A significant volume of new M&A deals during 2021 are expected to involve cell and gene therapy developers as in recent years—but with an emerging twist resulting from some recent clinical disappointments for autologous treatments . . .

A key lesson we can learn from Warren Buffett, is about how to think about a potential stock investment in the context of a long-term time horizon. Every investor in a stock has a choice: bite our fingernails over the short-term ups and downs that are inevitable with the stock market, or, zero in on stocks we are comfortable to simply buy and hold for the long haul — maybe even a twenty year holding period. Heck, investors can even choose to completely ignore the stock market’s short-run quotations and instead go into their initial investment planning to hold on for years and years regardless of the fluctuations in price that might occur next.

Leaders today need to revisit an overlooked skill: asking questions. In my 40 years as an executive and advisor in Silicon Valley, I’ve often seen leaders assume that people look to them for answers — bold assertions that build people’s confidence in their competence. But in reality, that kind of approach erodes trust, especially at a time when so much is manifestly uncertain. You think you have the answers to all important questions? That suggests that you are either clueless — you have no idea how rapidly the world is changing — or that you are lying. In either case, you won’t find that trust that you’ve been looking for.

Image: HBR Staff/uncoveredlens/Pexels

Now that Trump has been edged out of office, Joe Biden may emerge as the harbinger of a brighter, better blue future or as a version of Konstantin Chernenko, the aged timeserver who ran the Soviet Union in its dying days. To succeed, he will have to confront massive pessimism about America’s direction, with some 80 percent thinking the country is out of control. The Atlantic last year compared the U.S. to a “failed state,” while The Week predicts “dark days ahead.”

The Onion recently satirized the disjointed nature of information around the vaccine rollout, suggesting that the best shot at staying informed  is to cobble together information from Twitter accounts of “reporters, medical researchers, and politically engaged musicians… [and a] Tacoma-area mom who shares screenshots of vital information.”

While home in Kansas City for the season, BioTalk host Rich Bendis virtually sits down two local business leaders. Innar Health CEO, Chris Mathia, and Flyover Capital Managing Partner, Keith Molzer chat about the opportunities and challenges of BioHealth and Fund-Raising in Middle American.

Listen now via Google http://bit.ly/39ikNss, Apple http://apple.co/3shRRtk, Spotify http://spoti.fi/39ocgUz, and TuneIn http://bit.ly/2XvT0za.

In this article, we are going to list the 15 largest vaccine companies in the world. Click to skip ahead and jump to the 5 largest vaccine companies in the world. Vaccination is the most simple and effective way of prevention of many diseases. It provides immunity to infectious diseases and it is the most cost-effective method to protect the world population. The first-ever vaccine was introduced for smallpox to treat the deadly cowpox virus in 1796. This virus killed many people and developing a vaccine for it saved many lives. But the concept of vaccines existed even before 1796. Pharmaceutical companies around the globe have worked to develop vaccines for diseases such as Malaria, HIV, cholera, influenza and tuberculosis.

In the last few years I have seen a popular business model emerging which embodies a greater focus on social and environmental responsibility, and a new requirement for trust and sharing, as well as customer and community collaboration. Companies like Airbnb, Uber, Zappos, and Whole Foods are setting the example, and leading the way in profitability and purpose.

Image: https://blog.startupprofessionals.com

“No!” The doctor snapped. “Look at me!”

I had been staring her in the eyes, as she had ordered, but when a doctor on my other side began jabbing me with a needle, I started to turn my head. “Don’t look at it,” the first doctor said. I obeyed.

This was in early August in New Orleans, where I had signed up to be a participant in the clinical trial for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. It was a blind study, which meant I was not supposed to know whether I had gotten the placebo or the real vaccine. I asked the doctor if I would really been able to tell by looking at the syringe. “Probably not,” she answered, “but we want to be careful. This is very important to get right.”

Image: BioNTech co-founders Dr. Ugur Sahin and Dr. Ozlem Tureci in its headquarters in Germany on Jan. 3. Photograph by Dina Litovsky—Redux for TIME

What do these companies have in common? Pinterest, Uber, Dropbox, Slack, WhatsApp, Airbnb, Square, Stripe, Google and PayPal. (Hint: It’s more than just tech.)

The first eight companies on the list were born during the Great Recession of the late 2000s and the other two during the DotCom bust nearly a decade earlier.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has released its annual list of technology priorities for its Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs.

The agency will use broad agency announcements and other procurement methods for companies to compete for grants to conduct early research efforts. SBIR and SBTT are both tools DARPA uses to help small businesses advance new technologies that are useful to the Defense Department.

US healthcare venture fundraising soared in 2020, totaling $17B, a 57% increase over 2019’s record.

Image: https://www.svb.com

The additional challenges to launching new drugs that emerged since COVID-19 upended the biopharma industry, and life as we knew it, will continue into 2021, according to the annual list of trends released December 21 by Seqens CDMO North America (formerly PCI Synthesis, a contract development and manufacturing organization focused on producing new chemical entities (NCEs), active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and other specialty chemical products.

Once an entrepreneur, always an entrepreneur. Although many won’t admit it, true entrepreneurs can’t wait to exit their current startup, and build a new and better one with their next great idea. In addition, current investors want to see every startup go public or be acquired, as an exit event, so they can get their due return for that investment which has been tied up for the last few years.

Delaware has taken a major step toward its goal of enhancing its reputation as an innovation hub that grows scalable companies and successfully competes for business expansion and relocation projects.

The newly created Science & Tech Advisors group consists of representatives from Delaware’s top tech companies, industry organizations, institutions of higher education and state government. It is focused on being more intentional and strategic about advancing Delaware’s statewide scientific and technological innovation economy.

Image: Patrick Callahan

This past year left us with no shortage of incredible innovations, chief among them Covid-19 vaccines. Following a harrowing 2020, we're excited to see how innovators continue to push the envelope and bring forth what they think the world needs. From celebrating and honoring black history to improving the mental health of K-12 students, we're keeping our eyes on these ten groundbreakers as they share their visions with the world.

Image: https://www.smithsonianmag.com

That is a note from late 2020 from a good friend of mine - a highly regarded town planner in Australia, who has led city planning both for large metro cities and worked across the globe, most lately in the Middle East. He is no fool. The irony is – and he is right – that it has taken a global pandemic to shake ourselves out of from the focus on centralised, high density urban cores, surrounded by dormitory suburbs from which workers would commute daily, preferably in high volume public transport, to their city-based offices. Our subservience called for endless amounts of public money to be thrown at inner city altars, rewarding the increasingly privileged professional clergy who enjoyed commensurately rising real estate prices, while suburban areas languished.

Last year, when GEN prepared an editorial titled Eight Biopharma Trends to Watch in 2020, who could have foreseen COVID-19 and the deaths, illnesses, and economic disruption that the disease would wreak? And who could have foreseen how armies of industry and academic researchers would race to develop hundreds of new and repositioned vaccines and drugs? (GEN tracks more than 300 on its COVID-19 Drug and Vaccine Tracker webpage).

TechLink helps industry partners access and evaluate technology commercialization opportunities developed in federal research laboratories.

You can work with us to license partially-developed technology. Our licensing help is at no cost to you.

Learn the ins and outs with a free bonus gift to help you get started >>> TechLink’s Guide to Technology Transfer

Start with this curated list of inventions our expert technology managers evaluated as outstanding opportunities this month:

Very early-stage technology startups’ fundraising potential will get a boost from a new 80 million shekel ($25 million) Israel Innovation Authority program following three years of stagnation in seed funding, the independent public agency said.

The new Hybrid Seed Incentive Program created by the Economy and Industry Ministry’s Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) encourages seed investors by limiting their investment risk in early ventures after a funding slowdown was exacerbated by the pandemic.

Image: Dr. Ami Appelbaum, chairman of the Israel Innovation Authority. (Shlomi Amsalem/GPO)