about 550,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. Approximately 50,000 die annually waiting for a heart donor.

Taylor said in a telephone interview that her team began by trying to determine if it were possible to transplant rat heart cells. They took the hearts from eight newborn rats and removed all the cells. Left behind was a gelatin-like matrix shaped like a heart and containing conduits where the blood vessels had been. Scientists then injected cells back into this scaffold — muscle cells and endothelial cells, which line blood vessels.

The muscle cells covered the matrix walls and lined up together, while the endothelial cells found their way inside to coat the blood vessels, she said. Then the hearts were stimulated electrically.

"By two days we saw tiny, microscopic contractions, and by seven to eight days there were contractions large enough to see with the naked eye," she said. The tiny hearts could pump liquid at about one-fourth the rate of a normal fetal rat's heart.

link to full article

Research Coast a 10-year project?

I saw the headline that read "10 Year Biotech Project" and thought "Now, That's a Project!..."

read on for the real story...

PORT ST. LUCIE — The Research Coast is a sprint against other biotech hubs to land more companies.

It will take longer to generate local jobs at Oregon Health & Science University's Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute, which announced Tuesday it would create a center at Tradition.

"It took 60 years to create the Research Triangle (in North Carolina). We're going to make that happen in a little less than 10 years," said state Sen. Ken Pruitt, R-Port St. Lucie. "This is about our kids and, when you run a relay race, you run as fast as you can."

The Senate president foresees big returns from the institute's arrival and the opening of Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies. California-based Mann Research Center intends to build a $100 million, 400,000-square- foot life sciences complex next to the two research firms in the Florida Center for Innovation at Tradition.

The numbers are lofty.

The state and city are putting up $117.9 million for the Oregon institute.

In return, economic development leaders say that the 200 jobs spawned during the next decade by the institute will grow into 1,466 positions directly and indirectly through spin-off companies in the next two decades.

Those workers will generate $2 billion in payroll and $4.2 billion in gross state products.

link to full article

10 Questions: Guy Kawasaki- Moira Gunn- Biotech

good interview...Guy doesn't normally cover the biotech industry...
I'm gladd to see he didn't fall in to any of the normal boring questions...

Ten Questions with Moira Gunn: How Does an Internet Babe* Make the Leap to Biotech?

Tech Nation

Two biotech firms to operate in Penang

more on the "Big World/ Small World" theme...

TWO major biotechnology companies in Penang – Progenix Research Sdn Bhd (PRSB) and Alpha Biologics Sdn Bhd (ABSB) – will be ready for business soon.

Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon said PRSB would begin operations this month and ABSB in September at Biotechnology Park in Bukit Minyak.

He said these companies, founded by Springhill Management Ltd (SML) - a biotech venture capital company - were the first to set up biotech facilities in Bukit Minyak.

“They have strategically positioned themselves in Penang, helping the state government to stimulate foreign investments in biotechnology industry.

“The state government has been striving to make Penang the hub for biotechnology and life sciences,” he said recently.

link to full article

India's biotech queen goes for global crown

BANGALORE, India (AFP) - When Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw founded Biocon India in 1978 with 10,000 rupees (225 dollars) and an office in a rented car garage, no banker was willing to give her a loan.

Back then, no one had heard of biotechnology, which uses micro-organisms such as bacteria or biological substances like enzymes to make drugs and synthetic hormones.

Women entrepreneurs were also rare and finding recruits willing to work under a female boss was difficult.

Mazumdar-Shaw, hailed in 2004 as India's richest woman with a personal fortune of 21 billion rupees, and Biocon, India's biggest biotech firm with 3,000 employees, have come a long way from the garage.

The businesswoman, who will turn 54 on Friday, is now setting her sights beyond the domestic market, despite the company's 29 percent annual growth rate, estimated to touch five billion dollars by 2010.

"I see myself and Biocon as being a biotech company in a leadership position on the global stage," Mazumdar-Shaw told AFP in an interview in Bangalore.

"We are on the right track to getting there," added the entrepreneur, who plans to double research spending every year to discover new drugs and enter the league of giants such as Amgen and Genentech.

link to full article