Month: October 2010
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University of Rochester Launches Commercialization Fund
University of Rochester in New York has started a new Technology Development Fund that will award grants to help scientists advance their findings closer to the stage where they can be transferred to the market. Awards from the fund will range from $40,000 to $100,000. Robert Clark, dean of Rochester’s Hajim School of Engineering and…
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Chemists Streamline Cooking Oil Conversion to Biodiesel
As the U.S. seeks to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, the country continues to discard large quantities of waste vegetable oil — consider the quantity of oil used to cook one order of french fries, for example — that could be converted into bio-based fuels. But this process presents problems, notably the time and…
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U.S. Health Research Spending Level Flat in 2009
Spending in the U.S. on health research made gains in 2009, due mainly to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but as a percentage of overall spending on health care, stayed at about the same level as 2008. These findings came in a report yesterday from an annual audit of health research spending by Research!America,…
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Venture Fund-Raising Remains Slow So Far in 2010
U.S. venture capital (VC) companies raised $9.2 billion for 103 funds during the first three quarters of 2010, according to Dow Jones LP Source, an industry database that tracks venture and private equity fund-raising. Through September 2010, that represents a slight increase from the $8.9 billion raised for 105 funds during the same period in…
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City to Test Bio-Based Asphalt from University, Startup
A lab at Iowa State University in Ames has developed a potential green replacement for asphalt derived from petroleum, which will be put to a test in Iowa’s sometimes extreme winters and summers. The lab, in the Institute for Transportation’s Asphalt Materials and Pavements Program at Iowa State, developed the asphalt substitute, which will be…
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FDA, NIH Award Grant to Study Adaptive Clinical Trial Design
Researchers from academia and business aim to improve the process for testing therapies and medical devices by investigating a new type of clinical trial called adaptive clinical trials. This kind of clinical study makes adjustments to the trial using information accumulated as patients are enrolled, with the goal of improving clinical trials’ efficiency as a…
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Bacteria Monitors Can Measure State of Oil Fields
A doctoral dissertation published at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands suggests that monitoring bacteria levels in an oil field can provide useful indicators on the state of that oil field. Geert van der Kraan, who conducted the research, received his doctorate degree this week. For his dissertation research, van der Kraan investigated…
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Three Companies Win NIH Biodefense Research Contracts
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, awarded three new contracts to fund research on vaccines and vaccine delivery against dengue fever and anthrax that could be used in a terror attack. Total funding for the three contracts could reach $68 million, depending on the successful…
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Novartis to Develop Flu Vaccines with Synthetic Genomics
Novartis, a global pharmaceutical company based in Basel, Switzerland, says today it will join with Synthetic Genomics Vaccines Inc. (SGVI), in La Jolla, California to apply a combination of synthetic biology and genomics to accelerate production of influenza seed strains required for vaccine manufacturing. Seed strains are starter cultures of a virus, and the base…
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Algae Biofuels Technology to Capture CO2 from Coal Plants
OriginOil Inc. in Los Angeles, California, a developer of technology to convert algae into fuel, said today it agreed to a partnership with MBD Energy Limited, its first customer and a player in the field of CO2 capture using algae. MBD Energy as a company is experienced in the use of captured flue-gases as feedstock…
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