A San Francisco biopharmaceutical company developing small molecule products for use in organ transplants and metabolic diseases including diabetes has raised $480,000, presumably to advance its lead candidates toward commercialization.The first of Limerick BioPharma’s lead candidates, LIM-0705, is designed to improve the safety of existing immunosuppressive drugs used to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients. [...]

Mayo Clinic is providing expertise for a group of Harvard Business School students starting an incubator called Rock Health for people with innovative ideas for improving healthcare delivery.Dr. Michael Matly, who is in charge of business development at Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo’s two-year-old Center for Innovation, has a Harvard MBA himself. Officials at the school introduced [...]

The biggest health IT challenge is interoperability, but there are also challenges involving adoption of Health IT and focusing the products (and solutions) on the patients instead of the practitioners, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told onlookers at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference. “The problem that I have with all these conversations is that we end up talking about the incumbents and not patients,” he said.

How quickly new innovative medical devices get to market will be determined in part by changes in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 510(k) program. Outgoing Medtronic (NYSE:MDT) Chief Executive Bill Hawkins said this week that updates to 510(k) “will be neutral to slightly negative.”

As you’ve probably read, Steven Burrill’s predictions regarding the biotech industry go over at MedCity News the way former Detroit Lions President Matt Millen’s football forecasts go over in Michigan. Nonetheless, it’s notable when the renowned biotech specialist, venture capitalist, author and keynote speaker offers his thoughts on currents events in life sciences and the future of the industry next year (even if it is to promote his upcoming book: Biotech 2011-Life Sciences: Looking Back to See Ahead).

This is one in a series of articles, running the five weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, examining the relationship between housing loss and death in San Francisco. Ken sleeps under a sheltered overhang in the Financial District, an area full of sun-glinting towers and chic lunchtime hot-spots. Without a home and a sink, Ken is utterly dependent on the cheapest of prepared food options.

This is one in a series of articles, running the 5 weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, examining the relationship between housing loss and death in San Francisco. Nate, a self-described “Tenderloin rat,” talks about having trained in the Navy, working on submarine sonar systems, then coming home to be employed by his wife’s wealthy family.

Industry Ventures is raising a sixth fund after drawing down more than half of its 2-year-old, $265 million fund. The new fund indicates the increasing importance of this market. Investors and companies look to the secondary market for an exit while more traditional options — M & A and IPOs — wheeze along and only slowly come back to life.

Fairly or not, Steve Burrill’s reputation in Minnesota will rest a great deal on whether he can deliver the $1 billion investment fund to back the Elk Run BioBusiness Park in Pine Island. He says he’s close. But fund or no fund, Burrill said Minnesota already has benefited from his interest and his checkbook.

With less than a week to go before 12,000 Minnesota nurses plan to strike, negotiations between the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) and six hospital chains in the Twin Cities for a new contract don’t seem to be going well.“Things are at a standstill,” said MNA spokesman John Nemo.So, a 24-hour strike is increasingly likely. But [...]