Science and Enterprise

Tag: biotechnology

  • Small Business Grant Awarded for Oral Hygiene Drug

    PolyMedix Inc., a biotechnology company in Radnor, Pennsylvania received a $986,000  Phase 2 small business grant from National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant supports development of  antimicrobial compounds for the treatment of oral candidiasis, a yeast infection affecting the lining of the mouth or tongue, through 31 August 2012. Under the first portion of…

  • Sanofi-aventis, Covance to Partner on Drug Development

    Covance Inc., a drug development services company in Princeton, New Jersey, announced today an agreement with French pharmaceutical company Sanofi-aventis to provide drug development services to Sanofi-aventis over the next 10 years, with payments ranging from $1.2 billion to $2.2 billion. As part of the agreement, Sanofi-aventis will sell its Porcheville, France and Alnwick, United…

  • Process Validated for Purifying Protein-Based Drugs

    Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, are using nuclear magnetic resonance to understand and improve the process of purifying drugs that use proteins, which are notoriously difficult to separate from other potentially deadly impurities. A team led by Steven Cramer, professor of polymer engineering at Rensselaer studied the process of multimodal chromatography…

  • U.K. Partnership to Research TB Testing Methods

    A collaboration between the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the U.K.’s national measurement institute in Teddington, England and Orla Protein Technologies, a biotech company in Newcastle upon Tyne, England has been awarded £91,000 ($US 144,000) by the U.K. Technology Strategy Board to investigate improved methods for the detection of tuberculosis (TB). The U.S. Centers for Disease…

  • Trial Shows Positive Results for Hodgkin Lymphoma Drug

    Seattle Genetics Inc., a biotech company in Bothell, Washington, and and Millennium, a developer of cancer drugs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, today released positive top-line results from a trial of their drug brentuximab vedotin. The drug is antibody-drug conjugate that works like an antibody carrying molecules toxic to cancer cells, targeted to CD30, a marker for…

  • FDA Gives Muscular Dystrophy Therapy Orphan Drug Status

    Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics (AMT), a biotechnology company in the Netherlands doing work in human gene therapy, said today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated its gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) as an orphan drug. In October 2009, a committee the European Medicines Agency also granted the therapy, known as…

  • Partnership to Develop Sensors for Wound Infections

    ECI Biotech, a developer of diagnostic sensors in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Systagenix, a medical device company specializing in wound care solutions based in the U.K., have agreed to produce sensors to improve the diagnosis and treatment of chronic wound infections. The agreement covers licensing and manufacturing of diagnostic wound sensors, which ECI Biotech says will…

  • NIH Awards Two Small Business Grants for Skin Disorders

    Signum Biosciences Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey received two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 grants by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, a division of the NIH, totaling over $684,000 for development of G-protein coupled receptor modulating therapeutics designed to treat common skin disorders. Phase 1 SBIR grants fund…

  • Academic, Industrial Researchers Enhance Nanospring Capabilities

    Researchers at Oregon State University in Corvallis and University of Idaho in Moscow, with colleagues from GoNano Technologies also in Moscow, loaded biological molecules onto a type of nanostructure called “nanosprings” that are able to maximize surface area in chemical processes operating on a micrometer scale. The researchers found a way to attach enzymes to…

  • Patent Awarded for One-Step Diesel Fuel Process

    Joule Unlimited Inc., a biotech company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said today it received a U.S. patent covering its process for converting sunlight and waste carbon dioxide (CO2) directly into liquid hydrocarbons that are fungible with conventional diesel fuel. Joule says it is the first to achieve and patent a direct, single-step, continuous process for the…