Tag: licensing
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$50,000 Challenge Seeks Liver Disease Biomarkers
19 June 2015. A new challenge on InnoCentive asks for biomarkers indicating damage to the liver, conditions that today often require invasive procedures such as biopsies to diagnose. The competition has a total purse of $50,000 and a deadline for proposals of 17 August 2015. InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowdsourcing competitions for corporate…
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Trial Underway Testing Immunotherapy for Gout
10 June 2015. An early-stage clinical trial is recruiting patients to test the safety of a treatment for severe gout that harnesses the immune system, but still avoids unwanted immune responses. The trial is conducted by the biotechnology company Selecta Biosciences at two sites in the U.S.: Altoona, Pennsylvania and Dallas, Texas. Gout is a…
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Grant Funds Exosome Cancer Research, Optioned to Spin-Off
9 June 2015. A new $1.7 million grant from National Cancer Institute is funding research at University of New Mexico on harnessing exosomes as potential cancer therapies, with a spin-off company already optioning the technology for commercial development. The alliance between the university and spin-off company, Exovita Biosciences, includes an agreement between the university and…
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Biotech Adds Antibiotic Program, Raises $30 Million
8 June 2015. Spero Therapeutics, a developer of antibiotics, is adding a new class of anti-infection drugs to its pipeline, and raised another $30 million to its first venture funding round. The Cambridge, Massachusetts biotechnology company, a spin-off from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, was founded in April 2014 to develop therapies addressing the growing…
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FDA Approves Pediatric HIV Drug Formulation
5 June 2015. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved an application for a current HIV drug formulated to better treat infections in infants and young children, especially in limited resource regions. The formulation is a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir in pellet form designed to mix with food, and manufactured by the generic drug…
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Life Sciences Commercialization Firm to Crowdfund IPO
4 June 2015. Innovation Economy Corporation is going public by skipping the usual route of hiring an investment bank, and instead will use crowdfunding to attract investors to its initial public offering of stock. The Riverside, California enterprise, that goes by the trade name ieCrowd, licenses life science and health-related technologies from university research labs…
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Trial Shows Immunotherapy Reduces Rheumatoid Arthritis
4 June 2015. A clinical trial of an immune system therapy shows one treatment reduces levels of harmful immune activity and joint inflammation in people with rheumatoid arthritis. The early-stage trial led by researchers at University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia is reported yesterday in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease, where…
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Spin-Off Biotech Formed for Autoimmune Disorders
2 June 2015. Drug maker Astellas Pharma Inc. in Tokyo and Anokion SA, a biotechnology company in Lausanne, Switzerland, are forming Kanyos Bio Inc., a spin-off enterprise to develop therapy candidates for autoimmune diseases. The deal could bring Kanyos Bio, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as much as $760 million, as well as an equity investment…
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Patent Awarded for Plant Gene Sequence Engineering
27 May 2015. A patent for a genetic sequence derived from soybeans, but applicable through engineering to a range of plants, was granted to Ceres Inc., an agricultural biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, California. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted patent number 9,024,004, Sequence-determined DNA fragments encoding acetohydroxyacid synthase proteins, on 5 May 2015 to…
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Oxford Establishes £300M Spin-Off Capital Fund
15 May 2015. University of Oxford in the U.K. is creating a capital investment fund to help launch spin-off companies based on research from university labs. The £300 million ($US 472 million) fund will be managed by a new enterprise, Oxford Sciences Innovation plc, which will be the university’s preferred capital financier for businesses generated…