Having built an exceptional track record as one of Europe´s most successful and reputable investment firms in life sciences, LSP Life Sciences Partners has decided to set up a public fund, which has been taken public on NYSE Euronext today. TheLSP Life Sciences Fund (ISIN: NL0009756394) is managed by Mark Wegter, Joep Muijrers and Geraldine O’Keeffe, all of which are seasoned investment professionals in the healthcare sector and have been responsible for LSP´s investments in public companies since 2008. Since then, the team has significantly outperformed the market and generated a return in excess of +150%, according to Mark Wegter.
The new fund takes a long-only investment strategy and allows generalist and retail investors to benefit from LSP´s outstanding expertise in life sciences – a highly complex and knowledge-driven sector. While investing primarily in Europe, there will also be selected U.S. investments. The fund´s goal is to participate in all forms of primary or secondary offerings, including follow-on offerings, block trades and IPOs – given that the respective investee company passes the team´s strict, comprehensive diligence process, which is regarded as a key to success by LSP.
German Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Europe’s largest application-oriented research organization, last week launched its new research blog – forschungs-blog – featuring research, scientific discoveries and developments that might someday change our daily life.
The blog is run by the quite prominent German blogger, author and social media specialist Sascha Lobo and is supported by Martina Schraudner and Solveig Wehking from Fraunhofer’s “Discover Markets” team and freelance science writers Lars Fischer and Florian Freistetter (others will join in).
The blog is following a concept Fraunhofer calls “dual blogging”, i.e. the same topic is featured in scientifically accurate terms in the left column of the blog while the right column is featuring the same topic in a more entertaining, “drawn from life” perspective.
As an example, the left column is describing ice-cream as a complex multi-phase system which is stabilized by components from milk and eggs and features research from Fraunhofer that enables the replacement of these animal components by proteins from lupins so that it becomes compatible to people with intolerance to milk or eggs (plus people on diet, and, of course, vegetarians and vegans). The right column plainly states the research leads to ice-cream democracy, enabled by a beautiful flower.
While is is certainly a good and overdue move for a big German research institution to embrace social media, it remains to be seen whether dual blogging is more than a marketing gag. At present, only two of five blog entries dealing with science are dual-made, and of those two, the left column texts are overly heavy with scientific terms while the right ones read as if the authors are very anxious to sound “cool”. The other entries match the usual science blog style, but are much longer.
The blog is in German only and a project by Discover Markets, which in turn is a research project by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft to learn about how consumers and the general public can participate in the development of technologies at an early stage.
Andreas Menn in Wirtschaftswoche introduces the latest medical applications of smartphones for monitoring physical functions, ranging from the heartbeats of unborn children to blood sugar, blood pressure and pulse rates of elderly people to even pacers and other implants. According to Menn, the Mobile Health sector has a 19% market growth. In the US, patients are joining movements like The Quantified Self to collect health data for research purposes (and, as an example, to determine the ideal moment for wake-up). Contact lenses measure and report blood sugar levels, while tests strips or clothes with in-built wearable electronics control breathrate, wound swelling and urine for dangerous deviations. The field is still littered with startups, but big players like Siemens, Philips, sanofi aventis and Deutsche Telekom also have stepped in already.
Joachim Müller-Jung in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) reports from the recent meeting of the Stem Cell Network North Rhine Westphalia. The debates focused on quality control of induced stem cells and the ability to derive motor neurons from such stem cells.
In The New York Times, Nicholas Wade reports on a recently discovered bundle of genes regulating the growth of heart muscles cells. The study published in Science will be of great interest for the development of novel therapeutics. It is known today that heart muscle cells are replaced in humans – however, the growth rate is too slow to replace the loss of many cells, e.g. in a heart attack. By modulating these genes, it might one day be possible to regenerate heart muscle in a targeted manner.
In Wired, Brandon Keim features a proposal by theoretical physicists that bacteria might transmit electromagnetic signals by using their DNA chromosomes as an antenna. The proposal is likely to trigger controversy as many biologists doubt that bacteria emit electric signals. French nobelist Luc Montagnier had already claimed in 2009 that bacteria do transmit radio signals in the 1 kHz range.
In the New Scientist, Ferris Jabr introduces a super twisty beam of laser light that is able to tell left-hand molecules from right-hand ones, with potential applications in drug development. Rowan Hooper reports on successful attempts to cure certain forms of blindness by introducing genes from algae into the eyes. The genes are encoding for channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2), a photosensitive protein used by unicellular algae to orient towards light. The mice carrying a hereditary form of blindness were treated with subretinal injections of viruses carrying the algal gene and subsequently were able to use light beams for orientation in a maze. Trials in humans, the article states, might begin in two years. Finally, Andy Coghlan features findings that humans can be grouped by one of three gut ecosystems. These three “enterotypes” – dominated by three different species each – have been found all over the world and have a bias towards degradation of certain nutrients and production of certain vitamins.
And finally, for those of you who loved the Get a Mac ads by Apple (“I’m a Mac, I’m a PC”), please have a look at the ad campaign of Ion Torrent comparing its PGM sequencer to competitors such as MiSeq.
Even though professional principles in investor relations do apply to all industries, IR executives face important sector-specific developments and challenges. A recent whitepaper by Bloomberg and IR Magazine summarizes a roundtable held with IR professionals, buy-side and sell-side analysts in the healthcare sector.
Characterized by inherent long-term business strategies and goals, the healthcare industry faces increasing pressure from short-term oriented imvestors. At the same time, shortened investment horizons and the risk of high volatility requires IR professionals to have access to the same high-standard data analysis and monitoring tools as their buy- and sell-side counterparts. How to manage the conundrum of short-term trading and long-term business goals (and long-term oriented investors)? The challenge is to provide strong arguments and perspectives without over-selling the stock or ignoring rumors on the market. “Framing the issues and providing the necessary positioning to educate analysts and investors about the stock”, as the authors put it, remains the key to successful IR in the healthcare sector. Sounds a little bit too vague? Read further details in the whitepaper “A Healthy Debate: Navigating A Changing Investor Relations Landscape in the Healthcare Sector”!
