drugs
Justice hits eBay for $59M for selling obviously illegal pill-counterfeiting gear
You don’t need to resort to the dark web to find your illicit pill counterfeiting presses and molds. Just go to eBay and you can get one like new for…
Amazon launches RxPass, a $5/month Prime add-on for all-you-need generic drugs covering 80 conditions
More than two years since announcing Amazon Pharmacy to take some of the prescription drugs business away from big (and smaller) drug stores, Amazon is launching a new product to…
Nue Life Health raises $23M Series A Led by Obvious Ventures for psychedelics platform
Last year we covered the $3.3 million seed round for NUE Life Health, a US-based telemedicine startup in the US, which was building out a mental wellness platform that combined…
Cannabis beverage startup Cann raises $27M as it expands to Canada
Cann, a THC beverage company marketing itself as a fun alternative to alcohol, is bulking up on funding as it brings the product into Canada — its first international market…
Snapchat says it’s getting better at finding illicit drug dealers before users do
Snapchat has faced increasing criticism in recent years as the opioid crisis plays out on social media, often with tragic results. In October, an NBC investigation reported the stories of…
Frequency Therapeutics redesigns study after disappointing Phase 2 results, debuts new hearing loss and MS drugs
In Frequency Therapeutics’ short lifetime as a company, it’s had its ups and downs. On Tuesday, during an R&D event day, the company unleashed a slew of announcements that add…
Snapchat is launching new tools to crack down on illicit drug sales on its platform
Snapchat is rolling out new tools and educational resources to prevent younger users from buying counterfeit pills and illicit drugs via the platform. The company said on Thursday that the…
Journey Clinical raises $3M to allow psychotherapists to offer psychedelic therapies
Psychedelics companies are all the rage right now. Compass Pathways is working with the magic mushroom compound psilocybin to treat depression. It’s has raised $290 million in total. Atai Life…
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha and Danny decided…
Bicycle Health, the virtual opioid use disorder therapy service, will soon be available in 25 states
The startup opioid use disorder therapy service Bicycle Health will soon be available to patients in half the country, just three years after its launch in 2017, according to founder…
Ro makes the weight loss product Plenity commercially available to everyone in the US
In what could be the first step in the development of a significant new line of business for the telemedicine prescription provider Ro, the company is finally announcing the general…
With a Warby Parker playbook, SISU raises funding from Greycroft to face off against cosmetic clinics
With so many people getting botox and filler treatments to their faces these days (or are they, during the pandemic?), it’s probably no wonder that venture capital has decided to…
Mission Bio raises $70 million to help scale its tech for improving the development of targeted cancer therapies
California-based startup Mission Bio has raised a new $70 million Series C funding round, led by Novo Growth and including participation from Soleus Capital and existing investors Mayfield, Cota and…
Moderna set to start final-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine by July
Pharmaceutical company Moderna told Bloomberg on Thursday that it’s on pace to begin the final-stage clinical trial of its vaccine for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 by July. Moderna…
The cannabis market was in the midst of a correction when the COVID-19 crisis hit and could emerge stronger than ever. After a breakthrough period of growth, cannabis startups entered…
GreenLight Biosciences raises $17M to ramp mRNA production for COVID-19 vaccine candidate trials
One of the approaches therapeutics companies are taking to developing vaccines for COVID-19 relies on what’s called an mRNA (messenger RNA, which essentially provides cells with protein production instructions) vaccine,…
Lucid Lane has developed a service to get patients off of pain meds and avoid dependence
Four years ago, Adnan Asar, the founder of the new dependence prevention service Lucid Lane, was enjoying a successful career working as the founding chief technology officer at Livongo Health.…
SkyCell raises $62M for smart containers and analytics to transport pharmaceuticals
While human travel has become severely restricted in recent months, the movement of goods has remained a constant priority — and in some cases, has become even more urgent. Today,…
Price Technologies adds product availability feature for items experiencing COVID-19 shortages
Price Technologies, the operator of the comparison shopping website Price.com and its related browser extension, is adding a feature to show product availability for a few essential items that have…
While economic conditions and the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic may not make for the best atmosphere for raising funding, some companies are still announcing round closures with significant money committed.…
Moderna could make experimental COVID-19 vaccine available to healthcare workers by fall
There are some hard limits to the vaccine development process that mean we are not going to see any preventative immune therapies to fight the new coronavirus for at least…
Non-profit launches COVID-19 treatment and vaccine tracker with daily updates
There are a lot of global efforts underway to develop vaccines and treatments for COVID-19, including repurposing of existing drugs approved for use in treating other forms of coronavirus and…
First US clinical human trial of potential coronavirus vaccine set to start Monday
A human clinical trial of a potential vaccine for the new coronavirus will begin on Monday, the AP reports. The trial, which will test the effects of an experimental vaccine…
Eaze and Wayv founder explains how to raise money for cannabis startups
Keith McCarty could have retired after Microsoft bought Yammer. Instead, he founded Eaze to address cannabis delivery. He lead the company through its B round and then stepped back, but…
Obvious Ventures makes CBD sporty with beam, which sells cannabis products to the GNC set
Athletes looking to take a break from all their worries over prescription painkillers and anyone who’s hankering to try out the new cannabinoid-based treatments for their conditions (without worrying about…
Cannabis processing startups hope to unlock new chemicals and treatments
Jeff Ubersax knows yeast. The chief executive officer of Demetrix studied yeast genetics and biochemistry in school and was an early employee at Amyris Biotechnologies, a technology company that was…
YourChoice Therapeutics is developing unisex, non-hormonal birth control
The latest Y Combinator-backed startup is targeting the $36 billion contraceptive market.
Vans Warped Tour bands back FEND, an app educating young adults about opioid dangers
Can a mobile app help to address the opioid crisis in the U.S.? That’s the goal behind FEND, an app that’s taking advantage of technology solutions like machine learning and…
BenevolentAI, which uses AI to develop drugs and energy solutions, nabs $115M at $2B valuation
In the ongoing race to build the best and smartest applications that tap into the advances of artificial intelligence, a startup out of London has raised a large round of…
Crunch Report | North Korean Hackers Target Bitcoin Exchanges
Facebook bans monetization of hate, porn, drugs and violence on its platform, some shake-ups happen at Baidu and WhatsApp, and North Korea is allegedly targeting bitcoin exchanges. All this on…