VentureBeat

(UPDATED: See below.)

Revisiting a few life-science stories you might have missed over the weekend:

“Baby Einstein” creator’s defense: We were just kidding! — You have to feel at least a little sorry for Julie Aigner-Clark, the entrepreneur who created the best-selling line of “Baby Einstein” videos for infants and toddlers and then sold her company to Walt Disney five years ago. After University of Washington researchers suggested that the videos may retard language development in babies aged eight months to 16 months, Aigner-Clark basically had two choices: Challenge the study on its merits, or acknowledge that her entire enterprise was essentially a sham.

Surprisingly, Aigner-Clark chose the second route, and now says the videos were never intended to make children smarter. (So much for the company’s one-time slogan, “Great minds start little.”) In this AP story, courtesy of Forbes, Aigner-Clark insists that the videos, which predominantly pair toy images with cheesily simplified classical-music arrangements, were simply intended to expose babies to “beautiful things” such as art, music and poetry. “I believe we’ve done what we’ve always set out to do — expose kids to great things,” Aigner-Clark told the AP. “And when used the right way, by interacting with a parent or a guardian, they’re positive ways to engage your child.”

In other words, parents, you’ve been duped, and Aigner-Clark is more than happy to rub your face in it. Aigner-Clark’s chutzpah, however, doesn’t justify the abusive behavior some people have apparently leveled in her direction; the AP story notes that someone vandalized her mailbox with the spray-painted words “Baby Dumb.”

Why the elderly can face “death by medication” — This Sydney Morning Herald story argues that the side effects of many prescription drugs are effectively poisoning many elderly people, in part because no one really keeps track of how the many drugs older people are often taking at once interact with one another. The article tells the story of Don Ireland, a spry 91-year-old who nevertheless almost lost his will to live until a doctor weaned him from 14 drugs, leaving him on three.

From the story:

At the heart of the problem is a collision of two forces, says David Le Couteur, professor of geriatric medicine at the University of Sydney, and the director of the Centre for Education and Research on Ageing at Concord Hospital. “We have pharmaceutical companies, and doctors with conflicts of interest, who make a huge amount of money from drugs; and people who expect to live for ever and be well for ever - and they feed off each other.”

Because of their medication, many elderly patients suffer unnecessarily. They feel sick, nauseous, confused; their memory deteriorates; they suffer incontinence; they may suffer hemorrhages in the stomach or brain; they fall; they are referred to nursing homes.

(Hat tip: Pharmalot.)

Artificial life may be closer than you think — Scientists interviewed by the AP believe that someone will create a living single-celled organism from scratch for the first time within the next three to ten years. Doing so essentially means clearing three hurdles: Building an artificial cell membrane, synthesizing a working genome from basic building blocks, and hooking everything up to metabolic processes that can extract energy from the environment and deploy it to perform useful tasks. And scientists are already close to overcoming one or more of those challenges.

Of course, if you believe J. Craig Venter, he and his research team are almost there already. For a useful corrective to Venter’s often wildly overblown and always self-interested hype, see this July Forbes story by Matthew Herper. (Tellingly, Venter doesn’t appear in the AP piece.) UPDATE: He does appear in a companion piece, though. See below.

Biogen Idec’s CEO Jim Mullen on the future of biotech — In a lengthy interview with Robert Buderi of Xconomy.com (part one is here, part two is here), Biogen Idec CEO Jim Mullen waxes philosophical on what he sees as a coming era of rapid biotech-led advances in medicine, energy, agriculture and other areas. The executive also shares his thoughts on big issues such as patent reform and biogenerics — he doesn’t say a lot that’s terribly new, but it’s a useful primer if you’re interested in those issues. Pharmalot has a more detailed summary.

UPDATE: Craig Venter’s PR representative points out to us that he was interviewed by AP reporter Seth Borenstein for the piece linked above, and that he appears in the full version of the story. (You can see that full version here, I believe, although it’s always hard to tell with the AP, which frequently moves multiple versions of its own stories that are then often edited by daily newspapers and other outlets for their own purposes.) In any event, it now looks like it was the editors of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and not AP editors or reporters, who chose to cut Venter from that piece in the course of shortening it — not to mention changing the focus considerably. Apologies for any confusion.

UPDATE REDUX: As if this wasn’t confusing enough already, it looks like the AP’s Seth Borenstein did two separate articles related to artificial life on the same day. The one I originally linked to ran with the headline “Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years” and ran in a variety of papers, including the San Jose Mercury News and the Boston Globe. (Check Google News for more examples.) Venter doesn’t appear in this piece.

A longer Borenstein article addressing the philosophical issues raised by artificial-life research also ran in a number of places, including USA Today and the Houston Chronicle. This is the story I linked to in the first update, and it does mention Venter.

Bottom line: Venter’s PR person jumped the gun. My original point stands, although the same AP reporter did interview Venter and quoted him in a related piece. Similarly, the Seattle P-I didn’t cut Venter out of the story it chose to run. And now that this update is far longer than the original item, I’ll draw this to a close.

FINAL UPDATE: It’s now clear that “tellingly” was a poor choice of words. I’ve spoken to the AP’s Borenstein, who graciously pointed out that the piece I linked was specifically focused on artificial-life “purists” who are trying to build microbes from scratch. Venter, who is more interested in manipulating existing life forms — such as by swapping one microbe’s genome for another — didn’t qualify. Borenstein also confirmed that this research piece was originally a sidebar to the longer article on the philosophical implications of artificial life, and not a shortened version of the longer piece.

And now I hope I’m done.

Aveo Pharmaceuticals, a Cambridge, Mass. cancer-drug company, raised $53 million in a fourth round of funding from a coalition of mostly blue-chip life-science investors.

New investors included Biogen Idec, Bessemer Venture Partners, Merlin BioMed Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Vatera Holdings, an investment vehicle owned by Kos Pharmaceuticals founder Michael Jaharis. Schering-Plough also provided a $10 million equity investment as part of a collaboration agreement.

The round also included new funding from existing investors Highland Capital Partners, Venrock Associates, MPM Capital, Prospect Ventures, Flagship Ventures, Oxford Bioscience Partners, Greylock Partners, Lotus Biosciences and GE Capital.

Founded in 2002 by a pair of Harvard cancer researchers, Aveo claims to model tumor biology in sophisticated ways that allow it to identify more effective cancer drugs. Its lead candidate, AV-412, takes aim at epidermal growth-factor receptor, or EGFR, the same cancer-growth protein targeted by current drugs such as Erbitux, Tarceva and Iressa. Aveo says its models show that AV-412 is more potent than other EGFR drugs and appears to be active against tumors that are resistant to Tarceva or Iressa. AV-412 was in-licensed from Mitsubishi Pharma, and is currently in early-stage human testing.

Aveo, formerly known as GenPath Pharmaceuticals, has previously raised roughly $65 million. See the company’s release here.

No nukes in lymphoma treatment – Two innovative biotech drugs that target tumor cells for destruction by tiny radioactive particles are struggling in the marketplace, in part because cancer doctors are simply too specialized to make proper use of them. The drugs — Zevalin (pictured at left), from Biogen Idec, and Bexxar, now produced by GlaxoSmithKline — consist of bioengineered antibodies that carry fragments of radioactive material directly to lymphoma tumors in the bloodstream, where the localized radiation can kill cancer cells with fewer side effects than traditional radiation or chemotherapy.

Although both drugs seem to work well, fewer than 10 percent of eligible lymphoma patients receive either one, the AP reports. One main reason: Oncologists don’t usually work with radioactive materials, and so must send patients to nuclear-medicine specialists instead, something many are loathe to do. Demand for the drugs is so anemic that Biogen Idec announced in December that it will try to sell off Zevalin to another company. It’s an interesting tale of how some innovations can fall completely flat when they don’t neatly fit modern medicine’s specializations.

Vaccinating infants — or cows — for E. coli – Those are two possible steps that might protect people from food poisoning by the bacterium Escherichia coli, which was responsible for two major outbreaks last fall, one involving bagged spinach and the other contaminated lettuce served in chain tacos. At the moment, doctors have few options for treating E. coli-related illness, but have begun considering ways to vaccinate children against the bug and to test possible therapies. Canada last year approved an agricultural vaccine for cows that can limit, but not eliminate, E. coli in the animal’s manure. (Cows and their waste are the primary source of the microbe.) The NYT has the story.

New eggs from old ovaries – In a fascinating fertility-medicine development, women can now have small strips of their ovaries frozen, then thawed and re-implanted years later to produce youthful-seeming eggs — even if they have already reached menopause. The technique is most commonly used when medical treatments such as chemotherapy threaten a woman’s fertility, although some women simply hope to improve their odds of bearing children in later years. Check out the WSJ story here.

Ballooning costs of biotech drugs – In five years, biotechnology treatments could account for a full quarter of all prescription-drug spending, according to a study by pharmacy-benefits manager Express Scripts. Spending on biotech drugs is rising far more quickly than for traditional pharmaceuticals, largely because many biotech drugs tend to be vastly more expensive, imposing costs that can range into the tens of thousands — or even hundreds of thousands — of dollars per year. Overall spending on biotech drugs rose 21 percent in 2006, compared to a 5.9 percent increase for traditional pills. By 2010, the company predicts, biotech drug spending will rise to $99 billion and will account for 26 percent of all drug costs, almost double the $54 billion spent in 2006. New drugs for cancer, arthritis and other inflammatory conditions are expected to account for the bulk of that growth. (Hat tip: Reuters, via the San Diego Union-Tribune.)

Additional signs of life among early-stage biotechs – Solace Pharmaceuticals today said it raised $15 million in an early venture round, providing further evidence that investors’ interest in younger biotechs may be perking up. The Boston-based company is developing new pain treatments; its investors include Polaris Venture Partners and InterWest Partners.

Doctors and sales reps, entangled again – A federal court struck down a New Hampshire law that barred the sale of physicians’ prescribing patterns to drug companies, information that drug reps use to tailor their approach to particular doctors. According to the NYT account, the decision may impact several other states that have considered similar laws. Separately, the NYT reports that some doctors are starting to just say no to free drug samples.

Prospects for “biogeneric” legislation may be dimming – Several reports suggest that momentum behind the push to allow cheap generic-style competitors to expensive biotech drugs is slowing, largely because the Senate failed to include the bill in a package of proposed laws that include various FDA reforms and renewal of the program under which drug-industry fees help pay for drug approvals. The biogenerics bill may still move separately, but the conventional wisdom seems to be that its odds were much better as part of the FDA package. The NYT has more on that FDA-reform package here.

Now that AstraZeneca has made the bold — or impulsive — decision to snap up MedImmune for $15.6 billion in cash, one big question is whether the U.K. pharmaceutical giant has kicked Big Pharma’s appetite for biotech acquisitions into high gear.

The green-eyeshade types are generally still scratching their heads over the rich price, which amounted to a 21 percent premium over MedImmune’s close on Friday. The biotech was known primarily for Synagis, an antibody-based drug that prevents a common respiratory infection in babies, and FluMist, a so-far underperforming influenza vaccine that’s delivered via a nasal spray instead of injection. MedImmune has next-generation versions of both drugs in development, but neither seems likely to set the world on fire. The company also reportedly has more than 40 other experimental drugs in its pipeline, but of course it’s far from certain that any of them will ever even make it to market, much less become the blockbusters that AstraZeneca is presumably looking for.

In fact, odds are good that AstraZeneca fell victim to the “winner’s curse,” the well-known tendency of bidders to overpay, sometimes dramatically, in competitive auctions. The WSJ reports that at least four large companies, including Eli Lilly, had been involved in the MedImmune bidding — a classic blueprint for overheated competition. Somewhere, Carl Icahn is smiling.

So, of course, are other biotech investors, who have to be hoping that whatever fever AstraZeneca came down with continues to spread. The WSJ story notes that the deal is “sure to push up valuations for similarly sized companies,” and indeed the Amex biotechnology index bumped up almost two percent on the news. Other blogs are now rife with speculation over which companies might now be in play — the WSJ Health Blog thinks Biogen Idec, Medarex and some specialty pharma companies could be next, while over at Pharmalot, Ed Silverman tosses ImClone Systems, Xoma, PDL BioPharma and Telik into the mix.

Should the expected free-for-all materialize, it will obviously have major implications for venture investors, who are already plunging more deeply into the sector. At the same time, I’d also expect to see more blood on the floor on the pharma side, as it’s far from clear to me that buyers like AstraZeneca really understand what they’re getting into. I suspect that many biotech acquisitions by pharma don’t end well — the cultures are very different, and it’s very easy for even a substantial biotech like MedImmune to get lost inside the vast structure of a $26 billion behemoth like AstraZeneca.

That, at least, was generally the logic behind the rage for pharma-biotech partnerships, in which drug companies could trade cash for future rights to experimental drugs without all the messiness that acquisitions entail. But it seems the desperation of Big Pharma knows no bounds these days.

One additional point: Little noted in all the hoopla is the fact that the acquisition takes out the last North American maker of flu vaccines, following last year’s purchase of Chiron by Novartis and that of Canada’s ID Biomedical by GlaxoSmithKline the year before. So far, the concentration of vaccine production in the hands of European pharmas hasn’t seemed to concern U.S. regulators much. And it probably won’t, either — at least until the next avian-flu scare, that is.