Science and Enterprise

Month: December 2012

  • Kidney Stone Monitor Boosts Treatment Effectiveness

    Engineers at University of Southampton in the U.K. tested a prototype monitoring device for ultrasound treatments of kidney stones that showed the device ready for full-scale clinical trials. The team led by Southampton engineering professor Tim Leighton published its findings yesterday online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A (paid subscription required). In…

  • Wake Forest Health Expands Commercialization Program

    Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina started a new division to encourage development of new products and services from its research. Wake Forest Innovations, as the division is called, is expected to generate new revenue streams for the medical center by growing and managing new business partnerships. Wake Forest Innovations has a…

  • Method Devised to Reliably Capture Circulating Cancer Cells

    Engineering and medical researchers at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor with colleagues in China developed a simple technique to capture circulating cancer cells believed to spread cancer from the original tumor to other parts of the body. The team from the labs of Michigan breast cancer researcher Sofia Merajver (pictured left) and biomedical engineering professor…

  • EU Approves Unitary Patent Regulations

    The European Parliament in Strasbourg, France approved draft regulations establishing a common patent system for 25 participating member counties of the European Union. The approved regulations create a unitary patent instrument and govern the language versions of the patent documents. However, EU members Italy and Spain are not taking part in the program. The unitary…

  • DNA Sequencing Performed with Tiny Samples, No Library Prep

    Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Babraham Institute, both in the U.K., developed a technique for sequencing DNA molecules requiring a tiny fraction of material and without the laborious library preparation that had been needed before. The work of the team led by Harold Swerdlow (pictured left), Sanger Institute research and development director,…

  • New Life Sciences Venture Fund to Invest in Europe, U.S.

    Sofinnova Partners, a venture capital company in Paris, closed its seventh fund focusing on investments in life sciences start-up companies, valued at €240 million ($312 million). Sofinnova Partners is affiliated with Sofinnova Ventures, a life sciences venture capital company in Menlo Park, California. The company says contributors to the Sofinnova Capital VII fund are major…

  • Lower Copays, Mail Orders Close Hypertension Drug Gaps

    Researchers with the health care system Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California found lower copayments and use of mail-order refills help reduce race and ethnic disparities in drug adherence for patients diagnosed with high blood pressure. The findings on medicine-taking behavior and measures to cut those differences in drug adherence are reported online in the journal…

  • Mobile App and Classes Help Obese People Lose Weight

    Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago and four other institutions found a mobile app that tracks eating and activity, combined with classroom sessions, helped people at a weight loss clinic lose weight and keep it off for at least a year. The findings of Northwestern professor of preventive medicine Bonnie Spring and colleagues appear online…

  • Smallest Indium Gallium Arsenide Chip Developed

    Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a process for creating nanoscale transistors, like those designed for computer logic operations, made of indium gallium arsenide. The team from MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories will discuss its findings later this week at the International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco. The team led by electrical engineering professor…

  • Amgen Purchases Diagnostics Developer deCODE Genetics

    Amgen, a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, California, acquired deCODE Genetics, a developer of genetic disease risk assessment tests in Reykjavik, Iceland in an all-cash transaction valued at $415 million. Amgen says the transaction does not require regulatory approval and is expected to close before the end of 2012. deCODE Genetics offers genetic scans for…