BSD Medical Licenses Hyperthermic Therapy from Duke to Treat Breast Cancer
BSD Medical last week said that it has signed an exclusive agreement with Duke University to license patents related to Duke’s treatment system for primary breast cancer using hyperthermia therapy.
BSD, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, said that the treatment system has been used and tested at Duke University Medical Center over the past several years, and that it intends to integrate the technology with its current BSD-2000 and BSD-500 hyperthermia systems.
Hyperthermia therapy is used to kill cancer cells directly with heat and to increase the effectiveness of companion treatments. The technology will be used to complement radiation therapy, chemotherapy, and heat-released, targeted liposome drug delivery, BSD said.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
CardiffUniversity Spinout Q Chip Lands $4M in Financing for PCR Prep Tech
Q Chip, a spinout of Cardiff University in Wales that makes bead-based reagents for DNA testing, has landed £2 million ($4 million) in new financing from previous and new investors, one of its backers said last week.
Biofusion, an intellectual property commercialization company that has agreements with Cardiff University and the University of Sheffield, said that it invested £125,000 in the funding round, raising its stake in Q Chip to 10 percent.
Other previous investors who backed Q Chip in this round included E-Synergy’s Early Growth Fund and John Moulton, managing partner of Alchemy Partners.
New investors include Forum des Entrepreneurs, an angel investor group based in Geneva; the Sustainable Technology Fund, based in London; and Finance Wales.
Earlier this year, Q Chip launched ReaX, a bead-based reagent kit for PCR sample prep. According to Biofusion, ReaX eliminates handling errors in PCR analysis and can reduce the time required for PCR set-up by up to 90 percent.
UK Biotech Napo Pharma Buys License for Anti-Diarrheal from UCSF
London-based Napo Pharmaceuticals has purchased a license to technology from the University of California, San Francisco, to develop second-generation products against secretary diarrhea, often caused by HIV infection, irritable bowel syndrome, and other indications, the company said last week.
The technology, a cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator, is being developed by Alan Verkman, professor of medicine and physiology at UCSF.
Under the terms of the agreement, Napo will receive an exclusive, royalty-bearing worldwide license with sublicense rights. It will pay an undisclosed conventional fee and a license maintenance fee, as well as various milestone and royalty payments upon commercialization.
Exubrio Launches Web-Based IP Publishing Service
Exubrio Group, a marketing firm based in Buffalo, NY, has launched a web-based service to support patent and technology databases at university technology transfer offices.
The software, called SeekIP Online, allows tech-transfer offices to publish their licensable technologies online.
Exubrio said in a statement that SeekIP Online takes “carefully selected portions” of existing published IP data and makes them more widely available online.
Robert Klingensmith, president and CIO of Exubrio, first developed the service for the University of Rochester, the company said. Virginia Tech University is the company’s second customer.
PLSG Invests $350K in Local Biotech Startups, Including Carnegie Mellon, UPitt Spinouts
The Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse, a public-private partnership that corrals start-up investment capital for Pittsburgh-area life sciences businesses, said last week that it has invested a total of $350,000 in three local companies: Celsense, Glucose Sensing Technologies, and Falcon Genomics.
PLSG invested $100,000 each in Celsense, a Carnegie Mellon University spinout that is developing imaging technology to monitor transplanted cells; and Glucose Sensing Technologies, which is developing a colorimetric sensor for glucose monitoring developed at the University of Pittsburgh.
PLSG has also invested $150,000 in Falcon Genomics to support validation of the company's Cancer BioChip System, which PLSG said is "a high-throughput assay system for individualized cancer target identification and validation using silencing RNA." Falcon Genomics’ technology is not based on university research, a company spokesperson said.
Argentis Licenses Bovine Collagen Systemic Sclerosis Treatment from U of Tennessee
Argentis Pharmaceuticals last week said that it has licensed intellectual property related to the use of solubulized type 1 native bovine collagen from the University of Tennessee to develop a treatment for systemic sclerosis and other fibrosing diseases.
Argentis, based in Memphis, Tenn., said that the agreement gives it the rights to the treatment as well as the processes involved in manufacturing the pharmaceutical product.
The use of orally administered, highly purified native bovine type 1 collagen for treating SSc was developed by Arnold Postlethwaite, director of the division of connected tissue disease; and Andrew Kang, professor of medicine in rheumatology, both at the UT Health Science Center.
The collagen treatment has completed a National Institutes of Health-funded, 168-patient, double-blind Phase II clinical trial with 13 major rheumatology centers in the US.
Financial terms of the licensing agreement were not disclosed.