Frank Vinlaun

Cancer diagnostics startup GeneCentric Diagnostics, led by former LabCorp (NYSE: LH) executive Dr. Myla Lai-Goldman, has raised $250,000, securities filings show. Besides Lai-Goldman, GeneCentric’s CEO, the filing lists only Dr. Neil Hayes, a professor at the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lai-Goldman could not be reached for comment. But the website of venture capital firm Hatteras Venture Partners, where Lai-Goldman is a venture partner, notes that Lai-Goldman co-founded GeneCentric this year with Hayes and Dr. Chuck Perou, also a professor at UNC’s medical school. Durham-based GeneCentric was formed in June, according to...

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) wants to find out what auto racing can bring to pharmaceutical development. The London-based pharma giant is partnering with Formula 1 racing firm McLaren Group a deal that will apply McLaren’s engineering and technology to GSK’s global operations. The partnership will focus at first on GSK’s manufacturing, R&D and consumer healthcare operations. The deal also calls for the construction of a new facility at focused on engineering called the McLaren GSK Centre for Applied Performance. The facility will be built at McLaren’s headquarters outside of London and is expected to open in 2013. “This partnership is another...

A GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) pharmaceutical sales representative these days still works to get in front of a physician’s desk to discuss GSK drugs. But their conversation today is vastly different compared to one a year ago. That’s by design, said James Millar, GSK’s vice president of oncology marketing and sales. Pharma rep compensation has historically been sales based: sell more drugs, make more money. Doctors knew a rep was incentivized to sell more to make more, Millar said. But GSK is aiming to remove financial incentives from the equation. Pharma reps still receive a mix of salary and bonus. But...

Biotechnology company Medicago (TSX:MDG) could soon demonstrate whether its technology can rapidly develop and manufacture vaccines to respond to potential pandemic and bioterror threats. Medicago, which is part of a national project to develop vaccine capabilities to respond to virus threats, has launched operations in its Research Triangle Park facility. The company expects to have the new 90,000-square-foot vaccine facility fully occupied by the end of October. The new North Carolina operations for Quebec City, Canada-based Medicago come about a year after the company secured a grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which pledged...

GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE:GSK) has halted part of a phase 3 breast cancer clinical study after an independent committee concluded that the GSK drug administered alone is unlikely to work better than a rival cancer drug from Roche. But three other arms of the trial studying the GSK drug lapatinib, also called Tykerb, will continue. Those studies are evaluating Tykberb in some combination with Roche blockbuster drug trastuzumab, which is marketed as Herceptin. “Patients assigned to the lapatinib alone arm of the trial will discontinue lapatinib and discuss treatment options with their study physician,” GSK said in the clinical trial update....

North Carolina will become a healthcare reform test bed through a new public-private partnership that aims to see if a Medicaid management program that has saved more than $1 billion can also bring savings and efficiencies when applied to the private sector. The state’s Secretary of Health and Human Services Lanier Cansler announced the “First in Health” initiative on Monday. Participating companies are GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK), software firm SAS Institute, pharmacy chain Kerr Drug, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina as well as the State Health Plan of North Carolina. They’ll work with Community Care of...

The nanotechnology industry mapped out across the United States is full of bubbles – the good kind. “Nano-metros” identified and mapped by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, or PEN, depicts the nation’s nanotechnology hubs as bubbles. The larger the industry in a given region, the larger the bubble on the map. Silicon Valley, Boston and Houston are the nation’s top three nanotechnology hubs. Silicon Valley and Boston have nanotech companies in various industries, including medicine. Houston excels in energy applications. Raleigh broke into PEN’s top ranks in 2009 and is still climbing. The Research Triangle is knocking on the...

Oncology remains the top therapeutic area for pharmaceutical deal makers. But even as pharmas seek these deals, industry changes will force them to look to license compounds at earlier stages in clinical development. Those projections come from the annual Dealmakers’ Intention Survey conducted by Campbell Alliance, a Raleigh-based pharma industry consulting firm. Campbell presented the findings at a Council for Entrepreneurial Development Biotech Forum held last week in Research Triangle Park. Campbell Alliance has conducted the annual survey since 2008 to gauge dealmaking trends. For this year’s survey, Campbell received 126 responses from senior decision makers from a range...