I had an amazing Friday a couple of weeks ago. Literally, in one day, I found out that two of i2E's portfolio companies were being acquired by major corporations — the two biggest exits i2E has ever had.

The first deal was acquisition of Selexys Pharmaceuticals by Novartis, the No. 2 ranking pharmaceutical company in the world. The second acquisition is the purchase of majority control of Oklahoma-based WeGoLook by Crawford & Co. Crawford is one of the world's largest independent providers of claims management solutions to insurance companies and self-insured entities.

A startup dream has been realized, while an old pharma company tries to turn a new leaf.

On Monday, 60-year-old Purdue Pharma announced a strategic partnership with Exicure, a 2009 startup that could pull as much as $790 million and royalties if its drug candidates succeed.

For that investment, Purdue gets an option and licensing agreement for an investigational psoriasis drug and three other molecules based on the same novel nucleic acid platform.

While its creation was only announced earlier this year, with Vice President Joe Biden at the helm instilling hope and calling for action, the Cancer Moonshot may shockingly be nearing its end, as we know it. Uncertainties overshadow the future of this initiative as the White House Cancer Task Force is expected to exist in its current configuration only until the end of the Obama Administration, January 20, 2017.

Through a recent interview with Greg Simon, Executive Director of the White House Cancer Moonshot Task Force, PMWC has learned that he will not continue in that position beyond the current Administration. It’s unclear what the change in Administration and a Trump Presidency will mean, and what impact it will have on the initiative’s funding and goals, on the collaborations already initiated, and on specific projects already under way. Administration uncertainties aside, we unquestionably need to win the fight against cancer.

“They drove past the place where Wallander had run over the hare. A flock of crows took off as they approached. The hare was already dismembered to the point of unrecognizability. Wallander told Modin that he was the one who had run over it.

‘You always see hundreds of run-over hares along this road,’ Wallander remarked. ‘But it’s only once you kill one yourself that you really see it.’ “

If you are an entrepreneur, or you know an entrepreneur – share this special holiday cheer with them, as it will warm their heart. 

On the 1st day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

• A Dream that inspired me…

On the 2nd day of Christmas my true love gave to me…

• 2 Unique Products 
• A Dream that inspired me…

Lee Billings: Hey folks, it’s Lee Billings at Scientific American joined by my esteemed colleague...

Mike Lemonick: ...Mike Lemonick

Billings: And together we’re going to give you a very quick rundown of what’s up in the solar system in 2016.

Lemonick: Yeah, so let’s start with Mercury, closest planet to the sun. Astronomers have discovered a colossal canyon, twice as deep as the Grand Canyon. Mercury is gradually shrinking as it cools. And as it shrinks it crumples up, like a grape shrinks into a raisin, and making those little crevices—except this is a really big crevice.

To ensure a bright future, Americans need to engage with science. Yet the incoming Trump administration has just picked Scott Pruitt, a fossil fuel industry ally, to head the Environmental Protection Agency. President-elect Donald Trump has also promised to roll back environmental regulations such as the Clean Power Plan, to gut the EPA and to renege on the Paris climate agreement. Meanwhile the planet continues to warm, sea levels keep rising and glaciers retreat even farther. So how should scientists and science communicators respond? And how can they persuade citizens who are skeptical about climate change that man-made global warming is real and that nations need to act?

Image: Bill Nye - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye#/media/File:BillNyeSG.jpg

Of course everyone wants bright white teeth. But the benefits of a beautiful smile are more than just cosmetic. Researchers have found links between poor oral health and conditions that involve the heart, the brain, and other parts of the body—all the more reason to give your kisser the best care possible.

Read on for the updates you need to know to keep your lips, teeth, and gums in tip-top shape (including cold sore remedies, a teeth-whitening cheat sheet, and the right flossing technique). And if you hate going to the dentist? The good news is that there is a natural way to feel calm in the chair.

The one thing venture capitalists and the medtech industry don’t want you to know is that innovation can sometimes be used as a manipulation to evade the law.

The industry can sometimes, even knowingly, be deceptive in three very specific ways. These are: lie to government agencies, underreport adverse events, blame the employees and consumer (victims). My goal as a federal whistleblower is to explain how these at times carefully crafted lies impacts each of you.

Last month, LinkedIn released the results of a survey of its members, gathering the opinions of more than 600 startup investors and founders on the current state of diversity in the venture capital industry.

The results — though unsurprising to many of us — were quite sobering.

In an industry where 98 percent of senior investors are either White or Asian, and African American male founders receive just two percent of all venture capital deployed, less than five percent of those surveyed rated diversity as their top concern. Some even pushed back against the basic idea that there is a good business case for funding companies or hiring employees with diversity in mind.

On the same day that President-elect Donald Trump doubled down on his doubts about climate change, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates countered with an announcement of a $1 billion fund dedicated clean energy innovation.

Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and YouTube are joining forces to remove extremist content from their websites more efficiently.

Savvy social media strategies have helped ISIS and other terrorist organizations disperse video and images online, helping to recruit new members and inspire attacks. As we wrote last year, ISIS in particular has been “using 21st-century technology to promote a medieval ideology involving mass killings, torture, rape, enslavement, and destruction of antiquities.”

The rise of diabetes is causing avoidable deaths and imposing substantial costs on ailing healthcare systems. Alarmed, lawmakers are attempting to improve prevention and get the emerging pandemic under control.

Diabetes is a growing healthcare challenge and one of the four priority noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), also known as chronic diseases, targeted for urgent action by world leaders.

NEW YORK -- Three years into being a business owner, Becky Davis knew she needed to break the hold technology had on her.

Davis, a marketing and management consultant to other small business owners, was so immersed in emails, texts and social media that she was getting only four or five hours of sleep a night and her husband said he felt invisible. It also hurt her productivity -- she'd get distracted reading people's posts and realize she'd lost two hours of work time.

Research and teaching assistants at Columbia University have voted to unionize as the Graduate Workers of Columbia, an affiliate of the United Auto Workers union, according to a news release issued on Friday by the union.

The National Labor Relations Board ruled in August that graduate students who serve as research and teaching assistants at Columbia were primarily employees, not students, and so could unionize under federal labor law. The ruling reversed a 12-year-old decision involving Brown University, and threw open the doors for graduate students to organize into collective-bargaining units at private colleges and universities.

Learning the Investment Landscape

You can have the sexiest and most exciting company in the world, but if you don’t understand the language and strategies of these investor sharks, they’ll eat you for lunch! The investment world is a brutal battlefield! You must understand what investors are doing, saying and how to strategically plan your attack. Below is the overview of the investment industry, language and strategies that you need to know:

PRYOR, Okla. — Students at Pryor High School study robotics. Elementary schools have basic computer programming classes using free laptops, online collaboration software and Wi-Fi spread across this small town in Oklahoma’s Green Country.

“We have to prepare them for their future, not our past,” said Don Raleigh, superintendent of the town’s schools. “You have to have new skill sets.”

Scientists say they discovered the "troubling" reason why a massive iceberg splintered off one of West Antarctica's largest glaciers last year, and why this may not bode well for the future of the world's coastal megacities.

Warm ocean waters appear to have melted Pine Island Glacier from underneath, causing a deep subsurface crack that split the ice from the inside out, Ohio State University researchers found.

Indiegogo entered into the investment crowdfunding sector with a big splash this month. Partnering with MicroVentures, a FINRA approved Reg CF portal and Broker-Dealer, Indiegogo launched with four diverse investment opportunities: BeatStars, Republic Restoratives, Play Impossible, and ArtCraft Entertainment. Three of these offers have hit their funding target, and the 4th is nearly there indicating solid momentum out of the gate.