Category: Finance
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Venture Fund Raises $50M for Life Science Investments
Forbion Capital Partners in the Netherlands says it is closing a new $50 million fund for investing in life science start-up companies nearing liquidity. The company’s second FCF 1 Co-Investment Fund plans to invest additional capital into its current portfolio of life science and biomedical technology companies. Forbion specializes in backing new businesses with late…
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Genome Institute to Fund Research on Rare Diseases, Medical Care
Funding announced by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of National Institutes of Health, will support new research on rare inherited diseases, informatics tools, and use of genomic data in medical care delivery. The four-year, $416 million plan also continues funding for current initiatives on large-scale genomic sequencing production. NHGRI plans to award…
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Senate Passes SBIR/STTR Reauthorization in DoD Funding Bill
The U.S. Senate yesterday passed a reauthorization of the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR and STTR) programs through 2019. The reauthorization of the SBIR and STTR programs were included in the larger Department of Defense authorization for the current 2012 fiscal year that began on 1 October. The bill passed…
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Research Project to Develop Salad Vegetable Safety Science
A new research initiative aims to provide U.S. growers and industry with the scientific basis to answer questions about the safety of salad vegetables. The research, led by University of Maryland food science professor Robert Buchanan, will conduct tests and collect data to develop safe and hygienic practices in farming, packing, transporting, and storing fresh…
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Fox Foundation to Fund Parkinson’s Drug Candidate Studies
Civitas Therapeutics Inc., a pharmaceutical company in Chelsea, Massachusetts, received a grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to support the company’s lead drug candidate CVT-301. The amount of the grant to fund clinical development of the drug was not disclosed. Parkinson’s disease occurs when the nerve cells in the brain…
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Junior Faculty Entrepreneurship Fellowship Grants Open
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Missouri has opened the next round of nominations for the Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship (KJFF) in Entrepreneurship Research. Each fellowship awards $40,000 to the fellow’s university to support the recipient’s research for two years. The foundation plans to award up to seven KJFF grants to junior faculty…
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Commentary: Manufacturing the Health Care Venture Crisis
Rahm Emanuel, the current mayor Chicago and former chief of staff to President Obama, once famously said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) has gone Emanuel one better, using highly selected bits and pieces from an industry survey to predict an imminent retreat by investors…
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Contract Awarded for Atlantic Salmon Genome Sequencing
An international business and scientific consortium from salmon-producing countries has awarded a contract for the second phase of sequencing and analysis of the Atlantic salmon genome to the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Maryland. The International Cooperation to Sequence the Atlantic Salmon Genome (ICSASG) that awarded the contract is a partnership of five…
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Gilead Sciences to Acquire Biotech Pharmasset for $11B
Pharmaceutical maker Gilead Sciences in Foster City, California says it will acquire the biotechnology company Pharmasset Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey, with the transaction expected to close in the first quarter of 2012. In the deal, Gilead will pay $137 per share, for a total value of about $11 billion. Pharmasset is a clinical-stage company…
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Personalized Health Informatics Technology in Development
A team of European and Israeli researchers is developing technology for real-time, personalized health monitoring that can minimize the number of follow-up visits patients need to make to health care providers. The EU has granted about €6 million ($US8.1 million) over four years to fund the project. The MOBIGUIDE project will involve researchers from five…