Life Science

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 ...

From the Institute for Alternative Futures: While the future promises major advances in healthcare, they will be slow to move into medical practice unless the U.S. confronts access and other larger problems in its healthcare delivery system, according to IAF President Clem Bezold in a March 3 keynote speech to private funders of healthcare research. The time lag in moving ...