Now, onto the latest headlines

News out of Seattle this morning adds a new dimension to the legacy of the late Paul Allen. With a $125 million gift from the philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder, the Allen Institute is launching a new research division to probe the mysteries of the human immune system. I have the story on the meetings that led Allen to commit the funding just months before he died in October.

In the latest sign that Amazon wants to integrate voice into health care, you can now ask its Alexa voice assistant to read your most recent blood pressure results. You’ll need to have a blood pressure monitor made by Omron Healthcare and paired to the company’s mobile app so that Alexa can find and read out your data, CNBC’s Chrissy Farr reports.

Growing Bay Area startup 10x Genomics, which sells tools to genetics researchers, just bought a Swedish company called Spatial Transcriptomics. The technology of interest uses microscopes and DNA sequencing to examine genetic variations that show up in different places among a group of cells. Read more on the acquisition from Forbes reporter Matt Herper, who will become my STAT colleague in January.

In Los Angeles, the biomedical research organization LA BioMed is starting what it describes as a first-of-its-kind graduate program in translational research. The three- to four-year program aims to teach students skills in the clinic, the lab, and in the business world.

In San Diego, the California Institute of Biomedical Research, or Calibr for short, has built a library of over 12,000 drug compounds — the largest collection of its kind ever assembled — to be mined for new uses. My STAT colleague Alex Hogan trekked to Calibr’s lab to film a video that takes you inside the team’s work.

Keep an eye on Spring Discovery, Silicon Valley’s latest anti-aging startup, which just raised some money. Business Insider’s Erin Brodwin has the profile of the company’s CEO and founder, Ben Kamens, who was previously an engineer at the Khan Academy, an education technology organization.

It was not three years ago that the drug maker AbbVie wagered nearly $10 billion to take over Stemcentrx, a high-flying San Francisco biotech backed by billionaire investor Peter Thiel. Since then, AbbVie has found seemingly endless reasons to regret that deal. The latest such reason came last week, when AbbVie announced it would halt a late-stage studyin lung cancer patients testing Stemcentrx’s lead drug, an experimental therapy called Rova-T, designed to home in on malignant cells while sparing healthy tissues.

Even as movie stars speak up about the wage gap and sexual misconduct, there’s often still a culture of silence in Hollywood around cancer. The Hollywood Reporter tells the story of a high-powered producer who kept her battle with deadly lung cancer a secret in a town where a cancer diagnosis can mean being perceived as weak or getting passed over for a gig.