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Edtech Pitch Competition

Editors — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 13:50:25 +0000

From the event organizer:

“LearnLaunch and Cengage will host a fast-paced pitch competition showcasing as some of the most innovative post-secondary edtech startups compete for the chance to wow an audience of 1000+ educators, industry experts, and potential investors at the LearnLaunch Across Boundaries Conference in February 2017. Judges from the edtech ecosystem will provide feedback to the companies on ways in which they can scale their businesses and increase their competitiveness in the market. Join this fast-paced pitch competition to hear how startups, institutions and education companies are responding to the needs of today’s learners and the ever-evolving higher education landscape.”

Click here for more information.

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UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

Bio Roundup: Drug Pricing, Cystic Fibrosis Showdown, Myovant & More

Ben Fidler — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 13:25:07 +0000

The 2016 election is (thankfully) almost here, and as one biotech analyst noted this week, a possible Democratic victory is to blame for a big October sell-off in biotech stocks. Since Donald Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” tape was released on October 7, Leerink Partners analyst Geoffrey Porges wrote, biotech investors have lost $50 billion. The prospects of a Hillary Clinton presidency and Democrat-controlled senate have spooked investors wary of drug policies “tremendously damaging to the industry,” Porges wrote.

In the meantime, however, the news hasn’t been all bad for drugmakers. A major shift in the treatment of lung cancer—for some patients, anyway—has begun. And new treatments to expand the reach of cystic fibrosis therapies have begun clinical testing. Those headlines and much more below.

TOP STORY

—The FDA approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda) from Merck (NYSE: MRK) for certain lung cancer patients who have received no previous treatment. It’s the first time a cancer immunotherapy has been approved in a first-line setting.

CYSTIC FIBROSIS SHOWDOWN

—As the North American Cystic Fibrosis Conference kicked off in Orlando, FL, Vertex Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: VRTX) said a key part of its plan to defend its industry-leading cystic fibrosis franchise is moving forward. Two “triple” combination regimens for CF, which are meant to expand the reach of its CF drugs, will begin Phase 2 trials by the end of the year, and two additional new CF drugs will start clinical testing in 2017. The news came with some caveats, however, as TheStreet.com explains here.

—Two Vertex rivals touted early-stage data at the NACFC conference: Belgium-based Galapagos, which is developing its own triple combination regimen, and Netherlands-based ProQr Therapeutics (NASDAQ: PRQR), which is advancing an RNA-based CF drug sprayed into the lungs.

THIS WEEK IN DRUG PRICING…

—A coalition of investors pressed drug makers to justify price increases. The group filed shareholder resolutions with 11 companies and cited a Kaiser Family Foundation poll that cited Americans’ concerns over drug prices.

—Richmond, VA-based Kaleo Pharmaceuticals said it would bring its anti-allergy auto-injector Auvi-Q back next year. The drug system went off the market in 2015, leaving Mylan’s EpiPen without competition and setting the stage for the furor over Mylan’s price hikes.

—Mylan CEO Heather Bresch has blamed EpiPen costs on middlemen. The largest of those middlemen, Express Scripts (NYSE: ESRX), said this week it received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice for more information about its role in the drug-buying ecosystem.

…AND DUCHENNE

—Aaron Kesselheim and Jerry Avorn, both professors of medicine at Harvard Medical School, penned an op-ed in the Journal of the American Medical Association warning of the implications of the FDA’s September decision to approve Sarepta Therapeutics’ Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug eteplirsen (Exondys 51).

—Separately, the insurer Humana became the latest to cover Sarepta’s drug, but said it would only do so for Duchenne patients who are currently able to walk.

—A coalition of non-profits, drug companies, and medical experts have formed the Collaborative Trajectory Analysis Project, an effort to better quantify how Duchenne patients progress without treatment.

IPO’S, BIG AND SMALL

—Brisbane, CA-based Myovant Sciences (NASDAQ: MYOV), another biotech founded by Roivant Sciences founder Vivek Ramaswany, raised $218 million in the largest biotech IPO of 2016. Ramaswany’s Axovant Sciences (NASDAQ: AXON) bagged $360 million last year in the largest biotech IPO ever. Here’s more from Forbes.

— Cambridge, MA-based Ra Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: RARX) raised $92 million in an IPO, partially through the help of existing shareholders.

DEALS AND FUNDINGS

—Unity Biotechnology of South San Francisco, CA, reeled in $116 million to push drugs for knee arthritis and eye disease into clinical trials. The company’s strategy is to kill dormant cells in the body that worsen what it calls “diseases of aging.”

—The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $210 million to the University of Washington, a record for the school, to build a center for the study of global population health.

—Allergan (NYSE: AGN) exercised its option to buy a stomach drug from Boston-based Rhythm Pharmaceuticals for $200 million.

—Warsaw, IN-based Zimmer Biomet (NYSE: ZBH) expanded into telehealth by acquiring startup RespondWell for an undisclosed sum.

AND IN OTHER NEWS…

—Merck (NYSE:MRK) got the FDA’s nod for bezlotoxumab (Zinplava), a treatment for C. difficile infection. The approval comes three months after a new approach to fight the deadly infection—a mix of bacterial spores to restore a healthy gut microbiome—failed a major test in the hands of Seres Therapeutics (NASDAQ: MCRB).

—An experimental treatment for sickle cell disease will soon enter Phase 3 trials. Global Blood Therapeutics (NASDAQ: GBT) said it has the FDA’s green light to start a trial that could produce results in 2019. Meanwhile, cutting-edge techniques to knock out or fix the defective gene that causes sickle cell disease are in motion but have yet to reach human trials.

—The FDA put a partial clinical hold on some of the studies being run by Berkeley, CA-based Aduro Biotech (NASDAQ: ADRO) after a single patient tested positive for the bacterium Listeria.

—Shares of New York-based Dipexium Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: DPRX) plummeted more than 80 percent after a cream it had been developing for patients with infections from diabetic foot ulcers failed two Phase 3 trials.

—Irvine, CA, and Bedminster, NJ-based Aerie Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: AERI) withdrew the FDA approval application for its glaucoma drug, netarsudil (Rhopressa), because of manufacturing issues. Aerie expects to re-file the application in January.

—Tucked into Biogen’s (NASDAQ: BIIB) earnings report this week was news that the company discontinued development of a drug called MT-1303. Biogen paid Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma $60 million in September 2015 for rights to the drug, which the company aimed to develop for a variety of autoimmune diseases, including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. The drug was a possible competitor to ozanimod, which Celgene acquired when it bought Receptos for $7.2 billion last year.

—And if you missed our “Boston’s Life Science Disruptors” conference last week, here’s a slideshow look at some of the festivities.

Alex Lash contributed to this report

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Exact Sciences Shares Dip After Company Adjusts Revenue Forecast

Jeff Buchanan — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 19:16:39 +0000

Exact Sciences reported third-quarter earnings Wednesday and despite increases in revenue and other closely watched metrics, the reaction from investors was unfavorable.

Madison, WI-based Exact (NASDAQ: EXAS) reported a net loss of $37.8 million for the three-month period that ended Sept. 30, on revenues of $28.1 million. Those figures marked improvements over the same period last year, when the company posted a $42.9 million loss on $12.6 million in revenue.

Exact narrowed its forecast for total sales in 2016 to $93 million to $95 million. Previously, the company had projected revenues for the current year would come in between $90 million and $100 million. After three quarters, Exact’s total revenues for 2016 are about $64.1 million.

Investors were apparently more wary of the lower ceiling than they were upbeat about the higher floor. Exact’s stock priced closed at $16.73 a share Wednesday, down 14.6 percent from the previous day’s close of $19.59 a share.

Exact, whose flagship product is a stool-based DNA screening test for colorectal cancer known as Cologuard, said it completed about 68,000 of the tests during the third quarter. The company reiterated its projection that it would complete 240,000 tests of Cologuard this year; hitting that target would require a fourth-quarter total of at least 78,000 tests.

Nearly 50,000 physicians have ordered Cologuard since the test launched in 2014, Exact said, up about 22 percent from June.

During the company’s earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Kevin Conroy gave some of the credit for what he called a “strong” quarter to sales and marketing efforts, including a national television advertising campaign. Maneesh Arora, Exact’s chief operating officer, said these initiatives have helped lead to more patients hearing about Cologuard and starting conversations with their doctors about getting screened.

“The sales team is executing and the marketing campaign is working,” Arora said, according to a transcript of the call from Seeking Alpha. “That is driven by patients actually going and asking their physicians for Cologuard, and that is driving patients and physicians to ask their systems and their payers to cover Cologuard.”

The television campaign has “clearly increased the reorder rate of [Exact’s] existing customer base,” Conroy added.

The company is continuing its efforts to get more insurers to agree to cover the costs of Cologuard, Conroy said. Earlier this month, the company announced that Tricare—which provides health benefits for 9.4 million current and former U.S. military personnel—now covers the test. Exact also said that Cigna (NYSE: CI), a major insurer based in Bloomfield, CT, recently began covering Cologuard.

Conroy said that currently, “things are working so well in the U.S.” that Exact has decided to reduce the amount of money it’s spending to make more insurers, physicians, and patients in Europe aware of Cologuard. Exact announced last year that Cologuard was available in the U.K., and the test has the CE marking that’s necessary for it to be marketed in Europe.

About 144 million people currently have health plans that cover Cologuard, Conroy said. That’s up 40 percent from June, he added, when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force announced changes to how it classifies colorectal cancer screening methods. About two-thirds of the total U.S. patient population eligible to be screened with Cologuard have plans that cover the test, Conroy said.

One major factor for primary care physicians when considering ordering Cologuard is whether the patient’s insurance covers the test, Conroy said. While that’s not surprising to hear, he added that another difference maker is the ease of ordering the test using a computerized patient records system.

“We see with [doctors] who are on an [electronic medical record] platform that has a Cologuard ease of ordering built into it, we see about…double the rate” of orders, he said. “We have plans in place to increase the rate at which [doctors] can order electronically, and that will drive volume.”

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Unity Nabs $116M To Bring “Diseases of Aging” Drugs Into Human Trials

Alex Lash — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 19:04:59 +0000

Unity Biotechnology launched earlier this year to tackle common diseases such as knee arthritis, glaucoma, and clogged arteries in a new way. The company said Thursday it has raised $116 million in a Series B funding round.

Unity wants to kill cells that have gone dormant but continue to produce chemicals that cause damaging inflammation in the pockets of the body where the cells accumulate. Researchers affiliated with the firm published a paper today in the journal Science to show that knocking out the dormant, or senescent, cells can change the course of atherosclerosis—the build-up of plaque inside arteries that can lead to heart attack or stroke.

The work was performed in mice. Unity has not yet tested its senescent cell-killing drugs, which it calls senolytic medicines, in humans. It is aiming for its first trials in 12 to 18 months in osteoarthritis and eye disease, according to a spokesman.

Two of the paper’s authors, Judith Campisi of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Jan van Deursen of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, are Unity scientific co-founders.

Senescence is widely thought to be a protective measure against cancer. If there’s risk of a cell turning cancerous, because of rapid division or stress such as radiation, it goes dormant. As we get older, senescent cells accumulate in various niches of the body.

Unity is also making changes at the top. Co-founder Ned David (pictured) is shifting from CEO to president, with chairman Keith Leonard taking over as CEO. David and Leonard, as well as some of Unity’s top investors at Arch Venture Partners and Venrock, were all part of Kythera Biopharmaceuticals. Allergan (NYSE: AGN) bought the cosmetic drug company in 2015 for $2.1 billion, mainly to gain rights to deoxycholic acid (Kybella), an injection that reduces double-chin fat.

Unity is trying to position itself as an anti-aging company—to fight “diseases of aging” and “extend healthspan” are stated goals—although it’s not clear how its approach, other than directing drugs at an unproven biological target, will differ from companies looking to fight any disease that shortens life span. A spokesman said that David will focus on “thinking big” with the company’s platform.

Arch and Venrock are participating in the B round along with Fidelity, Jeff Bezos’s personal investment fund Bezos Expeditions, and others.

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Zimmer Biomet Digs Deeper into Digital Health with RespondWell Deal

Frank Vinluan — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 17:16:02 +0000

Zimmer Biomet is expanding into telemedicine through the acquisition of RespondWell, a startup whose software allows patients to rehabilitate from surgery at home using messaging, videos, and monitoring handled over the Internet.

Warsaw, IN-based Zimmer Biomet (NYSE: ZBH) is one of the largest providers of medical devices and products for musculoskeletal care. But care is not limited to procedures performed at the hospital, and a growing number of patients are recovering at home. Zimmer Biomet says adding Grand Rapids, MI-based RespondWell helps it offer medical professionals the ability to provide “telerehabilitation”—post-surgical physical therapy that the patient can do from home.

RespondWell’s signature product is called Therapy@Home. The software provides a personalized rehabilitation plan along with an interactive video game approach to exercises, which is intended to improve patient compliance with the regimen. The software also allows medical professionals to monitor patients remotely and offer instructions, which RespondWell says saves on the time and cost of follow-up visits and rehabilitation programs based in the clinic.

According to a MiBiz report in March, RespondWell raised $2 million from investors and had been been aiming to raise another $8 million to support further development.

Zimmer Biomet disclosed no financial terms for the RespondWell acquisition. But the company says it fits with “Signature Solutions,” an initiative that combines consulting services that it started in the 1990s along with newer technologies aimed at helping healthcare facilities show that the care services they provide actually deliver value and cost savings. When Zimmer Biomet unveiled Signature Solutions in September, the company said that some of the services and technologies that would comprise the offering would come via partnerships and acquisitions. RespondWell is now part of the Signature Solutions portfolio.

Zimmer Biomet says it is launching research partnerships for Signature Solutions at U.S. academic research centers. A commercial launch of the offering is planned for next year.

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Allergan Snags Rhythm’s Diabetes-Related GI Drug for $200M

David Holley — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 16:30:08 +0000

[Updated 2:03 p.m. See below.] Rhythm Pharmaceuticals is selling a stomach drug for $200 million to Dublin-based Allergan, a deal that has been in the works since 2014.

Allergan is acquiring Motus Therapeutics (formerly Rhythm Health), which holds the rights to the gastrointestinal drug that aims to help the stomach empty more normally. Motus is a subsidiary of Boston-based Rhythm Holding Company, an entity that also houses Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, which is developing peptide-based treatments for rare genetic problems that lead to life-threatening metabolic disorders.

The deal has had little impact on Allergan’s stock (NYSE: AGN), which was up 62 cents as of 12:27 p.m. in New York from yesterday’s close of $221.99.

Allergan had an option to acquire Motus based on a deal that Rhythm struck with Actavis, the Dublin-based drug maker that merged with Allergan in 2015. Actavis paid Rhythm $40 million up front and snagged the option on the drug.

Allergan’s decision to exercise that option and purchase Motus was sparked by the release of results from a Phase 2b study into its experimental drug, relamorelin. It aims to treat a type of gastroparesis related to diabetes, in which the stomach doesn’t empty into the intestine quickly enough, leading to abdominal pain, bloating, and vomiting. In the Phase 2b trial, the drug was able to help with some problems associated with the condition, such as nausea, abdominal pain, and vomiting, according to a press release.

Showing a reduction in vomiting compared with the start of the trial was the study’s primary endpoint. While Motus found that patients who took relamorelin vomited 75 percent less than when they started the trial—regardless of how much they took—there was also an “unusually high” placebo response, the company said. The plan is to release the full results in 2017.

Still, it appeared the results were good enough for Allergan. Part of the company’s interest may stem from the FDA’s prioritization in finding a treatment for gastroparesis, calling it an urgent medical need, according to analysts from Boston-based Leerink. As many as 16 million Americans deal with some form of gastroparesis, and there’s currently only one treatment for it, Reglan (metoclopramide), the analysts wrote in a note to investors. That drug was approved in 1983, Allergan says.

Relamorelin is an injectable peptide drug derived from the hunger-simulating hormone ghrelin. Xconomy covered more of the drug’s backstory in 2014 when the deal with Actavis was struck. Rhythm has previously received an additional $7 million related to the option deal and to help pay for the Phase 2 trials, president Bart Henderson said. [Updated with comment from president.]

Ben Fidler contributed to this report.

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MIT Raising $150M Venture Fund to Rev “The Engine,” a New Incubator

Jeff Engel — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 15:27:24 +0000

MIT is investing $25 million in a potentially $150 million venture capital fund and opening a 26,000-square-foot startup space on the edge of its campus.

The two investments will jumpstart a broad entrepreneurship initiative, dubbed The Engine, that will provide resources to startups whose technologies typically take lots of time and capital to develop—think biotech, robotics, advanced manufacturing, medical devices, and energy.

MIT is already one of the more prolific startup engines on the planet, and in recent years the Institute has bolstered its campus resources for entrepreneurs, adding mentoring services, shared workspaces, grant programs, and more. It has also made efforts to better connect the various (some might say fragmented) campus student groups, programs, and centers for entrepreneurship.

But there are still plenty of promising ideas that get “stranded in the lab” because getting to market will take more money and time than most venture capitalists are willing to invest, said MIT President Rafael Reif.

“This is more than a matter of disappointed individuals, because many of them are working on solutions to humanity’s most important problems,” Reif said Wednesday evening at an event announcing The Engine. “So, if they cannot get their ideas to market, society loses as well.”

If things go as planned, that’s where The Engine will come in. Its fund will provide “patient capital” that emphasizes impact over a quick financial return, Reif said. MIT said the fund will take smaller equity stakes than typical VC funds. The exact parameters are being worked out, and could vary with each deal, MIT Provost Martin Schmidt told Xconomy. (More on the fund in a minute.)

The Engine will also offer access to affordable office and lab space, specialty equipment, shared legal and business services, and connections to mentors and potential business partners. Connections to those resources will be facilitated through an online marketplace called the Engine Room.

The plan is for The Engine to support 60 startups per year, each of which will participate in The Engine’s incubator for up to 12 months. The main space will be 26,000 square feet at The Engine’s headquarters at 501 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge, MA. The space is being renovated and is expected to open in the spring, Schmidt said.

In addition, MIT plans to make other offices and labs available to the program’s startups, for a total of more than 200,000 square feet. The other locations could be a mix of MIT-owned buildings, as well as spaces offered by partner companies and organizations in Kendall Square and the surrounding area.

“Our expectation is to really radically expand” the available space, Schmidt said.

The venture fund, meanwhile, is a big move for MIT. Other universities around the country have launched their own venture funds in recent years—see Stanford University, NYU, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Purdue University, and the University of California system. The University of California’s fund is especially notable for its size—it has committed $250 million to the effort.

But MIT hadn’t gone that route. A few months before she retired in June, former MIT Technology Licensing Office director Lita Nelsen told Xconomy she felt the Institute simply hasn’t needed to form a VC fund on campus because the school has no trouble getting “decent companies” funded. She raised concerns about conflicts of interest, clearly defining the mission of such a fund, and setting realistic expectations.

Nelsen also presented a hypothetical scenario in which MIT spinouts that didn’t receive an investment from a university venture fund might have trouble raising money later from outside VC firms. “There’s a negative-select bias there for what we don’t invest in,” she said at the time. “So, better to [create] a level playing field for anybody who wants to play.”

Schmidt said the structure of The Engine’s fund should help it avoid many of the concerns raised by Nelsen. The Engine will be set up as an entity separate from MIT, and a professional fund manager from outside the Institute will be hired to run the fund, Schmidt said. “The selection [of companies] and management of the fund will be done by individuals that are not MIT people,” he said.

And unlike the university-affiliated venture funds mentioned above, The Engine won’t … Next Page »

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Boston’s Life Science Disruptors: The Photos

Ben Fidler — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 14:26:51 +0000

View the Slideshow

How did one of the ambitious gene editing startups in biotech come together? What lessons does Harvard University professor and biotech veteran Vicki Sato have about closing the gender gap after spending “most of her career” as the only woman in the room? And what would it take to get organ systems on tiny microchips not just adopted by pharma, but approved by the FDA as a replacement for other preclinical drug testing methods?

These are just a few questions that our speakers answered last week at the latest installment of “Boston’s Life Science Disruptors” at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. A packed house took part in interactive chats on three topics; you can get a little taste of the festivities in the slideshow above.

Thanks first to our attendees and our speakers: Koch biological and mechanical engineering professor Scott Manalis; Wyss Institute founding director Don Ingber; Emulate president and CSO Geraldine Hamilton; Harvard professor of management practice Vicki Sato; Polaris Partners founding partner Terry McGuire; Koch executive director Anne Deconinck; Intellia Therapeutics founder and CEO Nessan Bermingham; and Atlas Venture partner Jean-Francois Formela.

Thanks also to our event host the Koch Institute; and gold sponsors ALT and Bayer; silver sponsors The Richmond Group, Danforth Advisors, Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers LLP, and WuXi AppTec. Also a thank you to our event partners: the Association for Women in Science, and Massachusetts Life Sciences Center; our national partner Alexandria Real Estate Equities; and our charter underwriter Biogen.

And as always a tip of the cap to Keith Spiro of Keith Spiro Photography for the photos—hope you all enjoy them.

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Facebook Boston Grows to 100 People, Expands Networking Projects

Gregory T. Huang — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 13:03:08 +0000

Facebook’s Boston-area office is about three years old, and seems to be hitting a critical mass. With a headcount of about 100, the engineering center is supporting some of the company’s most visible products—as well as leading projects that could pay off further down the road.

The local office—at One Broadway in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA—is adding 2,000 square feet, bringing the total space up to 18,500 square feet, says Ryan Mack, Facebook Boston’s site lead. The space could fit up to 150 people, Mack says, but there’s no specific plan to fill it yet. The team is currently hiring “senior technical talent,” he says.

The four main computing thrusts of the group are compilers (which translate programs into machine code), security, data storage, and networking. That last one is getting a boost today, as Mack is announcing three new projects in networking. The first is a telecommunications infrastructure project, to figure out how to build next-generation data networks with telecom companies. The second is on high-speed wireless Internet deployment for densely populated urban environments, using infrastructure like cell towers. And the third is on content delivery networks and “client-side traffic infrastructure,” which focuses on how to deliver robust and reliable video to wireless devices, no matter what kind of network they’re on. (That would compete with the likes of Akamai, which has been pushing into other areas like cloud security.)

The first two are longer-range projects “about connecting the world,” Mack says; indeed, global connectivity is on the company’s 10-year roadmap. But the one about content delivery is meant to impact today’s Facebook users who are accessing video on different types of devices and networks.

Mack declined to say how many local employees are working on networking, or on the other efforts. He did say, “It’s an area we are looking to grow aggressively.” And he adds that Facebook is “trying to build a technological underpinning that doesn’t exist at this cost point or scale,” and that “this isn’t going to be landing in the next few weeks.”

Asked how Facebook Boston is currently impacting the mothership, Mack gave a few examples, mostly around supporting product development and deployment and improving the efficiency of software development. Facebook’s Marketplace, which rolled out this month to help users buy and sell things locally, uses the Boston team’s work on data storage and location-based features, he says. And Facebook Live’s interactive comment stream depends on the Boston group’s work on “low-latency” communications and its efforts to “make sure we’re globally consistent,” he says.

Bottom line: as it grows, look for more technical infrastructure advances from the Kendall Square branch of Facebook. But here’s guessing it won’t make your friends any less insufferable.

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Despite Low Crop Prices, Corporate and VC Agtech Investments Soar

Frank Vinluan — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 11:00:23 +0000

Prices for agricultural commodities such as corn, soy, and wheat are at their lowest levels in years, but investment in agricultural technology has never been better.

Venture capital firms have increased their agtech investments by 80 percent since 2012, bringing total VC investment in the sector to a total of $3 billion in 2015, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group and AgFunder, an online investment marketplace for agriculture technology. Adding corporate investments to the VC funding brings total agtech investments last year to somewhere between $20 billion and $25 billion, which the report says is an all-time high.

Boston Consulting Group and AgFunder based their findings on a survey of more than 50 agribusiness executives from around the world representing businesses providing agricultural equipment, crop and animal-product processing, fertilizer and crop nutrients, and crop protection and seeds. They also queried 15 VC firms. The increase in dollars flowing to agtech comes despite commodity prices that are down 65 percent from their 2013 peak, the report says.

Agtech companies currently pour two-thirds of their investments into their own in-house R&D efforts, with the rest directed to external deals, such as partnerships or licensing. Agribusiness executives surveyed say they would prefer to shift that balance to roughly half of their investments occurring through partnerships and mergers and acquisitions, an increase from about 20 percent now. To do that, big ag companies will need to source more of their innovations from outside of their own labs. The crash in commodity prices led large companies to slash their own R&D, opening the door to opportunities for some agbio and agtech startups.

Big data analytics represents the area where most investors are placing their bets, followed by food security and traceability, and biologics, the report found. In big data analytics, makers of agricultural equipment are the leaders in developing technologies for collecting raw data; developers of crop-protection products and seeds are the leaders in analyzing data and recommending actions.

Though some of these products are still in development, farmers have come around to using new technology in an effort to become more efficient and more productive. The report quotes Kip Tom, a seventh-generation Indiana farmer, who explains how technology is changing farming. Decades ago, farmers avoided experimenting with new techniques, fearing that such risk could cost them an entire crop. But today, he says, his son can monitor 800 field trials from his office.

“Come fall, we can measure all these trials and decide how we should spend our money,” Tom told BCG and AgFunder. “This is what has revolutionized the industry—the ability to fail in small ways more frequently and to understand where we can win.”

Though farmers like Tom may now feel emboldened to pursue new technology, big ag feels less so. Despite investing record amounts of money in agtech, nearly 90 percent of agribusiness respondents say their investments are linked to a product or technology already in their portfolios, or the investment is meant to scale or strengthen an existing pathway to the market. Just 10 percent of corporate investments were made to build new technological capabilities, the report says.

Venture capitalists are similarly cautious. Just 27 percent of VC respondents say they aim to disrupt the existing agribusiness companies, and none say that they are developing a new business model. Perhaps that’s because they see acquisitions as the most likely path for an exit. Respondents say initial public stock offerings or buyouts by private equity are “the least likely exit strategy.”

Photo of corn field by Flickr user fishhawk under a Creative Commons license.

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Boston Tech Watch: TVision Tracks Eyeballs, Diffeo Grabs Cash, & More

Jeff Engel — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 04:01:41 +0000

Here are a few of the latest happenings in the Boston-area tech scene:

—MIT spinout TVision Insights raised $6.8 million in an investment round led by Accomplice, with contributions from Golden Venture Partners, Jump Capital, Itochu Technology Ventures, and Project 11 Ventures. The Boston-based company uses sensors and software to detect TV viewers’ eyes, in order to capture and analyze data about TV viewing behavior.

The startup has raised a total of at least $9.3 million from investors to date. It employs 19 people at offices in Boston, New York, and Tokyo, and it plans to hire at least 10 more people, a spokeswoman told the Boston Business Journal.

—Cambridge, MA-based Diffeo raised $1.85 million from investors, according to an SEC filing. The company’s software uses artificial intelligence techniques to analyze large amounts of data and text-based files.

—CarePort Health, a Boston-based healthcare software startup, was acquired by Chicago-based Allscripts for an undisclosed sum. CarePort graduated from the Techstars Boston startup accelerator program in 2012 and had raised more than $4.7 million in equity and debt funding, SEC filings show. CarePort will remain located in Boston and will operate as a subsidiary of Allscripts, according to a press release.

—New Boston venture capital firm Underscore.VC has closed its first fund at $85 million, up from the $75 million it initially said it raised, according to BostInno.

—Lastly, we’ve got a trio of companies that recently moved into new offices in the Boston area:

Salsify’s new space is located adjacent to the Government Center T stop. It’s the company’s fourth headquarters in four years, and it gives the company room to grow from 119 employees to 200-plus, BostInno reported. Salsify makes product-content management software for brands and retailers.

Nexthink, a Swiss data analytics and cybersecurity firm that raised $40 million earlier this year, relocated its local team from a temporary space in Cambridge to an office in downtown Boston. The office houses employees in business development, legal, sales, and marketing.

And Israel-based Infinidat tripled the size of its U.S. headquarters with a new 23,000-square-foot office in Waltham, MA. The data storage company, founded by EMC co-founder Moshe Yanai, raised $150 million from investors in a Series B round last year.

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Flexera Software Acquires Palamida for Undisclosed Sum