n our latest perspective, Chrysalis looks at how best-in-class companies took action during the recession of '09-'11. The most successful companies acted decisively in the face of the downturn, engaging in everything from acquisitions to alliances to deep investments in strategically important assets. We provide examples and dissect three classes of activities: the acquisition of previously unavailable assets, doubling down on existing business hypotheses, and capturing scale by investing in strategically adjacent businesses. We hope you enjoy the read.
There has been a bit of interesting activity in long read sequencing technology investment and acquisition in the past few weeks. First came Amgen’s ~$66M (£50M) investment in Oxford Nanopore Technologies, then a couple of weeks later, Illumina announced their $1.2B acquisition of Pacific Biosciences. Work in long read technologies has been going on for many years, so is this a sudden rush... or the culmination of long-term planning?
We have seen many companies in the life science space attempt a commercial launch like a ski jumper who forgot to bring along his or her skis. Sure, the boots were fine to get to the top of the mountain, but they are not what’s needed for the vertiginous flight ahead, much less a smooth landing.
Part II of our interview with Dr. Chris Mason.
Part I of our interview with Dr. Chris Mason
Continuing Chrysalis' "5 Questions" series, we reached out to one of the preeminent experts on the clinical use of whole genome sequencing. Robert C. Green, MD, MPH is a medical geneticist and physician-scientist who directs the G2P Research Program in translational genomics and health outcomes in the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School. Dr. Green sees patients and conducts empirical research on the medical, behavioral and economic outcomes associated with the implementation of genomic medicine.
We’ve taken our years of experience and distilled them down into some practices to help companies, big and small, make decisions about how and when to bring the right technologies to the right market. Taking a rigorous approach to find the right fit for a technology is a very important first step towards achieving commercial success.
In the recent article by Visscher et al., “10 Years of GWAS Discovery: Biology, Function, and Translation,” the authors pose a daunting question: “Does the GWAS have a future?” And this has led me to ask a higher-level question of my own:
“Why does GWAS need defending?"
As part of our blog, Chrysalis Biomedical Advisors will be sharing a series of “5 Questions With...”. These are brief interviews with thought leaders in the healthcare and biotechnology space. We hope you enjoy them. Interested in nominating an individual and / or posing questions? Please contact rob@chrysalisbiomed.com or comment.
After years spent working with and within startup (and grownup) companies, the Chrysalis team has observed repeated themes that prevent good ideas from growing into great companies. The following is a list of the most serious (and all-too-common) mistakes.
