Science & Innovation Insiders

Big pharmas outsource their R&D: new opportunities for biotech startups! (in French)

David Boucard Planel — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:49:36 +0000

In our new article, we explore one important aspect of the evolution of big pharmaceutical companies towards new models of development : the outsourcing of their R&D capacities, evolving towards a Search & Development model. Is it now widely recognized that the big pharmaceutical companies have completely remodeled their R&D system for drug development. By reducing their internal R&D capacities and cutting large teams of researchers, these companies are looking to improve their efficiency and unclog their drug development pipeline. Of course, financial aspects are also extremely importants, as this new model aims at cutting the huge costs and risks of drug developement, that are nowadays too big to offset the benefit of a successful project.

This could be a huge opportunity for biotech companies, smaller, more agile and willing to take more risks to develop new great drugs. Are they going to become the new Research departments of the big pharmaceutical companies ? We can bet on it !

Read the full article (in French)

Essentials of the Week : January 9 – 20

David Boucard Planel — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:10:12 +0000

Seems like nothing can stop the dynamic pace of innovation that is happening at the beginning of this year ! As usual we dig for the best and latest news, and the harvest is very prolific ! And NO we are not talking about Megaupload’s closure by FBI ! Enjoy these articles and don’t hesitate to share them !

Article of the Week :
2011 Venture Capital Report – A Record Year with $30.6 Billion Invested in 3051 Deals - CB Insights
Innovation
Do Innovation Consultants Kill Innovation ? – Jens Martin Skibsted & Rasmus Bech Hansen – Fast.Co Design -
Mike Bloomberg is a Smart Businessman, That’s Why he is Trying to Learn Code – Zach Sims – Fast.Co Exist
See The Coolest Sleep Technology at CES – Lindsay Blakely – Inc. Magazine
Principles for Social Innovation in 2012 – Alnoor Ladha & Tim Dixion – Fast.Co Exist

Entrepreneurship
A Year for Entrepreneurs – Jonathan Ortmans – Entrepreneurship.org
Here’s How Long It Took 15 Hot Startups To Get 1,000,000 Users - Business Insider
Top 15 U.S Accelerator & Incubators Ranked- Frank Gruber – TechcocktailBusiness

Business
How To Work From Home Like You Mean It - Kevin Purdy – Fast Company
The Four Year Career – Anya Kamenetz – Fast Company

The new translational research center of NIH: one step closer to opening !

David Boucard Planel — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 17:26:01 +0000

Fait accompli! The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) is launched by the NIH !The Obama administration will provide $30.7 billion to NIH for FY 2012 which includes $576.5 million to fund the NCATS. This article presents this new center that will focus on advancing translational research projects and moving basic research findings into applied innovations. A major step of the Obama Administration for innovation.

Read the full article (In French)

Innovation activities in the US: 2011 report, 2012 trends, a French perspective !

David Boucard Planel — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:10:15 +0000

Jointly drawn up by David and Antoine, the paper explores the recent trends impacting US innovation activities in 2011. It also identifies the key questions facing the funding of innovation, including the VC activities in 2012 and the development of new funding schemes. A large section of the paper addresses the US Federal policy in the field of innovation, including the “Start up America” initiative. Although challenged by various negative factors, such as the poor economic outlook, the US innovation system appears both robust and flexible.

Read the full article (in French)

And that’s only the first part ! Next week’s article will explore the new funding and support methods for entrepreneurs, and will highlight the hottest US industries and clusters for 2012 !

Learning more about chromosome fragility

David Boucard Planel — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:06:36 +0000

Why are some chromosomal regions particularly susceptible to breakage? Finding the answer to this question is crucial because this fragility is a factor in tumour development. A team from the Institute of Genetics and Molecular & Cellular Biology (CNRS/Inserm/University of Strasbourg) has just solved part of the mystery. Laszlo Tora and his colleagues have discovered that breakage in the longest human genes is caused by a phenomenon that, until now, was thought unlikely to occur in mammalian cells: interference between two key genetic processes, DNA transcription[1] and replication[2]. This research, published in the journalMolecular Cell on 23 December 2011, could eventually lead to novel strategies for fighting tumours.

Laszlo Tora and his team began by studying the transcription of very large human genes (more than 800 kilobases[1]) that are known to exhibit DNA breaks called ‘common fragile sites’. They started out on the assumption that, as transcription of these very large genes takes an extremely long time, the transcription process could be a factor in the appearance of fragile sites.

Left: chromosomes with no breaks: the chromosomes are perfectly symmetrical. Right: chromosomes with breaks leading to chromosomal rearrangements.

The researchers used flow cytometry to put this assumption to the test. The use of this technology allowed them to sort cells according to the stage they had reached in the cell cycle [2] – cells in the G1 phase (gene transcription and cell growth), S phase (DNA replication), G2 phase (growth and preparation for cell division) and M phase (cell division). It emerged from this analysis that the transcription of very large genes took far longer than one cell cycle and was not completed until the beginning of the next cycle, in the G1 or S phase. This initial result is surprising for, until now, it had been assumed that gene transcription in mammals occurred within a single cell cycle, mostly during the G1 phase.

As replication takes place during the S phase, the research team suspected that breakage in very large mammalian genes could be due to interference between transcription and replication. They therefore focused on replication in these genes. It was found that replication in fragile site regions occurs at the end of the S phase, while transcription is still in progress in the same regions! This discovery has challenged current ideas in genetics. Until this study, it was generally believed that DNA transcription and replication complexes could not collide in mammals.

To explore this phenomenon further, the team then tried to discover what it was exactly that could weaken DNA in the event of replication and transcription collision. They discovered the presence of lasting loop structures caused by DNA hybridising with the RNA molecule produced during transcription. It is these DNA/RNA loops that would appear to destabilise DNA to such an extent as to cause breakage in the event of stress.

This crucial discovery opens up new prospects for medical research, for these loops can be seen as possible targets for reducing genomic instability and the development of tumours.

[1] Process through which DNA is copied into RNA. The RNA is then ‘translated’ into proteins to allow the cell to function.

[2] Process allowing DNA to split before cell division.

[3] DNA is measured in kilobases (1 kb = 1000 DNA base pairs).

[4] The four cell cycle phases: G1 (gene transcription and cell growth), S (DNA replication), G2 (growth and preparation for cell division) and M (division).

To know more, please read the full article

Record Breaking Explanets Discovered !

David Boucard Planel — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 17:52:04 +0000

An international team led by a CNRS researcher from the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP, CNRS – Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier) has discovered the ruins of a planetary system, consisting of the cores of two former giant planets stripped of their gaseous envelopes, orbiting around the remnants of the core of a red giant. These two exoplanets are the smallest, hottest and closest to their parent star ever discovered. This finding, published in the 22 December 2011 issue of the journal Nature. could shed new light on the fate of planetary systems.

While analyzing data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft on pulsations in the star KIC 05807616, a team of astrophysicists led by French researcher Stéphane Charpinet, at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP), noticed an intriguing phenomenon: two tiny variations of a mere 0.005% in the star’s brightness, with a 5.76 and 8.23 hour-periodicity. The astrophysicists inferred the presence of two bodies in orbit around the star, as such variations could not be put down to the oscillations of the planet or to any other cause.

The changes observed are due to the reflection of the star’s light on the illuminated surface of the bodies and to the difference in thermal emission between the illuminated (warmer) and unilluminated (colder) hemispheres. The researchers’ calculations show that, in order to produce such small variations in brightness, the size of the orbiting bodies must be comparable to that of the Earth, probably 0.76 and 0.87 Earth radii, which makes them the smallest planets ever detected around a still active star, other than the Sun¹.

The planets have also broken another record: at distances of only 897,000 km and 1,137,000 km, they are closer to their star than any other exoplanet ever observed. These two bodies are quite foolhardy compared with Mercury, the planet closest to our Sun, which orbits at around 58 million kilometers! Since star KIC 05807616 is particularly hot, with a surface temperature of 27,400 °C, the temperature on the illuminated hemispheres of the two planets could reach 7700-8700 °C, breaking yet another record. In comparison, the surface temperature on Venus, the hottest planet in our solar system, is a ‘mere’ 470 °C!

This raises a number of questions about the nature of such bodies, capable of surviving such hellish conditions so close to their parent star. According to the astrophysicists, the most plausible explanation is that they are remains of former gas-giant planets. The bodies were once ‘hot Jupiters’ orbiting close to their star, which was still burning hydrogen in its core. Towards the end of its life, KIC 05807616 expanded and became a red giant. The planets orbiting around it were probably engulfed in the star’s outer layers and their envelopes were stripped away as a result. All that remains today from this extreme event are the ruins of the planetary system. These include the planets, reduced to their dense cores alone (mainly made up of iron and other heavy elements), and KIC 05807616, the helium-fusing core of the former red giant, surrounded by a thin layer of hydrogen. To form the star as it is today, the red giant must have ejected most of its envelope through a mechanism that increased mass loss, and it is possible that the two planets discovered orbiting around the star triggered this process.

Notes:

¹Smaller exoplanets have been detected, but they are in orbit around pulsars, neutron stars that are the inert remains of supernovae. Such planets probably formed after the explosion of the star, from material ejected in the explosion.
²The solid cores of former gas giants whose envelopes have been stripped away are called chthonian planets.

To know more about this project, please visit the CNRS’ website

From Basic Research to the Creation of Gatorade: The Challenges of Technology Transfer in the Amercian universities

David Boucard Planel — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:01:27 +0000

“On September 16, 2011, President Obama announced the signature of the America Invents Act that that will help American entrepreneurs and businesses bring their inventions to market sooner, creating new businesses and new jobs. He also announced new steps that will help America’s universities and research labs convert ideas into new products, create startups, expand the economy and create high-value 21st century jobs.

Following this memoranda, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) has set up webinar series where vice-presidents of research in each university highlights specific plans for enhancing technology transfer activities in response to President’s call for action

Practices related to technology transfer are very different in universities. Each university has its own experiences and organizations in this field.

Read the full article (in French)”

The U.S. Research Federal Budget for 2012 : Which Importance for Innovation ?

David Boucard Planel — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:59:19 +0000

Summary

As the FY 2012 appropriation for U.S. R&D budget took place on Dec 23rd, 2011, the paper explores both trends and features of the Federal Government in the field of Innovation. Although Federal R&D funding is challenged by a dire budget situation, the FY 2012 budget mostly follows the President’s proposals, about $ 147 Bi. and has similar content with the previous budget.
This paper also elaborates on the U.S. industry R&D in 2012, which is expected to increase by 3.8%, reaching $ 250 Bi. A larger part of this R&D increase relates to offshore innovation of the U.S. industry.

Read the full article (In French)

Essentials of the week : January 2-9

David Boucard Planel — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:36:58 +0000

Dear all,

welcome back for this new edition of the Essentials of the Week, the first of 2012 ! The year is off to a flying start with great news and forecast for the weeks and months to come. No doubt that Innovation & Entrepreneurship will be the flagship of the year, and the key to growth & definite recovery. Take a look at our selection !

Article of the Week
Is Massachusetts Losing its Edge ? - John Towne – Business Telegram

Innovation
5 Steps to Increase Innovation Skills Set - Innovation Management – Marc Juszczak
Tony Fadell’s Newest Invention is the iPod of Thermostats – Fast Company – John Pavlus

Entrepreneurship
The Essential Entrepreneur : What is Stopping You from Becoming an Entrepreneur ? – Forbes – August Turak
Fostering Entrepreneurship in Developing Nations – Larry Hardesty – MIT News
Optimism Wanes For Start-Up Ecosystem As Venture Capitalists And CEOs Face Economic Realities In 2012 - San Francisco Chronicle

Investment
Angel Investing in Startups Stimulate Job Growth – Mike Green – Huffington Post
Top 5 VC Mentors and Early-Stage Investors in Boston – Sravish Sridhar - Bostinnovation

Business
A Manufacturing Strategy for 2012 : Keeping Jobs & IP in the U.S. – Gene Quinn – IPWatchDog

The Most Innovative Countries in the World : France Rises to 3rd Place !

David Boucard Planel — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 14:37:05 +0000

Every country wants to win this new title : the most innovative country in the world. Ask anyone about this, and the answer will almost always be the same : the United States of America. And they’re right, the USA are the biggest innovation generator in the world, thanks to a broad range of universities and companies that keep inventing the next generation products and technologies.

But who’s next ? Thomson Reuters gives you the answer in this beautiful infographic below. And Cocorico, France is ranked 3rd, with an excellent result ! So take a look at this chart and see how your country is doing !