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Blood Disease Start-Up Lands $40.7M in Venture Funding
Global Blood Therapeutics Inc., a biotechnology company in San Francisco launched today with $40.7 million in funding from venture capital company Third Rock Ventures. The company plans to develop small molecule drugs to treat genetic blood disorders, such as sickle cell disease. The company’s founders include three biomedical researchers from University of California in San…
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Georgia Tech/Emory Spin-Off Gains SBIR Funding
A spin-off company founded by faculty at the biomedical engineering department shared by Georgia Tech and Emory University in Atlanta has received a small-business grant for its technology that protects the delivery of cell-based therapies, such as stem cells. SpherIngenics Inc., also in Atlanta, was awarded the two-year $730,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding…
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Novo Nordisk, Foundation to Partner on Type 1 Diabetes
JDRF, a foundation supporting research on type 1 diabetes, and the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk will partner on studies of the autoimmune process that plays a key role in type 1 diabetes. Financial details of the collaboration were not disclosed. Type 1 diabetes is sometimes called insulin-dependent, immune-mediated, or juvenile-onset diabetes, although it can…
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Patent Awarded for Curry Compound as Drug Ingredient
A patent has been awarded for compounds based on a substance in the spices curry and turmeric, to use in treatments for a number of diseases, including some cancers. Patent number 8,198,323 was awarded yesterday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to nine inventors, and assigned to University of Rochester in New York, University…
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Five More Pharma Companies Join NIH Drug Extension Project
A program at National Institutes of Health (NIH) to find new uses for currently tested drugs gained five more pharmaceutical company participants. Abbott, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen Pharmaceutical (a division of Johnson & Johnson), and Sanofi will take part in the Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules program, run by National Center for Advancing…
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DARPA Awards $8 Million Synthetic Biology Contract
The Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded an $8 million contract to Amyris Inc. of California for tools to expand the scope of Amyris’s industrial synthetic biology technology across various biological platforms and cell types. DARPA awarded the contract under its Living Foundries research program. With the Living Foundries program, DARPA…
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Glucose Regulation Shown to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes Onset
Researchers at University of Colorado in Aurora and four other institutions in the U.S. have found people with pre-diabetes who regulate their blood glucose levels are less likely to develop diabetes. The findings of the team led by Leigh Perreault (pictured left) are published online in the journal The Lancet; paid subscription required. According to…
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Rapid Cooling Adds Shelf Life to Fresh Eggs
Food scientists at Purdue University in Indiana have shown that rapid cooling of just-laid eggs adds weeks to their shelf life. The process for achieving these results is described in the June issue of the journal Poultry Science (paid subscription required). Kevin Keener, a food science professor at Purdue, led the research, which uses liquid…
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GE Healthcare, CSIRO to Partner on Alzheimer’s Diagnostics
GE Healthcare, a division of General Electric Company, and CSIRO, Australia’s science agency, will collaborate on the development of imaging tools to better predict people at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. CSIRO is the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, which is funding the Australian Imaging, Biomarker & Lifestyle Flagship Study of Ageing (AIBL).…
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Companies, University Team-Up on Drug Side Effects Model
Researchers at University of California in San Francisco, with colleagues from San Francisco start-up SeaChange Pharmaceuticals and the drug company Novartis, have devised a computer model that predicts adverse reactions to drug compounds, based on the chemistry of the drugs and known molecular causes of side effects. The team’s findings appear online in the journal…