Science and Enterprise

Tag: biotechnology

  • Trial of ALS Stem Cell Treatment Reports First Results

    Researchers from the biotechnology company Neuralstem in Rockville, Maryland and three universities report that an early clinical trial of transplanted spinal cord stem cells to treat amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) shows the 12 patients were able to tolerate the treatment without long-term complications. The team reports its findings online in the…

  • European Patent Office Filings, Awards Gain in 2011

    The European Patent Office, based in Munich, says the number of patent applications and awards increased in 2011, with applications from Asia now making up about a third of the total. The largest single technical field among applications was medical technology, which had almost as many filings in 2011 as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology combined. EPO…

  • Nanoscale DNA Sequencing Process Developed

    Physicists at University of Washington in Seattle and microbiologists from University of Alabama at Birmingham have developed a sensor with the ability to read the sequence of DNA one strand at a time. A description of their research, with implications for inexpensive DNA sequencing and personalized medicine,  appears in this week’s issue of the journal…

  • Private Equity Company Founds $50M Biologics Start-Up

    Celtic Therapeutics, a private equity company in the U.S. and Europe, has started a new company to bring to market therapies based on antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) that bind to and kill cells with the targeted properties. The new company, known as ADC Therapeutics and based in Lausanne, Switzerland will have an initial investment of…

  • Blood Biomarker Can Help Predict Imminent Heart Attack Risks

    Research conducted by Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California discovered a potential biomarker found in a patient’s blood that can help predict if that person is at imminent risk of a heart attack. The findings of Scripps’s Eric Topol and colleagues appear in this week’s issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine (paid subscription…

  • GSK, Johnson & Johnson Join in Life Science Venture Fund

    The London-based venture capital company Index Ventures unveiled a new investment fund for early-stage life sciences companies, with pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline and Janssen, a division of Johnson & Johnson, among the investors. The Index Life VI fund, valued at €150 million ($US230 million), is the first for Index Ventures devoted solely to the life sciences.…

  • European Autism Research Consortium Launched

    An international coalition of pharmaceutical companies, universities, and advocacy organizations aims to discover new drugs to battle autism spectrum disorder, a collection of conditions affecting social interaction and communication. The project known as European Autism Interventions: A Multicentre Study for Developing New Medications (EU-AIMS) is considered the largest single grant for autism research in the…

  • Osteoporosis Drug Developer Secures $28M in Series B Round

    Tarsa Therapeutics Inc., a Philadelphia-based developer of drugs to treat osteoporosis, has completed $28 million in new series B financing, the second round of funding after initial start-up. The financing package, announced on Friday, is led by a new investor in the company, Foresite Capital. The funding is expected to support the next commercialization and…

  • NIH, Eli Lilly to Partner on Drug Effects Profiles

    National Institutes of Health and Eli Lilly and Company will produce a public resource that catalogs the effects of thousands of approved and investigational medicines in a variety of testing systems. Biological profiles of these medicines and molecules are expected to help biomedical researchers better predict treatment outcomes and improve drug development. NIH’s new National…

  • U.S. Patent Awarded for Isobutanol Production Process

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted Gevo Inc. in Englewood, Colorado, a maker of biofuels from renewable feedstocks, a patent for its process of producing isobutanol with reduced accumulation of by-products. Patent no. 8,133,715, “Reduced By-Product Accumulation for Improved Production of Isobutanol,” was awarded today to 12 inventors and assigned to Gevo. Isobutanol…