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Upwind Medical Partners to Create $8 Million Early-Stage Fund

billp — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:49:04 +0000

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.

University TTOs Urged to Embrace Culture Shift for Start-Ups

billp — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:44:47 +0000

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.

Artificial Chemotaxis May Direct Drug Delivery

billp — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:51:50 +0000

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.

Method Stabilizes Vaccines at Tropical Temperatures

billp — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 14:47:35 +0000

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.

Obama’s ‘Restrained’ 2011 Budget Would Not Freeze NIH February 01, 2010

billp — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:32:10 +0000

February 01, 2010

By a GenomeWeb staff reporter

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – In its budget plan for 2011, the White House today said it will seek a $1 billion, or a 3.2 percent, increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health, even though the overall budget for the fiscal year plans a freeze on non-military discretionary spending as part of an effort to reign in the federal deficit.

“I think in this restrained budget the investment of $1 billion shows that the president sees research as a priority,” Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a press conference outlining her department’s budget today.
President Obama’s NIH budget would rise in 2011 to $32.9 billion from this year’s budget of $31.9 billion.

Imaging Single Molecules

billp — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:29:46 +0000

December 2009/January 2010

By Jeanene Swanson

Just how the cytosolic protein retinoic acid inducible-gene I detects viral RNA and elicits an antiviral immune response isn’t known. Solving the mystery of how it goes about its business is a big focus of Su-A Myong’s lab at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. One of the strongest investigative tools she has is single molecule fluorescence detection. Following up on work from Japanese scientists, who in 2004 discovered the antiviral receptor function of RIG-I, an RNA helicase that can detect replicating double-stranded RNA viruses and subsequently activate immune signaling pathways in the host cell, Myong developed a technique to observe the activity of this protein at the single molecule level.

Informatics Careers Take Shape in Translational and Clinical Research

billp — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:08:05 +0000

CTSciNet

By Brian Vastag January 22, 2010

The field of clinical research informatics–the art and science of improving information flow during clinical studies–is exploding, driving demand for those so skilled. It’s an area that is “just solidifying as a field, and there’s a lot of work out there,” says Peter Embi of the University of Cincinnati Center for Health Informatics, in CTSciNet, the clinical and translational science network.

Improving information flow during trials, creating software to alert intake coordinators when eligible patients are recorded in a hospital data warehouse, and designing systems that move patient data from bedside monitors into research databases are some of the assignments being tackled by clinical informatics specialists.

Women Researchers Less Likely to Get Major Federal Funding Grants

billp — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:04:57 +0000

Posted December 4, 2009

Jagsi R. Ann Intern Med. 2009;151:804-811.

Women researchers who are awarded competitive early career National Institutes of Health awards are less likely than their male counterparts to go on to receive major funding awards.

Researchers conducted a study of 2,783 researchers who had received highly competitive early career awards called K08 and K23. These awards provide funding that protects researcher’s time and include a mentoring component to help nurture a young clinician-scientist’s career.

Oncology R&D Challenges & Opportunities

billp — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:52:09 +0000

Life Science Leader, January 2010

Cliff Mintz Ph.D.

Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is one of only a handful of biotechnology companies that was built almost exclusively on a genomics and bioinformatics technology platform. Despite modest beginnings in 1993, the company has transformed itself from a fledgling genomics startup into a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company. Its flagship product is VELCADE (bortezomib) for Injection, an FDA-approved treatment for multiple myeloma and relapsed mantle cell lymphoma. In May 2008, the company was acquired by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company, and currently operates as an independent subsidiary known as Millennium: The Takeda Oncology Company.

One of the scientists and executives who helped transform Millennium into a world-class oncology company is Nancy Simonian, M.D. Dr. Simonian is currently Millennium’s chief medical officer and has responsibility for the company’s clinical development programs, pharmacovigilance, regulatory affairs, and development project management.

Women In Biopharma: Analyzing The Glass Ceiling

billp — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:49:48 +0000

Life Science Leader, January 2010

Suzanne Elvidge

Women make up approximately half of the world’s population, but have traditionally supplied a smaller proportion of the workforce. This has been changing over the years, and by October 2009, there was a breakthrough in women’s employment — according to a report by the Center for American Progress and Maria Shriver, women made up half of the U.S. workforce for the first time in history.