Luke Timmerman
Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. Before joining Xconomy, he was the U.S. biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News, based in San Francisco. There, he led coverage of major medical meetings and broke news about the industry’s top companies. His stories appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and International Herald Tribune. Before that, his passionate coverage of biotechnology won many awards for The Seattle Times.
While at the Times, Luke was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award, the Sigma Delta Chi prize from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Society of American Business Editors and Writers award, an honorable mention Gerald Loeb Award, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in public service. At Xconomy, he was honored in 2012 as a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award, and received a SABEW award for biotech columns.
Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2005-2006, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. In his spare time, Luke enjoys running, mountaineering, and fantasy baseball. Having grown up in Wisconsin, he is, naturally, a lifelong fan of the Green Bay Packers and the Wisconsin Badgers.
Recent posts
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CardioKinetix has spent 10 years and $80 million in venture capital working on an implantable device for people with heart failure. Now it’s got some evidence that suggests it could be... Read more »
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From the moment Dendreon started in business 20 years ago, most scientists have said that if its immune-booster for prostate cancer was going to work, it would probably work best at... Read more »
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Aveo Oncology is entering a competitive world for the treatment of kidney cancer, and it made a bold bet that its drug would prevail in the first head-to-head comparison of its kind... Read more »
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Doctors often ask themselves, after a leukemia or lymphoma patient gets high-dose chemotherapy, whether they really wiped out every last rugged cancer cell in the patient. That’s always been a difficult question, but... Read more »
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[Updated: 1:30 pm PT, 5/17/12] One of the big dreams in biotech over the past 35 years has been to make drugs that work like “smart bombs” by destroying... Read more »
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Theraclone Sciences has taken its first step ahead toward showing it might have an antibody drug that could work in humans.
The Seattle-based biotech company is announcing today that it passed its... Read more »
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The pistons of the biggest publicity engine in cancer R&D will start firing this week. It’s time to behold the annual rite of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO... Read more »
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A lot of people think tuberculosis is a thing of the past, but it remains one of the most deadly diseases in the world. Now the Seattle-based Infectious Disease Research Institute is... Read more »
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Seattle Genetics fell short of Wall Street’s quarterly sales expectations for its new lymphoma drug, but the company boldly declared today that it sees its first drug becoming a billion-dollar blockbuster over time.... Read more »
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Sutro Biopharma is pursuing a big idea for antibody drug development, and it just got some more money to see how far it can go.
The South San Francisco-based biotech company is announcing... Read more »
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Seattle-based Dendreon said back in February that it expected “moderate” first quarter sales growth with its prostate cancer drug, and now it’s reporting it delivered on that projection, generating... Read more »
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[Updated: 9:40 am ET] Vertex Pharmaceuticals wowed the cystic fibrosis community earlier this year with its new drug that improves lung function for patients with a rare form of the... Read more »
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Bacteria have been on Earth for more than a billion years, evolving in crafty ways to stay alive amid all kinds of threats. Only about 70 years ago, antibiotics came along and... Read more »
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Seattle-based Dendreon (NASDAQ: DNDN) is still struggling to get cancer physicians in the habit of prescribing its new immune-boosting drug for prostate cancer, as a competing product is gaining momentum, according... Read more »
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Cancer drugmakers and diagnostics companies rarely find ways to work together early in the product development process, because corporate priorities, budgets and timelines rarely match up. But Genomic Health and OncoMed... Read more »
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[Updated: 3:55 pm PT, 5/3/12] Affymetrix changed the way researchers thought about genetics in the mid-‘90s when it developed the original DNA microarrays, which it trademarked as “GeneChips.” The... Read more »
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Hologic has made big-money acquisitions before, and today it’s making another sizable one.
The Bedford, MA-based maker of women’s health products (NASDAQ: HOLX) said today it has agreed to purchase San... Read more »
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[Updated: 2:10 pm ET, 5/2/12] Something feels wrong about putting the words “biotech” and “IPO” together in a headline. This market has been lifeless for so long that few investors... Read more »
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The University of Washington campus is so big, with 42,000 students, that it’s impossible to get a handle on everything going on there. But this much I can say for sure: there are... Read more »
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Once while reporting on a medical meeting for new antibiotics, I met a physician/researcher who said “stay in the hospital long enough, and something bad will happen to you.” Now the prolific drug developer... Read more »
