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Cancer Immunotherapy Start-Up Completes $176M Funding Round
25 April 2014. Juno Therapeutics, a biotechnology start-up company in Seattle, completed its first round of venture financing, raising $176 million from private investors and not-for-profit research institutes. The company started in December 2013 with a stake of $120 million, but announced in January 2014 it planned to expand its financing beyond an original target…
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Simple, Low-Cost Method Adds Microscope Lens to Smartphone
25 April 2014. Engineers at Australian National University in Canberra devised an inexpensive process to make an add-on lens that turns a smartphone into a high-powered microscope. The team led by ANU’s Woei Ming (Steve) Lee published its technique in the May 2014 issue of the journal Biomedical Optics Express. The university filed for a…
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Genome Editing Start-Up Secures $25 Million in First Round
24 April 2014. Biopharmaceutical start-up company CRISPR Therapeutics in Basel, Switzerland raised $25 million in its first funding round. The company develops engineered gene therapies with a technology developed by one of its scientific founders, and is backed in this round by Versant Ventures, a venture capital company in Menlo Park, California. CRISPR Therapeutics’ technology…
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Electro-Gene Therapy with Cochlear Implant Boosts Hearing
24 April 2014. Researchers at University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia delivered genetic material with electric impulses into cochlear implants that improves the quality of hearing to nearly normal in deaf lab animals. The team led by UNSW’s Gary Housley published its findings in today’s issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine (paid…
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Touch Screen Data Visualization App Developed for iPad
23 April 2014. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh designed an app for the Apple iPad that allows data stored in worksheets to be manipulated on a touch screen with fingers. Ph.D. candidate Jeffrey Rzeszotarski and computer science professor Niki Kittur will discuss their app, called Kinetica, at next week’s ACM CHI Conference…
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FDA Proposes Accelerated Medical Device Approval Process
23 April 2014. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposed yesterday a change in its approval processes for devices that meet unfilled treatment or diagnostic needs of patients with serious medical conditions. The Expedited Access Pre-market Approval Application, says the agency, is designed to speed not only the approval of new medical devices, but also…
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Most Americans Favor Contraceptives Required in Health Plans
22 April 2014. A nationwide survey shows about 7 in 10 Americans support birth control medications being required in health insurance plans. The survey, conducted in November 2013 by a team at University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is reported today online in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Affordable Care Act includes…
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Gecko-Inspired Adhesive Sticks to Wide Range of Materials
18 April 2014. Materials scientists and biologists at University of Massachusetts in Amherst developed an adhesive technology that attaches heavy loads to a variety of surfaces, yet can still be easily removed and reused. The journal Advanced Materials published yesterday online the work of the team led by polymer scientist Alfred Crosby (paid subscription required).…
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Patent Awarded for Unwanted Internal Tissue Removal Device
18 April 2014. Savonas Inc., a medical technology accelerator in Sausalito, California, received a patent for a device that safely removes unwanted biological material from internal body cavities during minimally invasive surgeries. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted patent number 8,696,621 on 15 April 2014 to two inventors, including Savonas’s CEO Larry Gerrans. The…
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Health Care Accelerator Raises $7M for New Initiatives
17 April 2014. Healthbox Global Partners LLC, a Chicago-based business accelerator in the health care industry, says it raised $7 million to fund its operations in six cities in the U.S. as well as support new business models for encouraging innovation. Healthbox is a joint venture of Intermountain Healthcare, a health delivery system in Utah;…