Month: September 2014

  • Calico Licenses Neurodegenerative Disease Compounds

    11 September 2014. California Life Company, better known as Calico, is licensing for development compounds shown to protect nerve cells in lab animals against degeneration and injury. Financial terms of the deal between Southwestern Medical Center and 2M Company in Dallas, with Calico, a one-year old company backed by Google, were not disclosed. A paper…

  • Inappropriate Antibiotic Use Costing U.S. $163 Million

    11 September 2014. A review of hospital records over 4 years identifies widespread overuse of antibiotics, leading to an estimated $163 million in annual avoidable costs in the U.S. The study by analysts from Premier, a corporate health care industry alliance in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta appears…

  • Patents, Start-Ups Increase in 2013 at U.S. University Labs

    10 September 2014. The numbers of patents filed, licensing income, and start-ups generated by research at U.S. universities last year all increased, according to an annual survey conducted by the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), the organization of university staff responsible for research commercialization. The survey covers 202 responding institutions of 299 contacted, or…

  • Re-Analyzed Clinical Trial Data Often Draw New Conclusions

    10 September 2014. Researchers at Stanford University in California, with colleagues in Canada, analyzed decades of clinical trials to find a large proportion of the small number of studies where data were re-analyzed came to different conclusions from the original authors. The team led by Stanford medical professor John Ioannidis published its findings in today’s…

  • U.S. Patent Awarded for Freeze-Dried Vaccine Formulation

    9 September 2014. The technology making possible production and shipping of vaccines in a stable freeze-dried state received U.S. patent protection. Patent no. 8,808,710 was awarded last month by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to four inventors and assigned to University of Colorado. Soligenix Inc. in Princeton, New Jersey licensed the technology from University…

  • Advance Achieved in Replacement Kidney Blood Vessels

    9 September 2014. Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina succeeded in keeping open for 4 hours blood vessels in lab-made pig kidneys, a key step in developing replacement kidneys for patients needing transplants. The work is described in an article published last week in the journal Technology (registration required). The…

  • Grant Funding Crowdsourced Multiple Sclerosis Drug Trial

    8 September 2014. A grant from a National Institutes of Health agency is funding a crowdsourced clinical trial of a generic blood pressure drug to help treat multiple sclerosis. The $1.4 million grant from National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) is supporting an intermediate stage clinical study by Transparency Life Sciences LLC, a drug…

  • Synthetic Platelet-Like Particles Developed, Tested

    8 September 2014. Biomedical engineers and medical researchers designed and tested in the lab a new type of synthetic particle that acts like natural blood platelets to help heal bleeding. The team from Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University medical school, both in Atlanta, published its findings yesterday in the journal Nature Materials (paid…

  • Asthma/COPD Device Maker Lands $14.5M in Venture Funds

    5 September 2014. Propeller Health in Madison, Wisconsin, developer of a system to track respiratory disorder medications in real time, secured $14.5 million in its second round of venture financing. The funding round was led by venture investment company Safeguard Scientifics, with participation by the Social+Capital Partnership, Propeller Health’s previous funding source. The Propeller Health…

  • Coffee Genome Sequenced, Caffeine Enzymes Analyzed

    5 September 2014. An international team of researchers sequenced the genome of a major type of coffee that revealed the evolutionary pathway of this popular drink, and more details about caffeine, a main attraction of coffee. The team was led by Institute of Research for Development and National Sequencing Center, both in France, and University…