The explosion of genetic information in the past 20 years, from a combination of scientific discovery and massively increasing computer power, vastly increased our knowledge of the way disease progresses in the human body, making this type of information vital for diagnosis and treatments. Myriad Genetics, based in Salt Lake City, develops tests for hereditary risks of several types of cancer: breast, ovarian, colon and colorectal, melanoma (advanced skin cancer), lung and pancreatic cancer. The company's tests also can help guide a patient's individual chemotherapy dosing and toxicity tolerance, as well as predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Vanessa Kachadurian Bioscience merger of Myriad Genetics with Crescendo Biosciences
The explosion of genetic information in the past 20 years, from a combination of scientific discovery and massively increasing computer power, vastly increased our knowledge of the way disease progresses in the human body, making this type of information vital for diagnosis and treatments. Myriad Genetics, based in Salt Lake City, develops tests for hereditary risks of several types of cancer: breast, ovarian, colon and colorectal, melanoma (advanced skin cancer), lung and pancreatic cancer. The company's tests also can help guide a patient's individual chemotherapy dosing and toxicity tolerance, as well as predict the aggressiveness of prostate cancer.
Vanessa Kachadurian, Bioscience firm in Colorado raised $2.274 million in new funding
BOULDER - Mosaic Biosciences Inc. raised $2.274 million in new funding, according to a federal regulatory document.
In all, the Boulder-based company plans to raise $2.31 million in all in the latest funding round, according to the federal regulatory document. Company co-founder and president Marty Stanton did not immediately return a call requesting comment.
Mosaic makes a water-soluble gel that can be used to fill and heal wounds. The gel currently is going through testing required to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. It's made of polyethylene glycol, which also is used in cosmetics, drugs and food additives in the United States.
Stanton co-founded the company in 2009 with research colleagues at the University of Colorado-Boulder, including Pete Mariner, Kristi Anseth and Chris Bowman. The company licensed the gel substance for an undisclosed sum from Anseth's research lab at CU-Boulder, where it was developed over a period of five years.
The gel substance has biophysical and biochemical properties that support a patient's tissue structure. As a wound heals, the gel is taken over by healthy cells and dissolves into the body over a two-week period, according to Mariner.
The tissue-regeneration substance also can be used in bone regeneration and cartilage repair. It can be used on patients with bed sores, or as stem-cell therapy.
Stanton previously raised $1.3 million in venture capital funding in 2011. Well-known bioscience venture capital firms HealthCare Ventures in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Morganthaler Ventures in Menlo Park, California, with an office in Boulder, High Country Ventures in Boulder and Ganot Capital LLC in Hollywood, Florida, have all put money into the company in the past.
In all, the Boulder-based company plans to raise $2.31 million in all in the latest funding round, according to the federal regulatory document. Company co-founder and president Marty Stanton did not immediately return a call requesting comment.
Mosaic makes a water-soluble gel that can be used to fill and heal wounds. The gel currently is going through testing required to receive U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. It's made of polyethylene glycol, which also is used in cosmetics, drugs and food additives in the United States.
Stanton co-founded the company in 2009 with research colleagues at the University of Colorado-Boulder, including Pete Mariner, Kristi Anseth and Chris Bowman. The company licensed the gel substance for an undisclosed sum from Anseth's research lab at CU-Boulder, where it was developed over a period of five years.
The gel substance has biophysical and biochemical properties that support a patient's tissue structure. As a wound heals, the gel is taken over by healthy cells and dissolves into the body over a two-week period, according to Mariner.
The tissue-regeneration substance also can be used in bone regeneration and cartilage repair. It can be used on patients with bed sores, or as stem-cell therapy.
Stanton previously raised $1.3 million in venture capital funding in 2011. Well-known bioscience venture capital firms HealthCare Ventures in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Morganthaler Ventures in Menlo Park, California, with an office in Boulder, High Country Ventures in Boulder and Ganot Capital LLC in Hollywood, Florida, have all put money into the company in the past.
Vanessa Kachadurian Bioscience Firm in Kansas City rewarded for adding 230 jobs!!
This is what America is all about!!!
State incentives will help a global life sciences company create 230 new jobs in south Kansas City.
Catalent Pharma Solutions Inc., which has a 50-employee workforce at 10245 Hickman Mills Drive in Marion Business Park, will receive $2.65 million through the Missouri Quality Jobs program if it meets job and investment targets, said Amy Susan, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Economic Development.
Missouri Quality Jobs allows employers to retain the withholding taxes of eligible employees for a number of years.
Besides the 230 new jobs, the expansion calls for Catalent to invest $30 million in the south Kansas City site.
RELATED: Global pharma company will add 230 jobs in south KC
Based in Somerset, N.J., Catalent acquired Aptuit Inc.'s drug-development operations in Marion Business Park two years ago. Marion Business Park is the former home of Marion Laboratories and current home of Cerner Corp.'s Innovation Campus.
Gov. Jay Nixon and Kansas City Mayor Sly James are scheduled to visit the south Kansas City site Tuesday for a formal announcement of Catalent's expansion.
The expansion news is the latest of several positive economic development announcements involving Kansas City. Last month, Cerner confirmed plans to create as many as 15,000 new jobs as part of a $4.3 billion plan to redevelop the former Bannister Mall site, and Aviation Technical Services announced that it would create 500 jobs at Kansas City International Airport. Last week, Sedgwick LLP, an international law firm based in San Francisco, announced plans to create a new 100-job administrative center in Kansas City.
State incentives will help a global life sciences company create 230 new jobs in south Kansas City.
Catalent Pharma Solutions Inc., which has a 50-employee workforce at 10245 Hickman Mills Drive in Marion Business Park, will receive $2.65 million through the Missouri Quality Jobs program if it meets job and investment targets, said Amy Susan, a spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Economic Development.
Missouri Quality Jobs allows employers to retain the withholding taxes of eligible employees for a number of years.
Besides the 230 new jobs, the expansion calls for Catalent to invest $30 million in the south Kansas City site.
RELATED: Global pharma company will add 230 jobs in south KC
Based in Somerset, N.J., Catalent acquired Aptuit Inc.'s drug-development operations in Marion Business Park two years ago. Marion Business Park is the former home of Marion Laboratories and current home of Cerner Corp.'s Innovation Campus.
Gov. Jay Nixon and Kansas City Mayor Sly James are scheduled to visit the south Kansas City site Tuesday for a formal announcement of Catalent's expansion.
The expansion news is the latest of several positive economic development announcements involving Kansas City. Last month, Cerner confirmed plans to create as many as 15,000 new jobs as part of a $4.3 billion plan to redevelop the former Bannister Mall site, and Aviation Technical Services announced that it would create 500 jobs at Kansas City International Airport. Last week, Sedgwick LLP, an international law firm based in San Francisco, announced plans to create a new 100-job administrative center in Kansas City.
Vanessa Kachadurian Bioscience response of Oxidation in Cells
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new method for accurately measuring a key process governing a wide variety of cellular functions that may become the basis for a "health checkup" for living cells.
The NIST technique measures changes in a living cell's internal redox (reduction-oxidation) potential, a chemistry concept that expresses the favorability of reactions in which molecules or atoms either gain or lose electrons. Redox reactions are important to cell chemistry because they regulate many genes and the proteins they produce. An accurate measure of redox potential can provide insight into how well these genes are working, and in turn, whether or not the activities they control—such as differentiation and growth—are functioning normally.
To assess this, scientists customarily measure the levels of both the reduced (electrons added) and oxidized (electrons lost) forms of glutathione, a peptide the cell uses as an antioxidant. Glutathione in cells is found predominately in the reduced state, known as GSH, but some gets converted to the oxidized form, known as GSSG. A high amount of GSSG indicates a cell has suffered oxidative stress, a process believed to contribute to cell aging, breakdown, malfunction (such as cancer) and eventual death.
Unfortunately, traditional methods of obtaining this data are akin to an autopsy. The only way to measure the relative amounts of GSH and GSSG within a cell has been to rupture its membrane—killing it—and then examine the released contents.
The NIST team developed a way to measure GSH and GSSG levels in living cells in real time using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)spectroscopy, a technique that images individual molecules similar to how doctors use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to noninvasively view organs. "NMR has been shown in recent years to be a powerful tool for studying metabolites as they operate in living cells, so we felt it could work well as a noninvasive way to do the same for GSH and GSSG," says NIST research chemist Vytas Reipa.
In their proof-of-concept experiment,* the NIST researchers grew a mutant strain of yeast cells that could not manufacture their own glutathione in a medium containing the peptide tagged with a nitrogen isotope. This ensured that the only glutathione available in the cells would be detectable using NMR during its conversion from GSH to GSSG.
GSH and GSSG levels were measured by NMR for both cells at rest and under oxidative stress, and then used to calculate the changing intracellular redox potentials over time. The results showed, for the first time ever, that redox potential can serve as an indicator of how cells perform in response to oxidation in real time.
"We know that when oxidation tips the balance toward too much GSSG, we get a redox potential shifted more to the positive than it should be," Reipa explains. "A healthy cell compensates by reversing the process and when that happens, the redox potential shifts back to its original value. A sick cell, on the other hand, does not compensate and the value stays positive. Therefore, an accurate in-cell measurement of redox potential could one day help us determine how well cells can recover from oxidative stress and, as a result, give us a picture of the cell's overall health."
Currently, the NIST researchers are exploring other NMR-detectable peptides involved in reduction and oxidation processes to conduct studies with mammalian cells.
The NMR spectroscopy in this experiment was conducted at NIST's Gaithersburg, Md., facility in collaboration with NIST scientists at the Hollings Marine Laboratory (HML) in Charleston, S.C., and the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) in Rockville, Md.
Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST
The NIST technique measures changes in a living cell's internal redox (reduction-oxidation) potential, a chemistry concept that expresses the favorability of reactions in which molecules or atoms either gain or lose electrons. Redox reactions are important to cell chemistry because they regulate many genes and the proteins they produce. An accurate measure of redox potential can provide insight into how well these genes are working, and in turn, whether or not the activities they control—such as differentiation and growth—are functioning normally.
To assess this, scientists customarily measure the levels of both the reduced (electrons added) and oxidized (electrons lost) forms of glutathione, a peptide the cell uses as an antioxidant. Glutathione in cells is found predominately in the reduced state, known as GSH, but some gets converted to the oxidized form, known as GSSG. A high amount of GSSG indicates a cell has suffered oxidative stress, a process believed to contribute to cell aging, breakdown, malfunction (such as cancer) and eventual death.
Unfortunately, traditional methods of obtaining this data are akin to an autopsy. The only way to measure the relative amounts of GSH and GSSG within a cell has been to rupture its membrane—killing it—and then examine the released contents.
The NIST team developed a way to measure GSH and GSSG levels in living cells in real time using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)spectroscopy, a technique that images individual molecules similar to how doctors use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to noninvasively view organs. "NMR has been shown in recent years to be a powerful tool for studying metabolites as they operate in living cells, so we felt it could work well as a noninvasive way to do the same for GSH and GSSG," says NIST research chemist Vytas Reipa.
In their proof-of-concept experiment,* the NIST researchers grew a mutant strain of yeast cells that could not manufacture their own glutathione in a medium containing the peptide tagged with a nitrogen isotope. This ensured that the only glutathione available in the cells would be detectable using NMR during its conversion from GSH to GSSG.
GSH and GSSG levels were measured by NMR for both cells at rest and under oxidative stress, and then used to calculate the changing intracellular redox potentials over time. The results showed, for the first time ever, that redox potential can serve as an indicator of how cells perform in response to oxidation in real time.
"We know that when oxidation tips the balance toward too much GSSG, we get a redox potential shifted more to the positive than it should be," Reipa explains. "A healthy cell compensates by reversing the process and when that happens, the redox potential shifts back to its original value. A sick cell, on the other hand, does not compensate and the value stays positive. Therefore, an accurate in-cell measurement of redox potential could one day help us determine how well cells can recover from oxidative stress and, as a result, give us a picture of the cell's overall health."
Currently, the NIST researchers are exploring other NMR-detectable peptides involved in reduction and oxidation processes to conduct studies with mammalian cells.
The NMR spectroscopy in this experiment was conducted at NIST's Gaithersburg, Md., facility in collaboration with NIST scientists at the Hollings Marine Laboratory (HML) in Charleston, S.C., and the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) in Rockville, Md.
Source: National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST
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