East Coast Life Sciences Roundup: Bind, Boston Children’s, J&J, More

Shire  (NASDAQ: [[ticker:SHPG]]), an Irish firm with a large operation in Lexington, MA. The startup is backed by prolific Boston VC firm Third Rock Ventures.

—-Life Technologies (NASDAQ: [[ticker:LIFE]]) of Carlsbad, CA, announced at JP Morgan that it is forming a new company with Boston Children’s Hospital, called Claritas Genomics, to develop next generation genomics-based diagnostics. Claritas is majority-owned by Boston Children’s and will combine the expertise of the hospital’s staff with Life Technologies’ genomic sequencing technology.

—Life sciences did go on outside of San Francisco. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: [[ticker:JNJ]]), based in New Brunswick, NJ, scored a win with canagliflozin, one of a new class of drugs for Type 2 diabetes that increases the amount of glucose secreted in the urine. A committee of outside experts convened by the FDA voted 10 to 5 on Thursday to recommend FDA approval of the drug  A year ago the FDA delayed its decision on a similar drug, dapagliflozin, from Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: [[ticker:BMY]]) and Astra Zeneca (NYSE: [[ticker:AZN]]), asking for more information. Dapagliflozin was approved in Europe in November but the J&J drug now has the lead in the U.S. An FDA decision is due by the end of March.

—-And back in Massachusetts, health IT firm Athenahealth (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ATHN]]), based in Watertown, announced on Monday  that it will buy Epocrates (NASDAQ: [[ticker:EPOC]]), a mobile medical app company in San Mateo, CA, for $293 million in cash.

Pages: Page 1, Page 2

Author: Catherine Arnst

Catherine Arnst is an award- winning writer and editor specializing in science and medicine. Catherine was Senior Writer for medicine at BusinessWeek for 13 years, where she wrote numerous cover stories and wrote extensively for the magazine’s website, including contributing to two blogs. She followed a broad range of issues affecting medicine and health and held primary responsibility for covering the battle in Washington over health care reform. Catherine has also written for the Boston Globe, U.S. News & World Report and The Daily Beast, and was Director of Content Development for the health practice at Edelman Public Relations for two years. Prior to joining BusinessWeek she was the London-based European Science Correspondent for Reuters News Service. She won the 2004 Business Journalist of the Year award from London’s World Leadership Forum, and in 2003 was the first recipient of the ACE Reporter Award from the European School of Oncology for her five-year body of work on cancer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University.