Biotech SF: CBRE

Compugen's Mary Haak-Frendscho.

The patent expirations and capital efficiency trends sweeping through the global drug industry are playing out in companies’ local real estate decisions. That direction may not bode well in the short term for landlords and developers of biotech space on the Peninsula, with large biopharmaceutical companies buying tiny biotechs and consolidating multiple, smaller locations. But a new generation of biotech companies stands ready to take bits and pieces of the newly available space.

Some of my favorite stories.

• "The fight of his life" (2007)

Last year Mike Homer helped raise the money for 2,000 medical research computers. Now researchers are using that equipment in an attempt to save his life.

• "For reporter, CJD is more than a story" (2007)

Seven years ago -- nearly to the day -- my mother died of Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease.

• "A son's YouTube plea for Avastin" (2010)

Josh Turnage is your typical teenager, trying to discover what he wants to do in college and with his life. But a 7-minute, 41-second YouTube video he produced about his mother's fight with breast cancer may thrust him into a debate between drug makers and the agency that regulates them.

• "New device could knock out old dialysis technology" (2011)

Shuvo Roy has all the makings for the world's first implantable artificial kidney, thanks to nanotechnology and a web of nationwide collaborations.

All he needs now is $20 million.

Biotech SF

Friday, August 24, 2012

Peninsula biotech space feels global pharma blues