Science and Enterprise

Month: December 2012

  • FDA Extends Flu Therapy Approval for Infants

    The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the prescription of oseltamivir phosphate to treat acute, uncomplicated influenza in children as young as two weeks in age. Oseltamivir phosphate, developed by Genentech, a division of the pharmaceutical company Roche in South San Francisco, California, is marketed under the brand name Tamiflu. Tamiflu blocks the…

  • $50,000 Challenge Seeks Simple, Inexpensive Timer

    A new challenge on InnoCentive asks for a simple, reusable, and inexpensive timing mechanism based on the principles of reverse fluid flow and color change, with a total purse of $50,000. This type of competition — called a reduction-to-practice challenge — requires a written description and evidence of a working prototype, with one-page abstracts due…

  • Clinical Trial Underway for Cancer Stem Cell Therapy

    OncoMed Pharmaceuticals Inc., a biotechnology company in Redwood City, California, began dosing patients enrolled in a clinical trial of its therapy addressing cancer stem cells. The phase 1 trial is testing OMP-52M51, a monoclonal antibody — a type of engineered antibody molecule — designed for patients with hematologic cancers, in this case lymphoid malignancies. Cancer…

  • Cell Phone, GPS Data Identify Urban Traffic Jam Sources

    Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California at Berkeley devised a method for locating sources of urban traffic jams with anonymous data from cell phone records, which can encourage more effective strategies for reducing congestion. The team led by MIT civil and environmental engineering professor Marta González reported its findings in yesterday’s…

  • Stem Cells Induced to Become Blood Vessel Tissue Cells

    Biomedical engineers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore developed a process that causes stem cells to transform into two different types of tissue found in the walls of blood vessels. The findings of the team led by chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Sharon Gerecht are published in the January 2013 issue of the journal Cardiovascular…

  • U.K. Universities Form Advanced Materials Consortium

    The universities of Manchester, Cambridge, and Lancaster in the U.K. received funding from the European Research Council to develop new two-dimensional materials similar to graphene. The €13.4 million ($US17.7 million) grant was awarded to the three institutions under the council’s Synergy Grant initiative. The universities will form what they call a Synergy Group to support…

  • Biogen Idec, Four Universities Partner on ALS Therapies

    Biogen Idec, a biotechnology company in Weston, Massachusetts, will collaborate with researchers from Yale, Harvard, Columbia, and Rockefeller universities to identify new treatment strategies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The company says it is committing $10 million over three years to the research consortium. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a rapidly progressive…

  • R&D Project Aims To Cut Time, Cost of Solar Installations

    A new research and development project led by North Carolina State University in Raleigh seeks to reduce the time and cost of installing rooftop solar energy systems. The five-year, $9 million grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy to a consortium of NC State’s FREEDM Systems Center — an energy engineering research lab…

  • University Research Leads to Battery Sorting Machine

    Research on artificial intelligence by a professor at Gothenberg University in Sweden made possible a machine that sorts discarded household batteries and a company that developed and markets the system. Claes Strannegård, a researcher in logic and cognitive science at Gothenberg, applied his work on artificial intelligence to find a better way of sorting garbage.…

  • Merck, GE Healthcare Partner on Alzheimer’s Treatment Trial

    The pharmaceutical company Merck and GE Healthcare, the medical technologies unit of General Electric, are collaborating in a clinical trial of Merck’s drug candidate for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The trial is testing Merck’s compound known as MK-8931, a beta amyloid precursor protein site cleaving enzyme inhibitor. The accumulation of beta amyloid proteins in…