A New Jersey health improvement collaborative will use a diagnostic tool developed by BG Medicine Inc. of Waltham to identify patients at risk of being re-hospitalized for heart failure. Bloomberg Radio celebrated its entrance into Boston with a day-long live broadcast from South Station Wednesday. The financial news network, which broadcasts at 1200 on the AM dial, had some of its normally New York-based hosts on hand, and they were joined by a variety of Boston business luminaries including Legal Sea Foods CEO Roger Berkowitz, Cumberland Farms President Ari Haseotes, and many others. Nimbus Discovery LLC, a Cambridge biotechnology company, said Wednesday it has forged a co-development agreement with Shire plc that will focus on small molecule treatments for several rare genetic diseases. Financial terms of the agreement are not being disclosed. Shire operates from a $500 million campus in Lexington. About a year ago, it reported having nearly 1,650 full-time employees in Massachusetts. Shire’s new chief executive recently cited the development of treatments for rare diseases as a company priority. The agreement between Shire and Nimbus looks to focus on small molecule treatments for several rare genetic diseases known as lysosomal storage disorders, or LSDs. LSDs are inherited metabolic disorders caused by a lack of enzymes. Instrumentation Laboratory said Wednesday that that it has been awarded a $980,000 tax incentive by the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center under a program designed to foster job growth in life sciences within the Commonwealth. Instrumentation Laboratory, or IL, specializes in diagnostic products and services. Every day, more than one million samples of blood are tested on IL systems around the world. At its headquarters and technology center in Bedford, the company employs more than 200 scientists and engineers. IL said it will use its tax incentive to expand its employee base. IL is receiving its award under the Life Sciences Tax Incentive Program, which was established in 2008 as part of Massachusetts’ 10-year, $1 billion Life Sciences Act. Good Start Genetics Inc., a molecular diagnostics company based in Cambridge, said Wednesday that it has closed a non-dilutive loan facility for up to $28 million of capital from Capital Royalty LP. Good Start, which launched in 2010, specializes in carrier screenings for genetic mutations that can cause disease. For a woman thinking about getting pregnant, such screenings can provide information about the likelihood of her child having an inherited disease. A big potential market for such screenings is women who are thinking about getting pregnant from in vitro fertilization. The company calls its menu of screening tests “GoodStart Select.” Using its proprietary next-generation sequencing technology, the company says its product can detect such diseases as cystic fibrosis as well as disease-causing mutations that more traditional screening tests sometimes miss. Federal regulators have granted fast-track review status of several uses for an experimental antibiotic drug developed by Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Lexington. On the heels of raising $80 million in venture capital funding earlier this year, the fast-growing California thermostat maker Nest Labs Inc. has bought Boston start-up MyEnergy. The acquisition is the first one for Nest, which was founded by two former Apple Inc. executives in 2010 and has quickly grown into one of the hottest Silicon Valley technology start-ups. Nest would not reveal terms of the deal to buy MyEnergy, a 12-person company that was founded in 2007 and has raised $4 million in venture funding. “Nest came looking for us because of the MyEnergy technology,” said Ben Bixby, chief executive officer of MyEnergy, which provides an online service for analyzing energy consumption and for consumer to track utility bills. | | |
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