Category: Finance
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Venture Launched to Reduce Chronic Hospitalizations
10 November 2014. Sentrian, a new enterprise in Aliso Viejo, California, announced its launch today to offer a system combining personalized remote patient monitoring and cloud-based analytics that reduces what it calls preventable hospitalizations. The company also raised $12 million in early-stage venture funds. A spin-off from Singularity University, a Silicon Valley technology training organization and…
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Challenge Seeks Preclinical Models for Macular Degeneration
7 November 2014. A new challenge on InnoCentive asks for novel methods to test therapies for age-related macular degeneration in the lab, before being tested on humans. The competition has a total purse of $50,000 and deadline of 12 January 2015, where winners can also compete in a subsequent design challenge with a prize pool…
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Biosimilars Developer Lands $85 Million in IPO
7 November 2014. Coherus BioSciences Inc., a company developing medications comparable to brand-name biologic therapies, raised $85 million yesterday in its initial public stock offering. The Redwood City, California company trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol CHRS. Coherus valued its 6,296,300 initial shares at $13.50. The stock opened today at $12.74 a share,…
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Big Data Project Seeks to Autocomplete Software Code
5 November 2014. A new project led by computer scientists at Rice University in Houston aims to apply big data analytics and data mining for software developers to generate code the same way as search engines anticipate or correct the entry of search terms. The 4 year, $11 million initiative is funded by Defense Advanced…
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Gates Foundation Funds Malaria Vaccine Development
3 November 2014. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is awarding $156 million for a new type of malaria vaccine that prevents infection and transmission of the disease. Bill Gates, co-chair of the foundation, announced the grant to the Path Malaria Vaccine Initiative yesterday during keynote remarks at the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene’s…
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Ebola-Marburg Vaccine Development, Testing Contract Awarded
31 October 2014. A biodefense unit of the U.S. Department of Defense awarded a contract to vaccine maker Profectus BioSciences Inc. for development and testing of a vaccine protecting against the two major Ebola strains and related Marburg viruses. The $9.5 million contract with the Baltimore company came from DoD’s Medical Countermeasure Systems-Joint Vaccine Acquisition…
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Clinical Trial Proposals Sought for ALS Treatments
22 October 2014. A group of U.S. organizations promoting research on therapies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS are seeking proposals from academic-industry research teams for intermediate stage clinical trials to test treatment candidates for the disease. The organizations — ALS Association, ALS Accelerated Therapeutics or ALS ACT, and Northeast ALS Consortium — plan to…
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Project Developing DNA Antibodies for Infectious Diseases
21 October 2014. The biotechnology company Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. and partners are developing synthetic antibodies based on DNA that generate an immune reaction to prevent infectious diseases, a project funded by Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA. The $12.2 million DARPA grant is supporting the work of Inovia, in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania,…
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Better DNA Sample Prep Methods Sought in Challenge
17 October 2014. A new challenge on InnoCentive is seeking methods that make it possible to prepare DNA samples in the field for sequencing, based on smaller quantities of microbial evidence. The challenge has an award of $25,000 and a deadline of 7 December 2014. InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowdsourcing competitions for corporate…
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Needleless Delivery Start-Up Lands $11M First-Round Funding
15 October 2014. Portal Instruments Inc., a new enterprise developing needless injections for biologic therapies and other medications, raised $11 million in its first round of venture funding. Financing for the Cambridge, Massachusetts company was led by the Sunrise division of drug maker Sanofi, venture capital company PBJ Capital, and an unnamed medical device manufacturer…