The mergers-and-acquisitions market is doing quite well and a potential cure for superbug MRSA is found in a 1,000-year-old text (Morning Read)

The mergers-and-acquisitions market in healthcare is alive and well so far this year, and it looks like you'll have at least 19 health and fitness apps ready for the launch of the Apple Watch. Read this and more in The Morning Read.

TOP STORIES

The mergers-and-acquisitions market in healthcare is alive and well so far this year.

Driven by takeovers like AbbVie Inc.’s March agreement to buy cancer-drug maker Pharmacyclics Inc. for $21 billion, merger activity among health-care companies rose 108% year over year in the first quarter, to $126.4 billion, according to Dealogic.

You’ll have at least 19 health and fitness apps ready for the launch of the Apple Watch.

LIFE SCIENCE

Israeli biotech RedHill Biopharma Ltd. has purchased the exclusive worldwide development and commercialization rights to ABC294640, a Phase I-stage anti-inflammatory small molecule under development at Apogee Biotechnology for $5.5 million.

Infinity Pharmaceuticals will pay $52.5 million to exercise its option to buy out all future royalty obligations from a Takeda Pharmaceuticals subsidiary for sales of experimental cancer drug duvelisib.

Depression and heart-disease drugs are to be tested in a trial to find treatments for Multiple Sclerosis from existing medicines.

Matthew Herper of Forbes puts PBS’ documentary on history of cancer research in perspective, particularly in the realization that medical innovations in cancer may initially only help relatively few but will help many more longterm.

There could be a cure for the superbug MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphyloccocus aureus), and it comes from pretty far back in time. Apparently a treatment found in an old medical text from more than 1,000 years ago could do the trick, and it involves wine and dried ox bile.

Novan attracts $50 million to fund clinical trials for a nitric oxide-based treatment and potential cure for acne.

PAYERS-PROVIDERS

A new study illustrates the difficulty that comes with high turnover rates with healthcare staffing.

TECH

Google is changing the way it attempts big-time innovations after Glass and delivery drones stumbled.

Download Sentinel Alert 54 on the safe use of information technology.

It’s time for investors to step up even more with the creation of tech that will help prevent more large security breaches – venture capitalists have spent roughly $6.5 billion on new technologies to combat the issue in the last few years, and that will continue to go up.

Another day, another personal medical record storage system launches.

Google’s smart contact lens has received its patent.

POLITICS

Ohio-based Robinson Health System Inc. has agreed to pay $10 million to settle claims that it violated the False Claims Act, the Anti-Kickback Statute and the Stark Statute by engaging in improper financial relationships with referring physicians.

Part of the doc fix bill would provide more protection from malpractice suits for physicians.

A LITTLE EXTRA

Gotta love it when people stand up to protect some of the world’s beautiful creatures. A mission to airlift at-risk rhinos is underway in Africa.

In a bid to save them from the ongoing poaching crisis, conservationists have embarked on a monstrous but admirable project that aims to relocate at least 100 rhinos from zones with the highest poaching rates in South Africa to the lowest poaching areas in the whole of Africa, Botswana.

The Morning Read provides a 24-hour wrap up of everything else healthcare’s innovators need to know about the business of medicine (and beyond). The author of The Read published it but all full-time MedCity News journalists contribute to its content.

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