MaRS

Here’s the round-up of the week in the newsfeeds. Below I highlight my favourite articles of the week from each category.

Today’s Top Pick – “3M unveils $500 Bluetooth-enabled stethoscope”. Find out more under Health care.

Time to burn those medical books

With three major publishing scandals and counting, 2009 is going down as a tough year for medical literature.

Let’s review:

Roll up, roll up! The 2009 edition of the MaRS Regenerative Medicine Industry Briefing is now available.

New content in the 2009 edition includes:

• Breakthough iPS cell discovery by Andras Nagy (Toronto) and colleagues (read the blog)
• Updated market stats
• Use of stem cells as drug screening tools
• Overview of deal-making in the stem cell sector
• Industry-academia collaborations
• International, national and provincial research stats
• List of five major advances made by Ontario researchers since 2008

Faster than a speeding inventor

This month we have left the “golden umbrella” of the Biodesign fellowship here at Stanford University (a team of two physicians and two engineers designing medical devices) to step into industry as interns. I am taking my internship with an inventor who is making a name for himself in this industry. Though I have been working for less than a week, the differences I have noticed between the two are stark. Industry is fast: honesty and simplicity are critical.

What's really happening in biotech?

Peter Winter, editor of the Burrill Report, in a recent interview announced that, 40 years after it was established, the US biotechnology industry has turned a profit. This is a significant stat since it may help dispel the argument that biotech is a zero sum game with the earnings generated by the industry being no greater than the amount of investment it has received.

Crunching the 2008 numbers for the 360 publicly-listed US biotech companies, the group’s net income was approximately $3 billion. Sounds good, but does this indicate the industry is healthy as a whole?