Archive for the 'Nanotechnology' Category
July 29th, 2010 by admin
Milestone payments are becoming an increasingly familiar aspect of many biotech deals, as buyers try to mitigate the risks inherent with big purchases. Take Celgene’s $2.9 billion buyout of Abraxis; the biotech giant set aside $650 million in milestone payments if Abraxis’ key drug Abraxane hit certain goals. “These structures are a great way for buyer and seller to share the risk that’s related to drug development,” says analyst Brett Skolnik. Milestones also encourage buyer and seller to look beyond the merger, making it more likely the deal will be beneficial to both sides in the long term.
Continue reading ‘Milestones Mitigate Risk in Biotech Deals’
July 2nd, 2010 by admin
Craig Venter has never been reluctant to credit himself for a lead role in sequencing the human genome. And he’s certainly not the least bit shy about placing a high value on the overall significance of the work. “I think it’s far more important than walking on the Moon; not much has happened since walking on the Moon,” he tells the BBC on the tenth anniversary of the grand achievement, which took 2,000 scientists more than 10 years and $2.7 billion to accomplish.
Continue reading ‘Importance of Human Genome Sequencing Still Debated – 10 Years Later’
May 21st, 2010 by admin
In a single day, a solitary grad student at a lab bench can produce more simple logic circuits than the world’s entire output of silicon chips in a month. So says a Duke University engineer, who believes that the next generation of these logic circuits at the heart of computers will be produced inexpensively in almost limitless quantities. The secret is that instead of silicon chips serving as the platform for electric circuits, computer engineers will take advantage of the unique properties of DNA, that double-helix carrier of all life’s information.
Continue reading ‘DNA Could be Backbone of Next-Generation Logic Chips’
May 11th, 2010 by admin
The recently enacted healthcare reform legislation provides up to $1 billion in tax credits and cash grants for life sciences companies with 250 or fewer employees that have made or will make “qualified investments” in “qualifying therapeutic discovery projects” during 2009 and 2010. Credits and grants will be awarded through a competitive application process which is expected to commence on or before May 21, 2010.
Continue reading ‘Biotech Companies Qualify for $1B in Cash Grants’
May 6th, 2010 by admin
Researchers at Stanford University have created a nanoscale probe that can be implanted into a cell wall without damaging the wall. The probe can then be used to listen to electrical signals within the cell, as well as possibly provide a way to attach neural prosthetics or to insert medication inside the cell.
Continue reading ‘Nanoscale Probe May Help Insert Medication into Cell Wall’
April 30th, 2010 by admin
Scientists from Buffalo, Cleveland, and Oklahoma City made a huge step toward making the blind see, and they did it by using a form of gene therapy that does not involve the use of modified viruses. In a research report published in the April 2010 print issue of The FASEB Journal, scientists describe how they used a non-viral, synthetic nanoparticle carrier to improve and save the sight of mice with retinitis pigmentosa, an inherited disease characterized by progressive vision loss and eventual blindness.
Continue reading ‘Toward Making the Blind See: Gene Therapy Restores Vision in Mice’
April 12th, 2010 by admin
A team of McGill Chemistry Department researchers led by Dr. Hanadi Sleiman has achieved a major breakthrough in the development of nanotubes — tiny “magic bullets” that could one day deliver drugs to specific diseased cells. Sleiman explains that the research involves taking DNA out of its biological context. So rather than being used as the genetic code for life, it becomes a kind of building block for tiny nanometre-scale objects.
Continue reading ‘DNA Nanotechnology: ‘Magic Bullets’ Breakthrough Offers Promising Applications in Medicine’
March 10th, 2010 by admin
Personalized medicine holds tremendous promise for drugmakers, clinicians and patients alike – the market is estimated at about $232 billion and is projected to grow 11 percent annually, according to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers’ report. But it also presents players with opportunities and challenges–both on the commercial and regulatory fronts.
Continue reading ‘Experts Discuss Challenges, Promises of Personalized Medicine’
February 19th, 2010 by admin
Using lasers and nanoparticles, scientists at Rice University have discovered a new technique for singling out individual diseased cells and destroying them with tiny explosions. The scientists used lasers to make “nanobubbles” by zapping gold nanoparticles inside cells. In tests on cancer cells, they found they could tune the lasers to create either small, bright bubbles that were visible but harmless or large bubbles that burst the cells.
Continue reading ‘Physicists Kill Cancer with ‘Nanobubbles’’
February 3rd, 2010 by admin
Many different cell types can be cultivated in a petri dish. Unfortunately, turning them into organs is substantially more difficult. It also tends to be difficult to cultivate cells that will function in a way that is similar to normal tissue function. This is an especially critical issue when it comes to heart cells. Recently, researchers at Johns Hopkins in conjunction with researchers in South Korea found a way to use special grooves in nanochips to encourage heart cells to stimulate growing cardiac tissue.
Continue reading ‘Nanotechnology Improves Laboratory Based Heart Cell Growth’
