Showing posts with label My Rants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My Rants. Show all posts

Sunday, December 02, 2007

BioWest: An Event With a Vue!


If you are registered to attend BioWest this week then you should have received a welcome email from my friends Rob and Josh, co-founders at EventVue (EV), along with a link to set up your BioWest-EventVue profile. What this web-based software enables you to do is see in advance who will be attending the BioWest conference and of greatest value-add is the ability to network with fellow attendees before and after the conference. Networking at a conference is a fairly inefficient process, left often up to chance encounters and stacks of business cards. Anything that can help optimize the limited conference time that the expensive ticket bought you is a no-brainer.

As Colorado energizes and grows the life sciences an equivalent effort is transpiring on the IT side for our Rocky Mountain state. EventVue was the first TechStars company to close an Angel round of financing led by local rock-stars Brad Feld and David Cohen. FYI…TechStars is an amazing summer-long accelerator program established last spring in Boulder that provides seed funding, physical space, infrastructure, and of incalculable value, engulfs its start-ups with mentors, educational seminars and intimate one-on-one ad hoc exposure to a most incredible collection of serial entrepreneurs and institutional investors. The (closest) equivalent to TechStars in Colorado I can think of on the life science side is Fitzsimons BioBusiness Partners.

So be certain to establish your BioWest-EventVue profile ASAP! For this, what I am calling a Fugacious Social Network (FSN, hopefully this term will catch on to reference a short-lived network) is only as good as the content, garbage-in garbage-out.

If you have not received your BioWest-EventVue invite and/or are having problems with it please contact me immediately (arubenstein@rnaventures.com).

In the spirit of full disclosure I have no financial interest in the company, my interest simply lay in the desire to see all start-ups in our early-stage Colorado eco-system grow and thrive. As a very learned man once told me, a rising tide lifts all ships.

If you enjoyed this post get free email updates (here).

Saturday, December 01, 2007

GFF: $5M for Pediatric Stem Cell Research


Exciting times indeed for Colorado and stem cell research! Back in 2005 the Gates Family Foundation of Denver (not Bill and Melinda) committed a $6M donation that enabled CU's School of Medicine (CUSOM) at the Anschutz medical campus to create the Charles C. Gates Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Biology Program…listen to the story (here). Through the Gates Frontier Fund the Children’s Hospital and the CUSOM have now received an additional gift of $5M to expand the stem cell research program to include pediatric related research and an endowed chair. The search for a new director is ongoing.

Learn more about Charles Gates and the Gates Corporation (here)

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Friday, November 30, 2007

Perspective on Venture Investments

Thanks to Fred Wilson Managing Partner at Union Square Ventures for the transparent post on his investment track record in early-stage venture deals. Though Fred’s foci is in software and web-based technologies I feel comfortable stating, from what I have seen, heard, read, etc. that life science managing directors and partners approach current and potential limited partners with a similar expectation set. That is typically 1/3 of a funds investments will fail, 1/3 will under-perform expectations, and 1/3 of the investments will meet expectations, that is where meeting expectations means a 5X to 10X return.

To break it out assume:

1/3 Average 7.50X – 2.50X
1/3 Average 2.00X – 0.67X
1/3 Average 0.00X – 0.00X

TOTAL 3.2X

Therefore as an entrepreneur when seeking venture dollars it is of paramount importance to ‘know your audience’ before giving your pitch. That is if your perceived exit opportunity is only 2-3X understand that despite having a potentially very sound business architecture and/or low risk opportunity that such a deal may not be attractive to some venture funds because it is an investment that may not sufficiently/effectively ‘move the needle’ for the fund.

Recall this very important point: VC’s have a fiduciary responsibility to the funds limited partners, that is the individuals or institutions whose dollars are being managed by the director or partner.

Because drug development is riddled with numerous and unique risks it is not uncommon these days for institutional dollars to come in later in the development life of a therapeutic and thus makes for a challenging endeavor for an early-stage life science entity to raise its first round of professional investment. However, if there exists unambiguous established and owned intellectual property, a clearly superior technology and management with substantial industry experience, then such value will be recognized by the investment community and a term sheet will undoubtedly be on its way.

The challenge here is the necessity to amass all of the requisite elements for the convergence of such a perfect storm; that is IP, technology and management. So what to do if one or more of these elements is missing? The answer is simple, contact Fitzsimons BioBusiness Partners, an entity that functions as a node where appropriate connections are facilitated and efforts to package investable life science companies are made daily.


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Thursday, November 29, 2007

CBSA 2007 Award Winners


The Colorado BioScience Association has released their winners for the 2007 Awards Program to correlate with next weeks official awards presentation at the BioWest luncheon (7 December) more info and register to attend (here).

And the envelope please…
  • The Lifetime Achievement Award goes to (insert drum-roll sound effect here) Dr. Larry Gold founder, chair and Chief Science Officer of SomaLogic. Prior to SomaLogic, Dr. Gold founded Synergen (acquired by Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN)) then followed with the founding of NeXagen, Inc., which then merged to become NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, In addition to numerous other appointments and awards Dr. Gold is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. Read more about CLSDF highlights of Dr. Gold (here).
  • The Company of the Year Award goes to AlloSource one of the largest non-profit bone and tissue banks in the country.
  • The Rising Star Award goes to InViragen who developing novel vaccines to protect against worldwide infectious disease threats, and was covered just two days ago here on CLSDF (see below).
  • The Volunteers of the Year Award go to Debora Hankinson and Phil Macey, two individuals who have been instrumental in revitalizing the CBSA’s Real Estate and Facilities Committee.
  • The Partner of the Year Award goes to Forest City Development who signed a 30-year agreement to develop the $2 billion bioscience park on the Fitzsimons Campus.
  • The Legislator of the Year Award goes to Representative Jim Riesberg (D-Weld). Who has carried the bioscience industry’s legislation the past two years with HB’s 1060 and 1360.
  • The CBSA Chairman’s Awards -- Ed Wood, Kevin Smith and Bonnie Vivian. Ed Wood, former CEO of Cobe served as the CBSA Board Chairman from 2005 - 2007. Kevin Smith, former President of Gambro and Bonnie Vivian, former CEO of Denver Biomedical are chairing the CBSA Education Committee.
  • The inaugural Pinnacle of Science Award has been awarded to Dr. John Stewart, University of Colorado for his substantial contributions to peptide chemistry and the growth and development of pharmaceutical manufacturing capabilities.

If you enjoyed this post get free email updates (here).

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

You’re Cordially Invited to BioBeers(.com)!


Dear Friends of Colorado Bio,

You are cordially invited to attend the BioBeers gala the evening of 6 December 7:30pm (@ Harry’s Bar 818 17th St Denver). We hope you are able to join us following what is certain to be an enthralling first day of the BioWest Conference and Expo.

For more information about BioBeers and the invitation please take a look at the new website (here) or http://biobeers.com

So what exactly is BioBeers you say? Well, Colorado has a rich history (and growing) in the life science industry...a fundamental component to accelerate the region towards achieving a top-tier bio-cluster ranking is a thriving and nurturing bio-entrepreneurial community. BioBeers is designed to function as an accelerant, where like minded bio-preneurs gather once a month to share ideas, cultivate business relationships and build life long friendships.

Now just a bit of homework for you:
  1. Sign-up for email updates from BioBeers
  2. Submit your one-click anonymous RSVP at BioBeers
  3. Submit your new member profile to BioBeers
Thank you. We look forward to seeing you at BioWest and BioBeers!

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Monday, November 26, 2007

A Colorado Vivarium Option


If you are looking for a vivarum and Contract Research Organization to conduct pre-clinical GLP animal studies than looking no further than Ft. Collins’ High Quality Research. In addition to directing studies HQR also provides protocol development, implementation and quality assurance. There is also the option to run studies with HRQ staff or your own in mice, rats, hamsters, guinea pigs, rabbits, cats, dogs and pigs.

Give Larry Travis, gm of HQR a ring (email here) if you are looking to do PK/PD, tox, vax, absorbtion, efficacy, device, dental or surgery studies. HQR may have the facilities and options you are looking for.

If you enjoyed this post get free email updates (here).

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Biology of Thanksgiving


Planning on a post-Turkey tryptophan hangover tomorrow? Does the tryptophan myth even ring true? Well, while turkey does contain high levels of tryptophan, the amount is comparable to that contained in most other meats (chicken, beef and even fish). The Thanksgiving sedation may have more to do with what is consumed along with the turkey, in particular carbohydrates, rather than the turkey itself.

So what is going on…A high carbohydrate meal triggers release of insulin. Insulin then stimulates the uptake of large neutral branched-chain amino acids (LNAA) but not tryptophan into muscle, thereby increasing the ratio of tryptophan to LNAA. This increased ratio reduces competition with other amino acids for the large neutral amino acid transporter protein for uptake of tryptophan across the blood-brain barrier into the central nervous system. Once inside the CNS, tryptophan is converted into serotonin in the raphe nuclei. The resultant serotonin is further metabolized into melatonin by the pineal gland. Therefore it is actually the heavy duty carbs that increases the production of the sleep-inducing serotonin and melatonin in the brain.

With that said, thanks to my friends at Wikipedia, a place chock full o’ great stuff. Now poised to reflect for a moment, how truly thankful I am for the richness of my professional and personal life. It is an honor to be immersed in the world that I walk in and the incredible people I am able to interface with. And did I mention how appreciative I am of you, yeah you, sitting at your computer and allocating a portion of your valuable time to read what I post here at CLSDF, now to me that is something super special and not to ever be taken for granted. On that note I am going to take a breather, take some time to connect with friends and family and hang up CLSDF till next week, till then...Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble Gobble…

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Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Three Cheer for the ACS!


Congratulations to Kevin Johansen and the very talented team who executed the Angel Capital Summit yesterday. What an incredible turnout of sophisticated angel investors. I believe in excess of 40 companies presented, naturally I stuck to the bio-track and was not disappointed.

Several Fitzsimons BioBusiness Partners related entities presented to packed rooms and were unable to address all of the questions within the allotted time periods. I’ll take that as a sign of if nothing else a keen interest in the featured technologies.

Take a look at who presented:

Tensegrity Prosthetics
  • a next generation bio-prosthetic foot
ValveXchange
  • a tissue heart valve and percutaneously-exchangeable leaflet set
Snoasis Medical
  • soft-tissue substitute for use in mucogingival surgeries
TheraTogs
  • an exo-muscular system for neuromotor and postural training

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Tuesday, November 06, 2007

How Much Ya Got?


I often hear the commonly quoted metric of 10 years and $1B as the time and cost to bring a drug to market. After seeing, hearing, observing drugs reaching the market for less than $1B I decided to do some poking around in an effort to validate said metric. Well valid it is according to recently published data from the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development (Tufts CSDD); the average capitalized cost to bring one new biopharmaceutical product to market, including costs of failures, is $1.24B (in 2005 dollars). Current Tufts CSDD data indicate that the average time to bring a biopharmaceutical product to market from the start of clinical testing is 8.0 years, and the likelihood of success is 30%. For traditional pharmaceutical products the average time to bring a product to market from the start of clinical testing is 7.5 years, and the likelihood of success is 21.5%. Now these time frames do not include the discovery period or the time to execute IND enabling studies that allow a potential product to enter the clinic. Considering that point I would venture to guess that the 10 year metric is indeed a conservative one. Do your thoughts or data points differ? Please let me know…

Monday, November 05, 2007

Had To Tell Someone


Since architecting CLSDF some 2 and-a-half years ago and enjoying the ups and downs of the ride since launching one rule of thumb I’ve been adhering to is to keep my personal life out of the blog, for who cares what movie I saw over the weekend or where I took my dog hiking. Relevant content is king in order to keep readers coming back…stay on course is a CLSDF mantra.

Well today we take a slight diversion from the path. First I would like to extend my infinite thanks and appreciation to a loyal and sophisticated readership who I take great pleasure in interacting with, so please…keep your comments coming!

Now to step off…I’ve questioned many decisions I’ve made throughout my life, big and small, good and bad, but this past weekend I unquestionably made the best decision…that is to ask Robin to marry me. For the past almost nine years this woman has taught me, supported me, loved me, our relationship is a gift, conscious bliss, never to be taken for granted.

I can not contain my excitement and had to tell the world or rather shout it out here at CLSDF. So when she said yes or rather “of course” I presented her with these two carrots…

Thursday, November 01, 2007

The Envelope Please...


The finalists for this years BioWest Venture Showcase have been named. The Venture Showcase will be held on Friday 7 December at Denver’s Grand Hyatt. The winner will receive the $10,000 Faegre & Benson Venture Showcase award at the CBSA’s Annual Awards Luncheon on the same day.

I am working on embedding a poll for what company you believe will take this years Venture Showcase top prize. More to come on that. And now the finalists:

Nanodisc is a developer of nanoscale drug and vaccine delivery technology. Their proprietary system allows the presentation of proteins, small molecules and nucleic acids, stabilized and in their active form. The company is focusing its internal R&D capabilities on the highest value application – using nanodiscs to deliver membrane proteins such as receptors, enzymes and channels – to the body. Nanodisc is validating primary applications including antigen delivery, receptor delivery/ligand trap and gene therapy. Nanodisc is backed by Illinois Ventures and is seeking an institutional round of $6M - $10M. The company will continue to pursue non-dilutive sources of funding from licensing agreements, fee-for-service relationships and proceeds from SBIR and STTR grants. The company has exclusive rights to the nanodisc technology in all markets. For more information, call President and CEO Michael Artinger at 303-544-0406.

Sierra Puente is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of small molecule therapeutic products to treat multiple diseases of the brain for the medically refractory patient. Sierra is reformulating orally administered medications for placement into an implantable pump, for administration into the fluid around the brain for a platform of diseases including epilepsy, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder and major depression. The company is seeking to raise a Series A financing to support development of its two lead candidates through completion of Phase IIa clinical trials. Sierra has raised capital through grants and angel round financing to build a comprehensive IP foundation, proof of concept in animal models and a wide base of scientific and business advisors. For more information, call CEO Dan Abrams, MD, at 303-315-5450.

Solix Biofuels is commercializing the technology for the production of algae-based biofuels. The company built its first generation technology in the summer of 2006 and subsequently raised its second round of capital in September 2006. The company’s $3 million in funding has allowed it to operate its second generation production systems and to engineer its beta-test field reactor for operation in the first half of 2008 at New Belgium Brewery. Solix has filed patent applications and provisionals that include design elements of photo-bioreactor design, panel design, control systems and chemical conversion processes. Solix is in the midst of raising approximately $2MM to $3.5MM as a bridge loan and recently closed with its lead investor on this round. The Company will look to raise a preferred round in the beginning of 2008. For more information, call CEO Doug Henston at 303-885-7143.

ValveXchange holds patented technology on a two-piece bioprosthetic tissue valve that resolves the compromises between conventional mechanical and tissue heart valves. The company’s technology is easily adopted by surgeons with a clear regulatory path and a $1.2 billion market opportunity. ValveXchange has exclusively licensed its core technology, invented by founder Ivan Vesely, PhD, from The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. Thus far, the company has been financed by seed funding from the founder and three SBIR grants. That funding has allowed for prototypes developed with proof of concept, two-piece exchangeable tissue valve, functional & mechanical tests, in vitro testing of prototypes, validated performance and in vivo testing. Going forward, the company is initiating recruitment of Angel and Series A Financing of $2.5 million to bring it to the Clinical Trial stage. For more information, call Dr. Vesely, Founder and CSO, at 323-481-9643. or go to.

Ventrus Biosciences is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on the late-stage development and commercialization of gastroenterology products. Strategically, Ventrus will concentrate on licensing late-stage GI products in select areas of unmet medical need with targeted sales potential of $200 to $500 million. The development strategy for each asset will focus on the most efficient path to approval, with expansion to full potential achieved with additional post-marketing indications. Ventrus has secured the rights to three late-stage GI products. The current company pipeline has a combined annual net sales potential of $1 billion. Ventrus is entering Series A financing with one phase II and two phase III products. The company has been seed funded by Paramount Bioscience. – For more information, call President and CEO Thom Rowland at 720-528-4090.

mBioSystems The technology is a low-cost, high sensitivity, multi-pathogen companion detection system for therapeutics. Detection is based on fluorescence and takes advantage of the parent company’s experience in low cost, high precision micro-optics and laser detection. The company has in-licensed a suite of patents for biosensors. Development has been ongoing for two years and a successful study of 30 clinical patients was recently completed. In addition, the company has two proprietary diagnostic products in development: first, a multi-disease diagnostic focusing on HIV and common co-infections; a second product is a low cost cytometer for counting CD4 positive T-cells for the management of HIV therapy. It is anticipated that the products will be developed under NIH and foundation funding. For more information, call CEO Chris Myatt at 303-444-9948.

If you enjoyed this post get free email updates (here).

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Social Networking 101: LinkedIn BIO Group


If you are on the professional social networking platform, LinkedIn, you can now join the new BIO International Convention group; simply add me to your network and request an invite to join the BIO group. This year the conference will be held at the San Diego Convention Center 17–20 June.

If you are not on LinkedIn simply click on the button below to get started on your professional networking with biotech, pharma and med device industry folks; now connect in advance with people who will be attending BIO.

For those daring enough to be in Facebook well you guessed it there is now a BIO group there as well. So set up an account profile and then join the Facebook BIO group. The link to join is (here).

Finally, once registered for attending BIO don’t forget to use the wonderful myBIO connector and planner software (here).

View Adam Rubenstein's profile on LinkedIn

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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Now This Is Cool!

Giddy in anticipation of the Replidyne (NASDAQ: RDYN) conference call this afternoon (2:45MST 800-435-1261 passcode 57078639) I happened upon this incredible look at the leukocyte from BioVisions @ Harvard. If you have a few minutes to watch you will likely not be disappointed.

White blood cells or leukocytes are cells of the immune system which defend the body against both infectious disease and foreign materials. Several different and diverse types of leukocytes exist, but they are all produced and derived from a multipotent cell in the bone marrow known as a hematopoietic stem cell. Leukocytes are found throughout the body, including the blood and lymphatic system.

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Friday, October 26, 2007

Home Sweet Fitz!

Portions of the Fitzsimons Life Science District are beginning to take shape. With an anticipated 30 to 40,000 folks to be working in the District I reckon some of them will need a place to live, well the Pauls Corporation will have an answer to that question with 21 Fitzsimons, luxury living in the heart of the Fitzsimons Life Science District.


In addition to the buzz and the mounds of dirt mysteriously moving from one end of the pitch to the other, some times over night, there now exists a supply center of mammoth proportions. The amount of building material that is queue-ing up there puts the biggest of the big box supply stores to shame. Why this stack (shown below) must be thirty feet high and occupy a few football fields.

Today’s picture theme is the supply depot. How exciting to have the privilege to continue to watch and document this city within a city emerge. More pics (here).
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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

The Future of Biomedicine in Colorado - A Workshop of the Possible


Don’t miss the Third Butcher Symposium, Friday 16 November, part of the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology, to be held at the Westin Westminster Hotel. The goals of the Symposium are to bring together faculty in the many areas of research related to genomics and biotechnology, to improve awareness of the relevant resources at CU, to spark new collaborations, and to identify means and opportunities for strategic advancement in this important area. The Symposium will also lay the groundwork for distribution of the third round of seed grants.

The format of the Symposium will include oral presentations by the Butcher Awardees from 2005, poster presentations by attending faculty, invited speakers, good food, and plenty of time for discussion and interaction. The day will be capped off by a keynote talk from Stuart Schreiber, Ph.D., HHMI Professor of the Department of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, Harvard University, his address it titled “Rethinking Small-Molecule Drug Discovery”.

Ten seed grants of up to $100,000 each will be awarded to support these new collaborations. To be eligible to apply for seed grants you must present a poster at the Symposium, describing research in your own lab (and not proposed projects). The deadline for the grant applications will be in January 2008, more information is (here) and a schedule of events is (here).
If you enjoyed this post get free email updates (here).

Saturday, October 13, 2007

Wild Wild BioWest!


The BioWest Conference will be here before you know it 6 and 7 December, the schedule has been finalized and looks as action packed as ever, take a look at the program (here). The event is growing by leaps and bounds and nearly 1,000 attendees are expected this year. I must admit I am really excited for the opportunity to listen to Jim Collins, author of Good to Great (and others (here)) deliver one of the keynote talks. I devour Jim’s works and he is an incredible resource to our community as his Management Laboratory is housed here in beautiful Boulder, Colorado.

Register to attend (here).

Perhaps I’ll find out if I am a Fox or a Hedgehog?

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Sprint Down to the Boulder Esprit07!


The CU Innovation Alliance Breakfast will be held Tuesday 16 October 8:00am – 10:30am at the Millennium Harvest House Hotel. Emerging CU Boulder technologies of all stages will be highlighted. Register (here)! Presenters include:

Medical Informatics - An early-stage innovation from CU’s whose technology can be used to pull relevant data out of text-based medical records. This allows hospitals and other health care facilities to direct more staff resources to direct patient care.
Regeneration of Muscle Tissue - Based on UCB stem cell technology CU researchers have developed a new method for transplanting skeletal muscle stem cells and enabling them to survive long-term.

ColdQuanta, Inc. - Based on Nobel-prize winning work at UCB, the company is commercializing technology for the achievement of Bose-Einstein Condensation in atomic vapor; potential applications are atomic clocks, inertial sensing instruments, improving frequency standards, magnetic field sensing, and quantum computing.

AgriHouse, Inc. - An agro-biotech developing CU’s innovative leaf sensor, which enables reliable feedback for plant irrigation control by direct detection of impending water deficit stress in plants.
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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Narcissism: Big Pharma 411!?

Nar-cis-sism [nahr-suh-siz-em], noun.
  1. Inordinate fascination with oneself, excessive self-love, vanity
  2. Psychoanalysis. Gratification derived from admiration of one’s own physical or mental attributes
Those regular viewer-readers of CLSDF, not those who subscribe via email or RSS (many thanks to all of the subscribers!) may have observed a new and prominently placed banner titled Big Pharma 411 at the top of the page. Big Pharma 411 is my latest foray into the blog-o-sphere and I struggled and squirmed while deciding whether or not to add the banner link to BP411 here. The catalyst of the new blog creation is simply to architect a placeholder for me to aggregate my research and address my deficiency knowing (or not knowing well enough in my case) of just exactly who is doing what in big pharma. Here then now is a place to build and house such an information repository.

So then if this tool is for my personal development why place it for the world to see? That is an easy question to address, for the blog software chosen allows for 1) me to access the info just about wherever I am and 2) the blog software chosen allows for a fantastic approach to organizing all of the content. It beats building a spread sheet any day of the week and thus was a no-brainer to select.

The struggle was with who to tell or not tell about this new endeavor. Since at some point the search engine bots will eventually pick-up Big Pharma 411 I decided to throw caution to the wind and bring it to the CLSDF’s audience’s attention. Who knows…perhaps this may actually be useful to someone other than myself?

So would it be awful of me to ask that you subscribe to Big Pharma 411 (here)?

I ask myself is it then narcissistic to cross-promote and/or self-promote these blogs? Without delving to deep into the dark crevasses of self I put forth that it is in fact without a doubt, at some level, a narcissistic approach but is blogging in general narcissistic? The answer to that question is, context dependent, and often unambiguously no. For in the world today speed to information is powerful, the internet, be it words, pictures, audio or video delivers so many flavors of information and so quickly that it may be a disadvantage to opt out of participating. The blog-o-sphere has created a doorway for absolutely anyone to merge onto this information superhighway. Without a doubt sensitivities abound with information, especially if there is proprietary information and/or regulatory bodies are involved be it the SEC or the FDA with the entity or individual. In this authors humble opinion, a mere static website is not enough to add to competitive advantage. Dynamic, fresh content of a protected or non-proprietary nature serves customers of all types, from up-stream investors, to down-stream licensees/licensors, suppliers, the media and even those who will eventually purchase your product.

So do not hesitate to deploy that new online strategy, if properly managed it may lend untold economic value, jump on in, the water is warm!

Monday, October 08, 2007

CBSA BioBreakfast: Trends in VC Investing


A must-attend CBSA BioBreakfast coming up on 24 October 7:30am to be held at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. The distinguished panel of Dan Mitchell of Sequel Ventures, Karen Cassidy of Partisan Management Group and Andrew Schwab of 5AM Ventures will be reflecting back upon investment trends of 2007 and will provide insight and predictions of what to expect for the coming year.

Sign up (here) to attend.
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Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Wilderness MedVentures: CO to Patagonia


A bit of a departure from regular CLSDF posts here however, I think this is to cool not to highlight. My friend Kevin McGarvey, MD, MBA who is not only an ER physician as well as facilitating business development for ValveXchange, Inc. (a FBBp portfolio company), has also co-founded Wilderness MedVentures (WMV). How does he find the time!? Kevin is exactly what the doctor ordered in terms of the life science entrepreneurs that Colorado is attracting.

So a bit more about WMV and what is being offered in Patagonia (Chile that is) 23 February to 1 March. Without a doubt this must attract interest from the rugged yet sophisticated outdoorsy types that liter Colorado’s beautiful high country. If you are looking to improve your wilderness medical skills then pack your bags, grab your passport and look no farther than WMV who is serving up a course that empowers its participants with the skills necessary to provide state-of-the-art medical care and leadership in the remote, wilderness adventure setting. Completion of this week long course also provides 34 hours of Category I AMA CME credits and is team taught by four of the radest physicians you will ever meet.

Take a look at the course itinerary (here).

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