One of the most interesting aspects of this conference on molecular medicine was a couple of sessions about intellectual property (IP). IP is the mother’s milk of the life science industry. What they have that is really of value is what they know and know how to do. Those intangibles are the gold assets of the industry just as the ...

In the previous installment about the molecular medicine conference, I emphasized that the science of so-called complex, polygenic diseases like cancer is, well, complex. But there are other complications as well in the life science business. Biotechnology and pharmaceuticals are also risky, complicated enterprises from a financial standpoint. In a way it’s kind of a layering of complexities, one atop ...

I had the good fortune to attend (thanks to FI Center) the “Molecular Medicine Tri-Conference” in San Francisco last week. The attendees were researchers, executives of biotech and pharmaceutical companies, a few scientists from NCI or NIH, and me—as far as I can tell, the single NGO nonprofit person. (That’s not to say all the companies present are turning a ...

A few months ago Scientific American published an article about new theories of cancer. In the article the authors mentioned that the development of cancer looks more and more like the evolutionary processes that have shaped organisms in the world around us for eons. I came across a more detailed paper along that line recently. “Dynamics of Cancer Progression” was ...