Category: Finance
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NSF Awards $20 Million for Cyber Security, Privacy R&D
National Science Foundation is funding new research to better secure the nation’s health information technology, simplify and improve control of security for cloud computing, and clarify an individual’s privacy on the Web. The awards, made under the agency’s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program, total $20 million and are supporting three initiatives, each shared among multiple…
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FDA Funds Organ-on-Chip to Test Radiation Disease Treatments
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration awarded a contract to a Harvard University lab for simulated organ devices to test radiation disease countermeasures. The $5.6 million award will fund the work of Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering from FDA’s research and development program on regulatory science and medical countermeasures initiative. Wyss Institute researchers,…
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Medtronic Acquires Telemedicine Systems Developer
Medtronic Inc., a medical device company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is buying Cardiocom, a developer of telemedicine systems in nearby Chanhassen, Minnesota, in an all-cash transaction valued at $200 million. Medtronic’s devices currently help treat cardiac and vascular diseases, diabetes, and neurological and musculoskeletal disorders. Cardiocom, founded in 1999 and privately held, builds solutions for home…
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Challenge Seeks Technique to Estimate Age from DNA Samples
A new challenge on InnoCentive asks for a crowd-sourced solution for determining an individual’s age from a small sample of that person’s DNA. The competition has a a prize purse of $25,000 and a deadline of 7 October 2013 for submissions (free registration required). InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowd-sourcing competitions for corporate and…
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GSK Starts Venture Fund for Nerve-Signal Devices, Medicines
The pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline is starting a venture capital fund to invest in companies making therapeutic devices and medications harnessing the body’s electrical signaling system. The fund, called Action Potential Venture Capital (APVC) Ltd. will have $50 million, with its first investment in a California company developing a device to regulate nerve signals for treating…
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Smartphone App for Personal Psychosis Care in Development
Psychologists at University of Manchester in the U.K. are writing a smartphone app to help early-stage psychosis patients manage their own care at home. The research and app development are led by Manchester clinical psychology lecturer Sandra Bucci, funded by a £450,000 ($US 683,400) award from the Biomedical Catalyst program of U.K.’s Technology Strategy Board.…
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Genomics Therapy Company Secures $60M Venture Financing
Dicerna Pharmaceuticals Inc., in Watertown, Massachusetts, closed its third round of venture financing after start-up with $60 million in additional capital from new and current investors. Dicerna is a six year-old biotechnology company developing therapies harnessing genomic material to silence genes causing diseases. Dicerna’s technology is based on ribonucleic acid or RNA interference (RNAi), a…
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Biotech Gets Small Business Funds for Universal Flu Vaccine
TechnoVax Inc., a biotechnology company in Tarrytown, New York, received a grant from National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of National Institutes of Health, to develop a vaccine that protects against a wide assortment of flu strains. The initial award of $300,000, made under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program at NIH,…
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Actelion to Acquire Developer of Rare Cancer Treatment
Actelion Ltd, a biopharmaceutical company based in Switzerland, acquired Ceptaris Therapeutics Inc., a specialty pharmaceutical developer in Malvern, Pennsylvania, in a deal with a potential value of at least $250 million. The acquisition, however, depends on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving Ceptaris’s only current product, a topical treatment for symptoms from a rare…
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NIH Funds Three New Neurologic Drug Discovery Projects
National Institutes of Health is funding three new neurological drug research initiatives to address Fragile X syndrome, nicotine addiction, and age-related macular degeneration. Awards for the three projects, from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), total nearly $446,000. The three studies are funded under the Neurotherapeutics Network, part of the NIH Blueprint…