While You Were All Growed Up

We've passed a milestone. Although if you go back and check you can find a few dozen earlier posts stretching back to late 2006, this weekend marked the one-year anniversary of the official launch of IN VIVO Blog. On April 26, 2007 we posted twice--two takes on Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.'s blockbuster deal with Pfizer on apixaban and its hybrid biotech/pharma strategy--and decided to pull back the curtain on our fledgling blogging efforts.

The response has been encouraging. Thanks to everyone who reads us on the web, subscribes (it's free!), links over, comments (we wish there were more--you can do it anonymously!), and/or mocks our sports team allegiences. We really do appreciate you dropping by.

So even though there was plenty of news out of ARVO and EASL this weekend lets highlight some sweet bloggy goodness for your weekend roundup:

• When Patent Baristas isn't dreaming up ways to celebrate World Intellectual Property Day 2008 (that explains all the drunken patent attorneys on Saturday) it's laying down the serious analysis. Friday the blog dispelled some myths about the difficulties of biotech co/university tech transfer.
  
• Derek Lowe takes another look at GSK/Sirtris and the ally-vs-buy question, from the GSK employee point of view and through the historic prism of Glaxo's nuclear receptor R&D push that yielded, well, not much.
  
• After a year of blogging over at VentureBeat Life Sciences, David Hamilton has new digs--check out his new Pharma Industry page at Bnet. (h/t pharmagossip)


• If you're not reading Pharma Giles, you're missing out on some hilarious skewering of the pharma world. This morning the target is off-label promotion.


• And finally, stop by IN VIVO Blog later today (hey, that's us!) for our take on the latest setback for the Merck/Schering-Plough joint venture, FDA's Friday night smackdown of the Singulair/Claritin NDA.

milestone photo by flickr user robw1882 used under a creative commons license.

While You Were Redesigning Your Blog

Does our blog look big in this? You may have noticed a few changes round these parts, and we hope you like them. No, not that the pace of our posting has slowed (this will surely pick up as industry deal activity awakes from its summer slumber), but moreso the new look and feel of our corner of the web.

Today you'll even see the addition of our first blogroll (in the right-hand column). If you're not already familiar with these Web sites, go check them out. For now, it's a short list, and sure to expand. There are plenty of other high-quality blogs, and rest assured we will aim to update that list relatively frequently.

We'll be rolling out a few other new features in the days, weeks, months ahead. IN VIVO Blog started out only a few months ago as an experiment, and judging by feedback we've received from readers it seems to be working.

So thanks for dropping by, tell your friends and colleagues about us, and feel free to send suggestions, tips, rants, praise, remonstrations, or commiserations about the Phillies' inevitable collapse to blog [at] windhover.com. Or, as always, speak your minds in the comments.

Now, on to some weekend news you may have missed ...

• Back in the U.S.S.R.: Several drugs in clincal trials to treat hepatitis C have suffered setbacks this year, potentially opening the door to new mechanisms of action. On Friday night Implicit Bioscience announced that a Phase IIa study of its immune modulator oglufanide disodium had commenced in Australia. The drug originally hails from Russia, where it was developed and marketed to treat severe infections.
  
• I'm So Tired: The Guardian weekend magazine has an excerpt from The Family That Couldn't Sleep: A Venetian Medical Mystery, by D.T. Max. The book describes the mystery surrounding fatal familial insomnia, along the way illuminating the history of other prion diseases like vCJD and kuru.


• Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey: The New York Times writes about functional MRI, and how a company called Omneuron is using the brain imaging technology to treat chronic pain. But the tech's first application could be in lie detection, says the CEO of the aptly named No Lie MRI.
  
• Cry Baby Cry: Results from Neurochem's Phase III trial of its Alzheimer's disease candidate Alzhemed were "inconclusive"--i.e. didn't show statistical significance--the company reported Sunday night. This is the latest setback for the company and its drug; shares of Neurochem have been in freefall since late last year.