Tag: entrepreneurs

  • Behavioral App Developer Lands $20 Million in Venture Funds

    13 January 2015. Ginger.io, a company in San Francisco developing smartphone apps for monitoring mental state and wellness, raised $20 million in its second venture financing cycle. The new funding was led by first-round investors Khosla Ventures and True Ventures, with participation by undisclosed new investors. Ginger.io, a spin-off from human dynamics research at MIT’s…

  • Fertility Science Company Raises $115 Million in IPO

    8 January 2015. OvaScience Inc., a developer of fertility treatments using a woman’s early-forming egg cells, issued its initial public offering of common stock, raising some $115 million. The Cambridge, Massachusetts company that trades on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol OVAS, issued 2.3 million shares yesterday priced at $50.00. At 12 noon on 8…

  • Novartis Licensing Biotechs’ Gene-Editing Technologies

    7 January 2015. Pharmaceutical maker Novartis is licensing technologies from two biotechnology companies that enable the editing of human genomes to cure disease. Financial details of the agreements with Caribou Biosciences Inc. in Berkeley, California and Intellia Therapeutics in Cambridge, Massachusetts were not disclosed, but involve equity investments, initial payments and research support, and milestone…

  • RNA Therapies Company Gains $450M in Venture Funds

    5 January 2015. Moderna Therapeutics, a developer of medications that use genetic material to produce therapeutic proteins in the body, raised $450 million in its third announced venture financing round. The Cambridge, Massachusetts biotechnology company says existing investors AstraZeneca and Alexion Pharmaceuticals joined with new participants Viking Global Investors LP, Invus, RA Capital Management, and…

  • 3-D Tissue Assembly System Designed

    22 December 2014. Medical and engineering researchers at Brown University in Providence developed a system that puts together synthetic tissue components into larger tissue assemblies, a step in the creation of synthetic organs. A description of the system from the lab of Brown bioengineering professor Jeffrey Morgan was published on Saturday in the journal Tissue…

  • Juno Therapeutics Raises $265 Million in IPO

    19 December 2014. Juno Therapeutics, a biotechnology company spun-off from research labs in Seattle and New York, raised some $265 million yesterday in its initial public stock offering. The Seattle enterprise developing cancer therapies that harness the immune system issued 11 million shares of common stock priced at $24.00, and trades on the Nasdaq exchange…

  • Autoimmune Therapy Developer Raises $23M in Early Funds

    18 December 2014. Padlock Therapeutics, a biotechnology company creating treatments for diseases where the immune system attacks the body, gained $23 million in its first venture funding round. Financing for the Cambridge, Massachusetts enterprise was led by Atlas Venture, with participation from Index Ventures, MS Ventures, and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, the company’s venture…

  • Simpler, Lens-Free Microscope Developed

    18 December 2014. Engineers and medical researchers at University of California in Los Angeles designed a new type of microscope that combines holograms with computational techniques to generate images of pathology samples with quality comparable to lens-type microscopes. The team led by electrical and biomedical engineering professor Aydogan Ozcan published its findings yesterday in the…

  • Eye Tracking System Devised to Diagnose Brain Injuries

    17 December 2014. Researchers at New York University Medical Center designed a technology that spots brain injuries in patients by tracking their eye movements while watching a few minutes of videos. The team led by neuroscience and physiology professor Uzma Samadani, with colleagues from other NYU departments and VA New York Harbor Healthcare System, published…

  • Spin-Off Building Simplifed Signal Processing Connections

    16 December 2014. An engineering lab at Columbia University in New York is spinning off a new company aiming to design simpler connections between analog and digital signals as systems get smaller and performance becomes more demanding. Seamless Devices Inc., founded by electrical engineering professor Peter Kinget and former graduate student Jayanth Kuppambatti, began in…