The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation said this week that it has awarded 20 one-year research grants, worth nearly $1.6 million in total, to researchers investigating new approaches to treating the disease.
Among the award winners is Jennifer Lisa Bromberg-White, of the Van Andel Research Institute. White was awarded a $50,000 fellowship by MMRF for her project entitled “Validation of Melphalan-Resistance Targets In Vitro in Human Multiple Myeloma Cell Lines Utilizing a Retroviral-Based RNAi Delivery System.”
“The MMRF is extremely proud to support innovative efforts in the most promising areas of science, including pivotal research that contributed to the approval of Velcade last year,” Anne Quinn Young, program director of the MMRF, said in a statement.
Techno Venture Management, a US-German venture capital company that holds a stake in Sirna Therapeutics, has promoted Stefan Fischer to general partner of corporate finance and Annegret de Baey to principal in the life science team. The moves took effect July 1.
Additionally, TVM expanded its life science research team in Boston by appointing Jens Eckstein as a principal and Bong Koh as associates.
Fischer joined TVM in September 2000 after three years as a consultant in the corporate finance department of KPMG Deutsche Treuhand-Gesellschaft. He will concentrate on all issues of corporate finance involving TVM portfolio companies.
De Baey joined TVM in April 2001. She is responsible for identifying and assessing investment opportunities and the analysis of the scientific background of business ideas. She came to TVM from Micromet, where she led a research group on the development of therapeutic vaccines.
Before joining TVM in 2004, Eckstein was director of lead discovery and research IT at Enanta Pharmaceuticals, as well as head of research groups in biochemistry, structural biology, and computational chemistry at Mitotix, which is now called GPC-Biotech.
Koh, who joined TVM in April, was previously a biopharmaceutical R&D strategy analyst at The Boston Consulting Group.