Tech Transfer e-News
March 10, 2010
Minneapolis-based Upwind Medical Partners is launching a $6 million to $8 million early-stage fund that will focus on commercializing IP from health care and research institutions such as the University of Minnesota (UMN), Wisconsin Alumni Research Fund (WARF), Allina Hospitals & Clinics, and Johns Hopkins Hospital. Founded by Jim O’Reilly, a former health care executive, software entrepreneur, and VC exec, Upwind hopes to create up to three companies a year and exit them in no more than four years. The goal is to create enough returns in a condensed time frame by focusing on IP with a clear path to market, and pouring some of the exit dollars back into the fund while also keeping investors happy, according to O’Reilly.
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Tech Transfer e-News
March 10, 2010
Start-ups are still the best way to commercialize university IP, according to David Lerner, a serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and director of the Venture Lab at Columbia University Tech Ventures. However, university TTOs should imitate the start-up culture in their deal-making. In a post on peHUB, the public forum for private equity, Lerner recounts two business paradigms outlined by Chris Dixon, an early-stage investor and founder of the web site Hunch. The first, Dixon explains on his blog, is a transactional/legalistic approach to business that exchanges labor for money in the form of a contractual relationship. The second approach to business is based on trust, verbal agreements, reputation, and “enforcement” by the community rather than the legal system. Start-ups, Dixon says, are overwhelmingly governed by the latter approach.
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PFQ
March 9, 2010
Oil droplets can navigate through a complex maze to seek a lower pH environment, researchers said, opening the possibility of a new way to target drug delivery. Their ability to move toward a more acidic environment suggests that this principle could be used to target cancer cells, which are more acidic than healthy cells, the lead researcher said.
“Cancer has a slightly lower pH than the rest of the body. So if you developed a ‘smart’ droplet that would seek low pH regions within the body, it would be a form of a very directed delivery,” said Bartosz Grzybowski, PhD, a professor of physical chemistry and chemical systems engineering at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.
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PFQ
March 9, 2010
Encasing dried vaccine vectors in a sugar glass kept them stable for at least six months at temperatures up to 45°C (113°F) with no degradation, researchers in England report. The vaccines, stored in a special holder, can be quickly reconstituted for injection, the researchers said.
“Previously, technologies like spray-drying and lyophilization have been employed to remove water and form glasses. However, these aggressive treatments can potentially damage living viruses. Our technology achieves drying (and glass formation at the same time) without any aggressive treatments, just at room temperature in a dry environment,” Matthew G. Cottingham, MBiochem, DPhil, senior virologist at the Jenner Institute of the University of Oxford, England, said in an e-mail to PFQ.
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