This week’s New England life sciences news consisted of venture funding news, a research partnership, a health IT acquisition, and more.
—Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ALNY]]) saw its stock climb more than 40 percent on Monday after it released positive data on its experimental drug ALN-TTR02, a treatment for the rare disease TTR amyloidosis. The Cambridge, MA-based company is moving into a mid-stage trial with the drug, which would be its first product on the market if approved.
—Stealthy Cambridge-based Gen9—a startup whose founder roster includes MIT biology professor Joseph Jacobson, Harvard genomics expert George Church, and Stanford bioengineering specialist Drew Endy—has begun to market its technology for synthesizing genes at scale.
—Investors in biotech and med devices companies had the most “Big Exits” last year since 2005, according to new data analyzed by Silicon Valley Bank. A “Big Exit” was considered an acquisition of a venture-backed life sciences company with an up-front payment worth at least $75 million.
—My colleague Arlene wrote about Cambridge-based Galenea, and the latest research collaboration it inked with a Japanese pharmaceutical company—this time with Eisai, surrounding therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.
—And New York healthcare intelligence company WorldOne acquired Sermo, the Cambridge-based company that runs an online community of 130,000 physicians, for an undisclosed sum.
