Tag: physical sciences

  • Pain Medication Given FDA Breakthrough Tag

    22 February 2016. A new drug to treat moderate to severe pain, now in clinical trials, received a breakthrough designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The drug, oliceridine, is made by Trevena Inc. in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Oliceridine addresses the same pain signals as opioid drugs that affect areas of the brain…

  • Bayer Funding Studies of Honey Bee Health, Management

    18 February 2016. Bayer Crop Science is seeking research ideas for improving the health of honey bee colonies in the U.S. Proposals for studies in the $1 million program addressing urgent needs highlighted by Bayer’s Healthy Hives 2020 initiative are due by 1 March 2016. Bees, which play a key role in agriculture, are facing…

  • Vaccine Developed to Stop Synthetic Opioids

    17 February 2016. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid drug for treating severe pain after surgery, and in some cases chronic pain, but is also highly addictive and increasingly abused, with growing numbers of overdose deaths. Researchers from Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California developed a vaccine that in lab mice prevents ingredients in fentanyl…

  • Company Hosts Cancer Genome Cloud, Raises $45 Million

    16 February 2016. Seven Bridges Genomics, a computational biology company, unveiled its cloud-based cancer genome data sets, in one of three pilot tests for National Cancer Institute. The Cambridge, Massachusetts enterprise also raised $45 million in its first venture funding round. National Cancer Institute, part of National Institutes of Health, aims to make the Cancer…

  • Virtual Reality Seen Helping People with Depression

    15 February 2016. Individuals suffering from depression often express a high degree of self-criticism to the point it interferes with recovery from their disorder. Researchers from University College London showed in a pilot study that a virtual reality exercise could increase feelings of self-compassion and reduce the severity of depression, in some cases with enough…

  • Harnessing Big Data for Precision Medicine

    13 February 2016. Precision medicine aims to match individualized genomic data with therapies to provide personalized treatments for people with disease. A panel today (13 February) at the American Association for Advancement of Science or AAAS 2016 annual meeting, described how big data — finding insights in large data sets — help make precision medicine…

  • Alliance Creating PTSD Knowledge Base

    11 February 2016. A collaboration of three organizations and companies in the U.S. and Germany is building an authoritative and systematic collection of research on post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. The PTSD KnowledgeMap, as it’s called, is a project of Cohen Veterans Bioscience, Exaptive Inc,. and Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing, and will…

  • NSF Grant Funds Biosensing Laser Research

    9 February 2016. An engineering professor at University of Texas in Arlington received a grant from National Science Foundation for research on lasers with fluid samples to detect indicators of disease. Yuze Sun, known as Alice, is the recipient of a $500,000 Faculty Early Career Development award from NSF, expected to run through 2020. Sun’s…

  • Stent Implants Demonstrated to Transmit Brain Activity

    9 February 2016. A team of engineers and medical researchers in Australia show it’s possible to safely implant electrodes in the brain to transmit brain activity with a catheter-delivered stent. A description of the device and delivery process with sheep appears in yesterday’s (8 February) issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology (paid subscription required). The…

  • Start-Up Licensing Wayne State Neurological Discoveries

    8 February 2016. Wayne State University is licensing research discoveries from its pharmacy school to a new enterprise for development as drugs to treat depression, post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD, and other neurological disorders. Financial aspects of the agreement with Trimaran Pharma Inc. were not disclosed. The deal covers research by pharmaceutical sciences professor Aloke…