The annual biotech pilgrimage to San Francisco has come to an end, and the upbeat, optimistic sentiment from #JPM14 bodes well as a barometer of the healthcare industry.

Amidst the presentations and partying, there was lots of bullish thinking about biotech delivering innovative medicines, commentary that stocks were trading high but on read "

Today Zafgen announced its initial results from proof-of-concept study in patients with an obesity-related orphan disease called Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). The news was also covered by Andrew Pollack in the NY Times this morning (here) so I won't bother with the specifics - it showed meaningful improvements for several parameters read "

Today, we are excited to announce that we've successfully exited Arteaus Therapeutics to Eli Lilly (see announcement here, here). It's fair to say it's been a superbly executed example of R&D externalization and a win-win for Lilly and Arteaus.

Before sharing the details of Arteaus, a bit of background on the read "

Tis the season for reflecting and predicting, so I figured I'd follow the custom and share some of my thoughts about the state of biotech in 2013 and the year to come.

The Biotech IPO Returns. This is clearly a (the) major biotech market story of the year, and the positive sentiment around read "

In the tech-dominated venture capital world, 2013 could be called the year of the crowd. With the JOBS Act and the emergence of credible platforms like AngelList, crowdfunding has come into the mainstream in a meaningful way.

Social media, software, and other technology sectors have benefited most from this momentum and this has read "

Scientific reproducibility hit mainstream this month with a feature article and editorial in The Economist; they highlight issues around the failure to replicate peer-reviewed research, academic biases found in science, use of scarce resources in national science budgets, and even share a primer in statistics around false positives and read "