Science and Enterprise

Category: Joint ventures/collaborations

  • New Company Formed to Create Engineered Corneal Tissue

    Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, North Carolina Eye Bank, and the company Ocular Systems Inc., all in Winston-Salem, are forming a new company to create bioengineered tissue for cornea transplants. The startup company, HCEC LLC (for human cultured endothelial cells), is expected first to advance the technology to the point of an FDA submission for…

  • Sanford-Burnham, Intrexon to Partner on Stem Cell Technology

    Intrexon Corporation in Germantown, Maryland and Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla, California will collaborate on research with induced pluripotent stem cells. The deal gives Sanford-Burnham access to Intrexon’s latest stem cell processing technology in exchange for commercial and intellectual property rights to technological advances under the agreement. Financial aspects of the deal were…

  • Robotic Device Reduces Drug-Resistant Hospital Infections

    Medical researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and two other institutions found a commercial remote-controlled spraying device can reduce the rate of infections to some multidrug-resistant organisms found in hospitals. The team led by Johns Hopkins epidemiologist Trish Perl published its findings in the 1 January 2013 issue of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases…

  • University, Companies Partner on Air Cleaning Technology

    A chemistry professor at University of Copenhagen in Denmark is working with a Danish entrepreneur and waste processor to test a process for cleaning polluting particles from industrial emissions. Environmental chemist Matthew Johnson (pictured right) and the university have also patented the process he devised, which is based on on the natural ability of the…

  • Collaboration to Build Three New Pediatric Medical Devices

    A partnership between Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in Ohio and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel will develop three new medical devices designed to meet children’s medical needs. The collaboration that combines Cincinnati Children’s Hospital’s clinical staff with engineers from Ben-Gurion was first announced last May to help address unmet needs for pediatric medical devices,…

  • Clinical Trial Underway for Cancer Stem Cell Therapy

    OncoMed Pharmaceuticals Inc., a biotechnology company in Redwood City, California, began dosing patients enrolled in a clinical trial of its therapy addressing cancer stem cells. The phase 1 trial is testing OMP-52M51, a monoclonal antibody — a type of engineered antibody molecule — designed for patients with hematologic cancers, in this case lymphoid malignancies. Cancer…

  • U.K. Universities Form Advanced Materials Consortium

    The universities of Manchester, Cambridge, and Lancaster in the U.K. received funding from the European Research Council to develop new two-dimensional materials similar to graphene. The €13.4 million ($US17.7 million) grant was awarded to the three institutions under the council’s Synergy Grant initiative. The universities will form what they call a Synergy Group to support…

  • Biogen Idec, Four Universities Partner on ALS Therapies

    Biogen Idec, a biotechnology company in Weston, Massachusetts, will collaborate with researchers from Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and Rockefeller universities to identify new treatment strategies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The company says it is committing $10 million over three years to the research consortium. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a rapidly progressive…

  • R&D Project Aims To Cut Time, Cost of Solar Installations

    A new research and development project led by North Carolina State University in Raleigh seeks to reduce the time and cost of installing rooftop solar energy systems. The five-year, $9 million grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy to a consortium of NC State’s FREEDM Systems Center — an energy engineering research lab…

  • University Research Leads to Battery Sorting Machine

    Research on artificial intelligence by a professor at Gothenberg University in Sweden made possible a machine that sorts discarded household batteries and a company that developed and markets the system. Claes Strannegård, a researcher in logic and cognitive science at Gothenberg, applied his work on artificial intelligence to find a better way of sorting garbage.…