Tag: entrepreneurs
-
Antibiotic Developer Adds $9.2 Million in Early Funds
3 June 2015. Auspherix Limited, a start-up developer of new antibiotic drugs, raised £6 million ($US 9.2 million) in early-stage venture financing. Funding for the two year-old enterprise, located in a pharmaceutical and biotechnology incubator at Stevenage, U.K., was led by technology commercialization company Imperial Innovations plc, with earlier investor Australia’s Medical Research Commercialisation Fund.…
-
Spin-Off Biotech Formed for Autoimmune Disorders
2 June 2015. Drug maker Astellas Pharma Inc. in Tokyo and Anokion SA, a biotechnology company in Lausanne, Switzerland, are forming Kanyos Bio Inc., a spin-off enterprise to develop therapy candidates for autoimmune diseases. The deal could bring Kanyos Bio, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as much as $760 million, as well as an equity investment…
-
Mini Gamma Camera Developed, Spin-Off Company Formed
1 June 2015. Physicists and medical researchers at two universities in the U.K. designed a hand-held camera that performs gamma ray imaging, normally requiring a powerful room-sized device for diagnosing tumors and other medical functions. The team from Universities of Leicester and Nottingham also formed a spin-off company, Gamma Technologies Ltd., to take the device…
-
National Academies to Develop Gene-Editing Guidelines
18 May 2015. National Academy of Sciences and Institute of Medicine plan to write guidelines governing an emerging technology for editing human genomes. The initiative includes an international meeting in the fall to discuss the scientific, ethical, and policy issues associated with the technology known as CRISPR-Cas9. CRISPR, short for clustered, regularly interspaced short palindromic…
-
Oxford Establishes £300M Spin-Off Capital Fund
15 May 2015. University of Oxford in the U.K. is creating a capital investment fund to help launch spin-off companies based on research from university labs. The £300 million ($US 472 million) fund will be managed by a new enterprise, Oxford Sciences Innovation plc, which will be the university’s preferred capital financier for businesses generated…
-
New Company Founded to Develop Centimeter-Accurate GPS
Video: Centimeter-level GPS used in a virtual reality headset (University of Texas, Austin) 6 May 2015. An engineering lab at University of Texas in Austin designed a low-cost portable global positioning system with precision to a few centimeters, and started a company to take the technology to market. A team from UT-Austin’s Radionavigation Laboratory, led…
-
Cancer Therapy Spin-Off Gets $2M Small Business Grant
4 May 2015. A three year-old company started by a University at Buffalo microbiologist received a $2 million grant to develop an antibody into a clinical treatment for breast and other types of cancer. For-Robin in Williamsville, New York, received the two-year award from National Cancer Institute, part of National Institutes of Health, under the…
-
Plant Science Biotech Gets Genome Editing Technology
16 April 2015. Cellectis Plant Sciences, a biotechnology company in Minnesota developing higher quality crops through genetic engineering, licensed CRISPR genome editing technology from University of Minnesota. Financial details of the agreement between Cellectis and the university were not disclosed. The technology licensed by Cellectis covers techniques known as CRISPR, short for clustered, regularly interspaced short…
-
Gene Therapy Biotech Raises $60M in Venture Funds
13 April 2015. Voyager Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing gene therapies for central nervous system disorders, raised $60 million in its second venture financing round. Financing for the 1 year-old enterprise in Cambridge, Massachusetts was led by new investors Brookside Capital and Partner Fund Management, with participation by Wellington Management Company and Casdin Capital, also…
-
Purdue Spin-Off Designing Customized Synthetic Tissue
8 April 2015. A one year-old company, based on research at a Purdue University biomedical engineering lab, is producing customized biomaterials designed to form into synthetic tissue for drug discovery and toxicity testing. GeniPhys, founded by Purdue biomedical engineering professor Sherry Harbin, aims to further develop the technology, licensed from the university, into engineered tissue…