Science and Enterprise

Month: June 2012

  • Five More Pharma Companies Join NIH Drug Extension Project

    A program at National Institutes of Health (NIH) to find new uses for currently tested drugs gained five more pharmaceutical company participants. Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceutical (a division of Johnson & Johnson), and Sanofi will take part in the Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules program, run by National Center for Advancing…

  • DARPA Awards $8 Million Synthetic Biology Contract

    The Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded an $8 million contract to Amyris Inc. of California for tools to expand the scope of Amyris’s industrial synthetic biology technology across various biological platforms and cell types. DARPA awarded the contract under its Living Foundries research program. With the Living Foundries program, DARPA…

  • Glucose Regulation Shown to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes Onset

    Researchers at University of Colorado in Aurora and four other institutions in the U.S. have found people with pre-diabetes who regulate their blood glucose levels are less likely to develop diabetes. The findings of the team led by Leigh Perreault (pictured left) are published online in the journal The Lancet; paid subscription required. According to…

  • Rapid Cooling Adds Shelf Life to Fresh Eggs

    Food scientists at Purdue University in Indiana have shown that rapid cooling of just-laid eggs adds weeks to their shelf life. The process for achieving these results is described in the June issue of the journal Poultry Science (paid subscription required). Kevin Keener, a food science professor at Purdue, led the research, which uses liquid…

  • GE Healthcare, CSIRO to Partner on Alzheimer’s Diagnostics

    GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric Company, and CSIRO, Australia’s science agency, will collaborate on the development of imaging tools to better predict people at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. CSIRO is the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, which is funding the Australian Imaging, Biomarker & Lifestyle Flagship Study of Ageing (AIBL).…

  • Companies, University Team-Up on Drug Side Effects Model

    Researchers at University of California in San Francisco, with colleagues from San Francisco start-up SeaChange Pharmaceuticals and the drug company Novartis, have devised a computer model that predicts adverse reactions to drug compounds, based on the chemistry of the drugs and known molecular causes of side effects. The team’s findings appear online in the journal…

  • Trial Shows Long-Term Benefit of Multiple Sclerosis Drug

    The drug company Novartis today released results of a clinical trial that shows patients with multiple sclerosis taking its drug fingolimod — marketed under the name Gilenya — had fewer relapses and lower brain volume loss, including among patients who switched from a competing drug. The findings are expected to be delivered today at a…

  • Robotic-Guided Brain Surgery Performed

    Mazor Robotics Ltd. in Caesarea, Israel says it completed three robot-guided brain surgical procedures with its technology. The nature of the procedures was not disclosed. The procedures were performed by neurosurgeons In-Se Kim and Robert Schönmayr at Horst Schmidt Kliniken in Wiesbaden, Germany. Mazor Robotics is a developer of robotics for spinal surgery, often involving…

  • Small-Scale Surveillance/Emergency Robot Developed

    ReconRobotics Inc. in Edina, Minnesota has unveiled a compact and lightweight robotic device for military, police, and emergency-response applications. The company plans to demonstrate the Throwbot XT Reconnaissance Robot at the Eurosatory defense and security exhibition, 11-14 June in Paris. The Throwbot is designed to be physically thrown into harm’s way by military, police, and…

  • New Data Encoding Method Cuts Energy for Memory Cards

    Engineers and computer scientists at Rice University in Houston and University of California in Los Angeles have discovered a way to write data on computer memory cards that cuts the energy needed for the task by 30 percent. The team from Rice’s Adaptive Computing and Embedded Systems Laboratory, led by Ph.D. student Azalia Mirhoseini (pictured…