Science and Enterprise

Tag: biotechnology

  • Merck to Offer Biotech Funding, Incubator in Israel

    The global pharmaceutical company Merck in Darmstadt, Germany has opened the Merck Serono Israel Bioincubator Fund, to support Israeli biotech and materials science start up companies. Merck’s chairman Karl-Ludwig Kley announced the initiative yesterday during meetings with officials in Israel. Merck’s incubator program covers pharmaceuticals, life sciences, and high-performance materials. The program will offer start…

  • Yale, Gilead Sciences to Collaborate on Cancer Therapies

    Gilead Sciences Inc., a biopharmaceutical company in Foster City, California and Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut agreed on a multi-year research collaboration for the discovery of new cancer therapies. Gilead will have the first option to license Yale’s findings that result from the collaboration. The research effort will initially span four years…

  • Patent Awarded for Protein Biomarker Cancer Screening

    Van Andel Research Institute (VARI), a biomedical research institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Gentel Biosciences, a biotechnology company in Madison, Wisconsin received a patent for their process to  profile changes in proteins binding to antibodies in test arrays. This process can screen for biomarkers indicating early stages of cancer, including liver and pancreatic cancers…

  • Organic Nanoparticle in Development for Cancer Drug Delivery

    A research team at Ontario Cancer Institute in Toronto, Canada have created an organic nanoparticle that they say can potentially change the way tumors are treated. Their findings appear online in the journal Nature Materials (paid subscription required). The researchers, led by the institute’s Gang Zheng (pictured left), say these new nanoscale particles — 1…

  • Clinical Trial Underway for Seasonal/H1N1 Vaccine

    Medicago Inc., a biotechnology company in Quebec City, Canada has begun a phase I clinical trial of its H1N1 influenza vaccine candidate in the United States. The trial tests the drug’s safety, tolerability, and capacity to induce an immune response, with results expected in three months. The randomized, double-blind, multicenter, active- and placebo-controlled dose-ranging study…

  • Finance Friday: 18 March 2011

    Here are recent angel and venture finance transactions for science- and engineering-based companies, as reported by Xconomy and Venture Capital Reporter. Biomedical/Life Sciences Advanced Animal Diagnostics in Durham, North Carolina raised $11 million in equity funding with Intersouth Partners and Novartis Venture Funds, the venture capital arm of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and others. Chronix Biomedical in San Jose,…

  • Early Trial Indicates Stem Cells Can Reverse Heart Damage

    Researchers from University of Miami in Florida and BioCardia, a cardiac device manufacturer in San Carlos, California have shown that stem cells injected into enlarged hearts can reduce heart size, reduce scar tissue, and improve function to injured heart areas. The results of this small trial appear in the journal Circulation Research, published by the…

  • E. Coli Engineered to Produce High-Volume Biofuel

    Researchers at University of California in Los Angeles have engineered the bacteria E. coli to produce butanol, a type of alcohol that can substitute directly for gasoline in today’s car motors, and in greater quantities than before. The team published its findings earlier this month in the online edition of the journal Applied and Environmental…

  • CDC Awards Grants to Reduce Health Care Infections

    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded $10 million for new research to five academic medical centers to develop and test new ways to reduce infections in health care settings. CDC estimates that 1 out of 20 hospitalized patients will acquire an infection, including drug-resistant infections, while receiving health care treatment for…

  • U.K., Indian Spin Offs to Partner on Drug Discovery

    InhibOx Ltd. in Oxford, U.K. and COSMIC Discoveries in Hyderabad, India, signed a partnership to offer drug discovery services combining their computational, medicinal, and synthetic chemistry capabilities. Both companies are spin-off enterprises of academic or research institutions — Oxford University and the Institute of Life Sciences, respectively. InhibOx provides computational drug discovery services, and has…