by Roger Longman
Talk about corporate carnage.
Millennium is turning its business development skills on diagnostics, promising to create a high margin business in what has been a price-cutter's paradise. Its advantage: using the discovery infrastructure built at Millennium and financed by drug companies for their deals with Millennium on drug discovery. All Millennium claims that it needs to make diagnostics pay (it hasn't for the vast majority of other diagnostics start-ups) is funding from diagnostics companies and drug firms interested in pursuing pharmacogenomics. Its major competition, the joint venture between SmithKline and Incyte called diaDexus, is skeptical that diagnostic firms, which have hitherto spent their R&D budgets on developing new instrument platforms, not the high risk hunt for new diagnostic markers, will change their tune now, and spend more on biological research than they ever have before by signing deals with Millennium. But Millennium is convinced that without the kind of new, important and expensive diagnostics it can discover with its biotech platform, such traditional diagnostic firms will continue to merely grind their profitability down in price wars.
by Roger Longman
Talk about corporate carnage.
Almost halfway through 2025, and financing for European biotech could be described as challenging. Market volatility, geopolitical instability and trade barriers all loom large in biotech CEO minds when pitching for funding. In Vivo talked to biotechs and investors to gain a realistic view of the current market for company funding so far this year.
From chemical engineering to cancer innovation, AbbVie's rising oncology leader is advancing next-generation ADCs to tackle difficult-to-treat tumors with a patient-centered approach.
Mini-profiles of five synthetic biology companies and their leaders from SynBioBeta 2025 reveal how AI integration, data-driven platforms and interdisciplinary teams are revolutionizing drug discovery and manufacturing.