All eyes are on the nation’s capital this week, where the Senate released its version of the American Health Care Act (now called the Better Care Reconciliation Act) and the White House worked on an executive order to address drug prices. No one knows how to pay for high-priced medicines that could bring long-term relief or even cures; we checked with gene therapy maker Bluebird Bio about its latest experimental data and asked officials for their thoughts on pricing. MORE

By the end of this year, for the first time, patients with certain deadly types of blood cancer might have a new option, CAR-T cell therapy , to prolong their life. Immunotherapy could further entrench itself as a mainstay of cancer treatment. MORE

Silicon Valley angel investor Jason Calacanis has some advice for the millennial generation: Get your name on a cap table. In a keynote talk Tuesday night that was a headliner event for Startup Week San Diego, Calacanis observed that it doesn’t feel like the millennial generation is doing as well financially as their parents’ generation. MORE

Fresno State students receive supplies for school with help from Renaissance Scholars staff John Hunt, Jr. left) and Kizzy Lopez (right). We’re all bombarded with social media campaigns asking for us to Tweet, share, like, change our badge, use a hashtag or generally show outrage at a topic du jour. MORE

It’s always been Xconomy’s mission to reach audiences—both here on our website, and at our many live events around the country—with deep insights into the innovation process, divined from experts embedded in the world’s most important hubs of high-tech entrepreneurship. MORE

Maersk halts operations at Port of Los Angeles after cyberattack, Belkin starts selling backpacks and messenger bags and Snapchat pitches advertisers on advantages of Snapchat’s smaller audience MORE

Burbank-based Cast & Crew Entertainment Services , which provides technology-enabled payroll and production-management services to the entertainment industry, has snagged a PayPal executive to serve as its new Chief Technology Officer. The company said today that Andrew Patterson, who was previously Senior Director, Transaction Engineering at PayPal Holdings, has joined as Chief Technology Officer. MORE

solar developer PermaCity Inc. has completed the world’s most powerful solar rooftop generating project in San Pedro, company and L.A. city officials announced Monday while touring the facility MORE

R.E.D. Talks: Building a Successful Brand in LA. Speaker : Tracy Dinunzio , Founder and CEO of Tradesy. Hors d’oeuvres and cocktails served. SPACE IS LIMITED — REGISTER TODAY. link]. Tradesy—a ground-breaking e-Commerce business conceptualized and launched in Los Angeles by Tracy Dinunzio—has revolutionized the e-commerce industry. Tracy was an early pioneer of the trust-based online consignment shopping model, which enabled her to build a successful business around the new concept. MORE

Cloudbeds, a cloud-based provider of hospitality management software, said today it has raised slightly more than $9 million in Series B financing to expand its software-as-a-service platform and broaden awareness of its brand. The San Diego company describes the financing as its first institutional round, and said it brings total funding for the five-year-old startup to $20 million. MORE

Thursday, June 29, 2017 -- Expert Dojo Investor Festival. Q2 Investor Festival – Where Startups Meet Investors. You have been working hard building the foundation for a great business. Now its time to meet strategic investors who can provide you the investment you need to grow to the next level. Without a doubt we have over 80 of the highest caliber investors attending and can cater for seed, series A and series B funding. We have something for every great startup. See [link]. MORE

Thursday, June 29, 2017 -- The Future of News. Startups In The Sky. Journalism, Media, and the Future Where does reporting go next? Can Fake News be stopped? How does tech help create the next golden age? See [link] (more MORE

Close. Stop me if you’ve heard this story before. “My My job as a (newspaper publisher telephone installer, stockbroker, travel agent, retail store manager) is safe as this economy continues to grow.” Thought so. We are in a decade of creative destruction that will affect most everybody. MORE

A Silicon Valley entrepreneur has set out to boost the startup ecosystem in San Diego and the rest of Southern California—and he already has scored a coup by partnering with Bill Maris, the founder and former CEO of Google Ventures, now known as GV. Steve Poizner, who sold two of his startups to Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM ) and served as California Insurance Commissioner a decade ago, has signed a collaboration agreement with a venture fund that Maris founded in suburban San Diego. MORE

A 2014 report provided a stark frame of reference for the challenge of fighting Alzheimer’s disease, showing that 99.6 percent of all drugs in the field had failed in one way or another. Led by Jeffrey Cummings, director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, the same authors recently published a new report on the Alzheimer’s drug pipeline. MORE

For starters, trust that my motives come from a good place. To date I have given such advice to only three CEOs— Ivan Seidenberg when he was CEO of Verizon , Apple CEO Tim Cook , and most recently, your predecessor. MORE

Genome sequencing is becoming more common for people diagnosed with cancer. Should it become part of a healthy person’s checkup, too? A new study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine questions the practicality of making DNA tests standard for people who don’t have a cancer diagnosis or aren’t trying to identify a mysterious disease. MORE

Shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk shut down its operations at the Port of Los Angeles’ largest terminal Tuesday morning after a cyberattack hobbled its computer systems worldwide MORE

The Los Angeles area studio, Larsen Studios which is at the center of the unauthorized release of episodes of Orange Is The New Black , has detailed how an old version of Windows as behind a massive breach of its network. In an in depth interview with Variety, the company said that--despite paying a Bitcoin ransom worth $50,000 to those hackers--those hackers released 10 episodes of the Netflix online. The hackers also apparently got away with other content from Netflix, ABC, CBS and Disney. MORE

Vivace Therapeutics, a San Mateo, CA-based biotech that has kept quiet about its research until now, has reached across the Pacific Ocean to close $25 million in financing to support its work developing drugs to target two different mechanisms of cancer biology. MORE

Sean Parker leaves Spotify board, Leaf Group added to Russell 2000 Small-Cap Index, and Instagram Stories’ daily active users rise to 250 million, and more MORE

VR Playhouse launches virtual reality training program, USC to lead quantum computing project and sneaker marketplace Goat hires former Twitter executive MORE

Glassell Park-based boutique studio VR Playhouse has launched an educational program meant to attract students, artists, developers and directors to the virtual reality industry, according to a company statement MORE

The IT Summit is the executive technology conference series returning to Los Angeles for our eleventh annual event on October 11th, 2017. The purpose of the summit is to provide educational and networking resources for the IT leaders in Southern California. The conference is driven by an Executive Board of regional IT professionals that directs the content of the conference. The IT Summit is designed to address the real-world opportunities and challenges faced by today’s executives. MORE

Friday, June 30, 2017 -- Expert Dojo Investor Festival. Q2 Investor Festival – Where Startups Meet Investors. You have been working hard building the foundation for a great business. Now its time to meet strategic investors who can provide you the investment you need to grow to the next level. Without a doubt we have over 80 of the highest caliber investors attending and can cater for seed, series A and series B funding. We have something for every great startup. See [link]. MORE

Santa Monica-based BlockFraud , a developer of machine learning and artificial intelligence software used for detecting mobile fraud, has reportedly raised $5M in a Series A funding, the company disclosed on Wednesday. The funding was led by Palisades Venture Capital. BlockFraud is led by CEO Massimo Cristini. READ MORE>>. blockfraud antifraud software artificial intelligence machine learning venture capital MORE

NYC-based sketch show Blogologues is coming to LA for the first time ever! Blogologues is the messed-up brainchild of creators Allison Goldberg and Jen Jamula (“Top 10 Funniest Women In NYC,” Time Out NY). The duo takes anything from the internet or your phone — Reddit threads, alt-right blogs, Amazon reviews and more — and performs them word-for-word with insane characters and scenarios. Blogologues has been featured in Forbes, WIRED, Time Out, VICE, and more. Learn more at blogologues.org. MORE

The concept of synthetic lethality has been around for decades, but only recently has it been exploited for cancer therapy. The idea is to hit cancer cells in at least two places at once; the trick is to find the right combination of genetic mutations that make the cells vulnerable. MORE

El Segundo-based education software startup GoGuardian has launched Admin 2.0, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to enhance students’ behaviors online, according to a statement MORE

Los Angeles-based j2 Global says it has completed its previously announced, $650M offering of senior unsecured notes, in a private placement, which nets the company $636.4M after expenses. j2 Global is using the new funds to pay off an existing credit facility, and also for general corporate purposes, which it says may include more acquisitions. The notes carry a 6 percent interest rate and are due in 2025. READ MORE>>. fnding debt plaement private investment capital venture senior global MORE

Irvine-based Western Digital has just been sued by Toshiba Corporation , which is seeking $1 billion in damages for what it says is violation of the Unfair Competition Prevention Act. According to Sohiba, it filed a lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Western Digital Corporation, a U.S. company, and its subsidiary Western Digital Technologies, Inc. Toshiba cited Western Digital's actions related to Toshiba's attempted sale of a joint venture. MORE