In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology and life science news:

A top exec in Google’s autonomous cars effort quits

There is new life for the old Bell Labs complex

A cancer drug fails in tests

Berkshire Hathaway profits soar; and the FBI director wants a dialog about encryption. 

The details:

  • Exec who helped steer Google’s self-driving cars steps down

An executive who has been helping steer Google’s efforts to build self-driving cars is leaving the project after more than seven years on the job.

Chris Urmson disclosed his departure Friday as the project’s chief technology officer in an online post. He wrote that he is leaving to find another “adventure.”

Google lured Urmson away from Carnegie-Mellon University in 2009 to direct the once-secret effort to build a fleet of cars that can navigate the roads on their own.

Last year, Google moved the lab developing the autonomous cars into a new company called Alphabet Inc., which hired auto industry executive John Krafcik to oversee the project.

Google’s fleet of 58 self-driving cars has driven more than 1.8 million miles during test runs on public roads.

  • Former Bell Labs site seeks to inspire new inventors

The 2 million-square-foot building where Bell Labs scientists helped launch modern cellular networks before it became one of the country’s largest vacant office buildings is drawing companies with the lure of working at a complex surrounded by technological history.

A water tower in the shape of a transistor, which the company’s scientists created in 1947 as part of their continuing mission to improve and expand communications, stands over the Bell Works complex in Holmdel, near the site where the Big Bang theory of the universe was proven.

With that history, the developer who acquired the building in 2013 after it sat vacant for seven years is hoping to lure tech entrepreneurs and others to the glass and steel structure originally designed by Eero Saarinen, who also designed St. Louis’ Gateway Arch.

Somerset Development President Ralph Zucker envisions the office space as a “metroburb” anchored by tech companies that are joined by retail, entertainment, health care and nearby homes.

“It’s an attractive building with an incredible history that was a cradle of many innovations,” said Zucker.

Aside from the allure of being surrounded by history, the state’s Economic Development Authority also offered millions in tax credits to companies considering moving to the complex.

Bell Works is about 60 percent full after last month’s lease signing by human resources software provider iCIMS as the anchor tenant. iCIMS received a 10-year, $38 million tax credit.

Other tenants include the software company WorkWave, data storage startup Symbolic IO and cloud-based communications services designer Acacia Communications.

Plans also call for Toll Brothers to develop up to 40 single-family homes and 185 age-restricted townhomes, as well as a field house for sports.

Mayor Eric Hinds said the redevelopment will build on the work of the past, which itself transformed Holmdel from “a farm town into a corporate destination.”

Bell Labs began in 1925 when AT&T and Western Electric consolidated engineering departments to solve the problems of a new telecommunications network, said Bell Labsarchivist Ed Eckert.

  • Bristol-Myers drug fails lung cancer study, shares plunge

A blockbuster cancer treatment failed in a key study as the drug’s maker, Bristol-Myers Squibb, attempts to extend its usage for lung cancer patients.

Shares of the New York company plunged 16 percent. Shares of rival Merck & Co., which makes a rival cancer drug, spiked 10 percent to reach a multi-year high.

Bristol’s drug, Opdivo, and Merck’s drug Keytruda are immunotherapies, which bolster the immune system so that patients can better fight cancer. Both drugs are already approved to treat melanoma and lung cancer, but only after chemotherapy.

  • Berkshire Hathaway profit jumps 25 percent

Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the company led by Warren Buffett, said Friday that its second-quarter profit jumped 25 percent from a year ago as revenue from its insurance and financial products businesses grew.

The conglomerate reported net income of $5 billion, or $3,042 per Class A share, in the quarter, compared with $4 billion, or $2,442, per Class A share, in the same quarter a year before. Earnings, adjusted for investment gains, came to $2,803 per share.

Total revenue rose 6 percent to $54.46 billion in the period.

  • FBI chief calls for national talk over encryption vs. safety

The FBI’s director says the agency is collecting data that he will present next year in hopes of sparking a national conversation about law enforcement’s increasing inability to access encrypted electronic devices.

Speaking on Friday at the American Bar Association conference in San Francisco, James Comey says the agency was unable to access 650 of 5,000 electronic devices investigators attempted to search over the last 10 months.

Comey says encryption technology makes it impossible in a growing number of cases to search electronic devices. He says it’s up to U.S. citizens to decide whether to modify the technology.

The FBI earlier this year engaged in a high-profile fight with Apple to access data from a locked iPhone used by a shooter in the San Bernardino, California, terrorist attack.