Venture capital funds in Latin America have overlooked biotech, leaving an untapped opportunity for local capital markets and US and European investors alike. Chilean entrepreneur Cristian Hernandez, founder of newly launched boutique VC Zentynel Frontier Investments, explains how business – and society – can benefit from launching biotech start-ups able to serve a global market at lower cost.

New drug development is an increasingly communal enterprise. In Vivo examines how one major US academic institution – the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) – is expanding its range of research contacts to open new areas of therapy and shorten the transition from bench to the bedside. 

New drug development is an increasingly communal enterprise. In Vivo examines how one major US academic institution – the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) – is expanding its range of research contacts to open new areas of therapy and shorten the transition from bench to the bedside.  Its commercial impact is considerable: over the past two decades, private-sector VC’s have invested more than $2bn in UCLA-backed innovations, with 26 start-ups launched through the university in 2019 alone. Amir Naiberg, UCLA’s point man on technology transfer, explains the factors that have made the university a successful advocate for partnerships that produce results for patients.

In this installment of VC Playbook, profiling venture capital strategies in biopharma and medtech, In Vivo talks to Sofinnova Partners' Graziano Seghezzi about market access trends, Italy’s growing biotech offering and the perils of “health nationalism” to business partnering in the aftermath of COVID-19.

In this latest edition of the Lab Links series on notable figures responsible for major advances in drug discovery, In Vivo talks to Harvard Medical School professor and biologist Timothy Springer on his 50-year record as an academic scientist, business entrepreneur and philanthropist. His latest venture is being co-founder – and principal funder – of the independent non-profit Institute for Protein Innovation, an institution designed to fill a critical niche in open-source biomedical research.

Disruptions in the supply/demand configuration of generic drugs have plagued US health care for years. Picket Pharmaceuticals, a new start-up founded by a biostatistician veteran of Africa’s war on HIV, is using the illuminating powers of big data to stabilize the generics supply chain and find untapped areas of value among thousands of products in a business that remains a mystery to physicians, payers and patients alike.