TOP STORIES
Dr Farzad Mostashari’s health IT business, Aledade, has raised $30 million in a Series B round led by ARCH Venture Partners. The company, led by the former ONC head, provides software and offers consulting services for physician-led accountable care organizations. The company will use the funding to expand from the four states where it currently has a presence — Arkansas, Delaware, New York, and Maryland — to nine to 10 states by 2016, Mostashari said in a statement.
LIFE SCIENCES
Johnson & Johnson is collaborating with biotech startup Emulate to determine whether organ-on-a-chip technology is in research and development.
The FDA approved St Jude Medical’s brain implant to reduce Parkinson’s disease symptoms, including essential tremor.
Millennium Labs is nearing a settlement over allegations that it overbilled the federal government for unnecessary tests.
ProNAi Therapeutics filed for an IPO seeking to raise more than $86 million. The company has a drug discovery engine that’s designed to create unique, single-stranded DNA sequences to help fight cancer and other diseases.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
PAYERS-PROVIDERS
A South Korean hospital at the center of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome cases has suspended services.
TECH
BioIQ is raising money for its health screening platform.
POLITICS
Maine lawmakers are taking up a proposed death with dignity bill similar to what Vermont has on its books. Physicians would be permitted to provide lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients who want to hasten their death.
A LITTLE EXTRA
A study of reproductive precursor cells called germ cells has led to the discovery of the switch that controls whether these cells become eggs or sperm.
“While germ cells can become either sperm or eggs, nobody knew that in vertebrates the germ cells have a switch mechanism to decide their own sperm or egg fate,” said Minoru Tanaka, Associate Professor from the National Institute for Basic Biology with the National Institutes of Natural Sciences in Japan.
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.
Photo: Flickr user Peasap
