The big pharma could not confirm whether AveXis co-founder and CSO Brian Kaspar and his brother, SVP of R&D Allan Kaspar, were fired. Instead, Novartis noted that the withholding of preclinical safety data for Zolgensma was limited to the action of a few employees. NIBR preclinical safety chief takes key role at AveXis

In a new occasional series, START-UP will select companies it profiled in the past to find out what went according to plan, and what didn't. This month, we revisit four anti-infectives discovery companies first profiled in 2000 and draw out some lessons, both from their successes and from their failures, for those starting out today.

Will the emergence of new biological targets as a result of genomics and proteomics change venture investors' prejudice against diagnostics? No--or at least not until patented biomarkers can be tied more closely to the cause of the disease and to a therapeutic that treats it.

Elitra Pharmaceuticals Inc. has developed a rapid and systematic method to sequence the entire genome of microbial organisms. It will identify the genes essential to the organisms' survival and use its proprietary bioinformatics platform to prioritize and validate gene targets. Alone and with partners, it will develop and commercialize novel antibiotic and antifungal drugs to inhibit the growth of major microbial pathogens, many of which are becoming resistant to current therapeutics.