A grab bag of biotech thoughts - Back in March I wrote about Theravance's antibiotic televancin, and its tortuous path toward approval. Recap: Televancin was initially submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in 2007.

It was delayed because of alleged troubles with the company's clinical trials. In November, a panel of expert backed it as a new treatment for certain drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus, also known as MRSA.  Televancin was finally approved over the weekend.

The lack of new MRSA drugs is a major public health problem, because the drug-resistant strains keep showing up -- most recently on West Coast beaches. But to a drug company bean-counter, the difficult time televancin had getting to market probably doesn't seem like a reason to put money into new antibiotics.