Medicines to fight significant global health problems are scarce because the lack of commercial return trumps the fact that drug targets are well characterized and the required R&D investment is relatively inexpensive. The Gates Foundation hopes to create a more robust marketplace for global health medicines through non-dilutive funding. Gates money, plus Priority Review Vouchers and other creative tactics to ensure a market for these medicines may also persuade companies to develop drugs for long overlooked diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis. It's not yet clear whether these alternate funding schemes will prove attractive, but they may start making global health increasingly a part of business planning.

Brief summaries of recent product and company developments in the device industry, including the demise of GE's proposed $8 billion acquisition of Abbott Diagnosticss, the Cytyc/Hologic merger, and Alsius' SPAC merger.

What do you get when you cross a women's health company that sells screening and diagnostic imaging technologies to hospitals and radiologists, with a women's health company that sells diagnostics and therapeutic devices to Ob-Gyns? A single company capable of selling goods and services across the entire continuum of care, according to Rob Cascella, president & COO of Hologic, who thus revealed the reasoning behind the $6.5 billion proposed merger of Hologic with Cytyc.