Science and Enterprise

Month: August 2010

  • Cypress Bioscience to Cut Business Lines, Slash Workforce

    Cypress Bioscience in San Diego, California announced today several cost-cutting measures including a sharp reduction in staff. The steps announced will end a co-promotion agreement with Forest Laboratories, and close the company’s personalized testing services. The drug development company discontinued an agreement with Forest Laboratories to co-promote Savella, its drug for fibromyalgia, a disorder causing…

  • Gulf Coast Ecosystem Imaging Data Collected

    TTI Exploration, a geosciences technology company in Houston, Texas says it has successfully acquired some 26,000 square kilometers of ultra high-resolution, hyperspectral surface images over environmentally sensitive areas in Louisiana and Mississippi. The company acquired the imaging data as part of Operation GulfSCAN, an initiative it launched to measure the health of the Gulf coastal…

  • Clean Tech Venture Capital Hits $1.5 Billion in 2nd Quarter

    Venture capital (VC) investment in U.S. clean technology (cleantech) companies in the second quarter of 2010 hit $1.5 billion in 68 financing rounds, according to an Ernst & Young analysis based on data from Dow Jones VentureSource. Automotive, solar, and alternative fuel companies attracted the most investment dollars. Ernst & Young says this was the…

  • Louisiana Tech Researcher Awarded Biomedical Engineering Patent

    The U.S. Patent Office has issued a patent to Mark DeCoster, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Louisiana Tech University in Ruston, for his invention of an electromagnetic probe used in medical devices. Deoster and co-inventor Nicolas Bazan of the LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans, built the “Electromagnetic Probe Device,” at Louisiana Tech’s…

  • Report: Startups Help Sustain Long-Term Job Growth

    An analysis of U.S. Census Bureau business data by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation indicates that the numbers of jobs created by startup companies in the U.S. since 1977 have stayed fairly stable, even while most of the startup companies themselves have disappeared. The report — After Inception: How Enduring is Job Creation by Startups?…

  • Nanotech Firm Commercializing Biotechnology Research Tools

    Shrink Nanotechnologies, a nanotechnology company in Carlsbad, California, announced today formation of a new wholly-owned subsidiary, Shrink Chips LLC, to commercialize biotechnology research tools. Among its offerings is the ShrinkChip Rapid Prototyping System (RPS) to manufacture microfluidic chips, also known as lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices, as well as other biological and chemical sensors. LOC devices are…

  • Study: Industry Drug Trials Show More Favorable Results

    A study published in today’s issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine reviews drug trials appearing on the Web site ClinicalTrials.gov, and finds those trials funded by industry sources are more likely to report data favorable to the drug being tested. The investigators — Florence Bourgeois and Kenneth Mandl of Children’s Hospital Boston in Massachusetts…

  • Clinical Trial Approved of Potential Treatment for Asthma, COPD

    N30 Pharmaceuticals in Boulder, Colorado, announced today approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin a phase I clinical trial of a drug called N6022, that the company says has the potential to be a treatment for acute exacerbations of asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and inflammatory bowel disease. The trial, involving…

  • FDA Approves Drug for Neurological Movement Disorders

    According to Merz Pharmaceuticals in Greensboro, North Carolina, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved its drug Xeomin for the treatment of adults with cervical dystonia or blepharospasm, disorders characterized by involuntary, sustained muscle contractions. Merz Pharmaceuticals says the FDA approved the drug, with the generic name incobotulinumtoxinA, based on results from two…

  • University-Business Partners Get Grant for Energy Project

    MTECH Laboratories in Ballston Spa, New York has received a Small Business Innovation Research grant from National Science Foundation to demonstrate the feasibility of its energy distribution system for large buildings. The grant funds joint research and development on power distribution with the nearby College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering of the University at Albany,…