Report: Chicago, Denver, Houston among future biotech clusters (Morning Read)

Current medical news and unique business news for anyone who cares about healthcare.

The future cities of biotech. As big biotechs and pharmas continue their attempt to slash costs by outsourcing research and manufacturing operations and forming partnerships, emerging biotech regions could take some of that business and become actual clusters, suggests a report from the real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, which highlighted nine emerging biotech cities.

We’d argue that the firm stretched the meaning of “emerging” with its list — as it features both Minneapolis and Raleigh-Durham, plus well-established biotech hub Seattle (all of which were featured on our top medical cities list, too). The other six areas it says are poised for growth in bitoech are Chicago, Denver, Houston, Florida, Atlanta and Indianapolis.

“BSN in 10.” Registered nurses would be required to earn a bachelor’s degree within 10 years to keep their jobs if a bill under consideration in New York is passed. No other states have this requirement (most RNs have associate degrees), and critics of the bill worry that increasing the education requirements would discourage people from becoming nurses as an aging population needs more healthcare — although many would say the supposed “nursing shortage” has been over-hyped.

The year ahead in biotech. Welcome back to work. For some light reading this morning, check out Bruce Booth’s take on why the glass is half full for biotech in 2012 (hint — M&A activity and partnerships had a big impact in 2011.)

Vivo raises $375M for healthcare fund. Palo Alto’s Vivo Ventures has closed $375 million to invest in late-stage U.S. pharmaceutical and medical device companies and in revenue-stage healthcare companies in China, bringing the healthcare investment firm’s total to more than $1 billion in funds.

A medical tell-all. As Uromedica prepares to hear back from the FDA on the status of its data submitted for pre-market approval of its male urinary incontinence device, here’s a look from the NYT at the importance of urine in giving clues about one’s health.