A Facebook for the disabled, and an anti-drooling drug
Three recent posts over at VentureBeat Life Sciences worth a gander:
1. Disaboom.com offers social networking for people with physical and mental impairments, and has reportedly attracted heavyweight advertisers such as Netflix and J&J. But it’s an odd and sparsely populated site, and its survival may hing upon whether individuals want to consider themselves part of the “disability community.”
2. Does novocaine ruin your smile and make you drool? Then Novalar has a drug for you: NV-101, which reportedly cuts sensation-recovery time in half following a trip to the dentist. And it might make your dentist rich, too.
3. Entrepreneurs who fear assimilation when their start-ups are acquired, rejoice. Increasingly, big companies are “restarting” these startups, along with their original management — at least in biotech. Amgen has just done this by spinning out Relypsa from the former Ilypsa. (The new names are kind of catchy, too.)
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About the Author, David P. Hamilton
David Hamilton has been writing for VentureBeat LifeScience since April 2007. He formerly spent 14 years as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal in its San Francisco and Tokyo bureaus. Prior to that, he spent several years as a reporter at Science Magazine and as a reporter/researcher for the New Republic, both in Washington.