Science and Enterprise

Category: Joint ventures/collaborations

  • Foundations, Duke University Start Biomed Engineering Fund

    Duke University in Durham, North Carolina has created a $20 million endowment to encourage research collaborations between bioengineers and clinicians that aims to develop new technologies to improve patient care. Duke’s medical and engineering schools are taking part in the endowment. The Wallace H. Coulter Foundation in Miami, Florida is funding half of the Duke…

  • Duke, Novartis to Develop Pandemic Virus Vaccines

    The Duke Human Vaccine Institute in Durham, North Carolina agreed today with the pharmaceutical company Novartis to collaborate on the rapid development of a vaccines in case of virus threats such as pandemic influenza. The agreement also creates a research partnership to tackle both basic and translational vaccine studies. The five-year agreement calls for the…

  • Monsanto, Venture Company to Fund Life Science Start Ups

    Monsanto Company in St. Louis, Missouri and Atlas Venture, a venture capital firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, agreed to jointly explore investments in early-stage life sciences companies. Monsanto is a manufacturer of agricultural chemicals; Atlas Venture invests in early-stage technology and life sciences businesses. Under the agreement, Monsanto and Atlas will identify investments in several agricultural…

  • Company-University Partnership to Help Develop Nuclear Fuel

    IBC Advanced Alloys Corp. in Vancouver, Canada signed research agreements with Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana and Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) operated by Texas A&M University in College Station, to advance the company’s beryllium oxide (BeO) nuclear fuels R&D project. The project aims to develop high thermal conductivity BeO nuclear fuel that is…

  • Dow Chemical, Biotech to Partner on Bio-Based Acrylic Acid

    Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan and OPX Biotechnologies Inc. in Boulder, Colorado have agreed to develop an industrial scale process for the production of bio-based acrylic acid from renewable feedstocks. OPX Bio recently completed an 18-month pilot project showing that its technology based on genomic engineering could manufacture acrylic acid from renewable sources. The…

  • Field Test of New Clinical Trial Method Underway

    A field test has begun of a new type of clinical trial at the Veterans Affairs Boston (Mass.) Healthcare System, which proponents say is less costly and can also guide doctors to switch to the best treatment before the trial is completed. The new approach — called a point-of-care clinical trial — is described in…

  • Wind Turbine Blade Edge Helps Reduce Power Costs

    Denmark’s National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy and three corporate partners have developed a controllable trailing edge for wind turbine blades that can reduce loads on turbines and help reduce the cost of electricity from wind power. The lab, known as Risø DTU, is part of the Technical University of Denmark in Roskilde. Wind turbines are…

  • Energy Dept. Funding Solar Manufacturing Development

    The Department of Energy has awarded three sets of grants to promote development of advanced solar photovoltaic (PV)-related manufacturing processes in the U.S. The $112.5 million awards over five years are part of the department’s SunShot Initiative that aims to make large-scale solar energy systems cost competitive without subsidies by the end of the decade.…

  • SBIR Grant Awarded for Drug-to-Drug Interactions Research

    Optivia Biotechnology Inc. in Menlo Park, California received a $1.85 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from National Institutes of Health to determine the mechanisms that underlie certain drug-to-drug interactions, to help improve medication safety. The award was made by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH. The phase 2 SBIR grant…

  • Study Computes Cardiac Device Infection Mortality, Costs

    A review of Medicare records shows that surgical infections associated with pacemakers and defibrillators led to longer hospital stays, higher mortalities, and increased hospitalization costs compared to implantations without infections. Results of the study, funded by medical device developer TYRX Inc. in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, were presented yesterday at a meeting of the American…