Rockville, Maryland’s Fina Biosolutions recently was awarded an SBIR grant to develop a genetically detoxified tetanus toxin as a carrier protein for conjugate vaccines.  The NIAID funded grant is for $289,000 and will use a mutant toxin engineered by Dr. Joseph Barbieri of the Medical College of Wisconsin.  FinaBio’s Scientific Director, Andrew Lees, noted “We are very appreciative of the help from BHI in securing this grant which will help us to commercialize a new genetically detoxified vaccine carrier protein that complements our existing conjugate vaccine portfolio.” FinaBio has created an E. coli strain with an oxidative intracellular environment that grows to very high densities and can express soluble disulfide bonded proteins. The mutant tetanus toxin will be produced in this E. coli strain and compared as vaccine carrier protein with the chemically detoxified protein.  Fina Bio received assistance from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. in preparing the SBIR grant application through its Federal Funding Assistance program.

This new program is specifically aimed at helping patients with Type 2 diabetes, who take medications to control their blood sugar levels.

Sonavex, a Baltimore-based medical device company, has announced a raise of $3M in financing including the first close of its Series A round led by Grey Sky Partners. Recently named Maryland’s 2016 Incubator Company of the Year, Sonavex is focused on improving surgical patient outcomes with point-of-care imaging technologies. Other organizations participating in this financing include CRCM Venture Capital, TEDCO, and the Abell Foundation. Award of a $750k Phase II SBIR grant from the National Science Foundation is also included in the financing. With this influx of capital, Sonavex will be advancing the commercialization of EchoSure, a Doppler ultrasound system, and developing additional ultrasound solutions currently in the company’s pipeline. The press release also announces the addition of Bill Niland, CEO of Harpoon Medical, and Bob Hallenbeck, former executive at Becton Dickinson, to Sonavex’s Board of Directors.

Sisu Global Health got more recognition for its device that recycles blood for use during surgery, winning the First Mile Innovation Challenge.

The competition, which was run by the Consortium of Affordable Medical Technologies (CAMTech), GE Sustainable Healthcare Solutions and MGH Global Health, sought applications from around the world that address health hardships in low and middle income countries. About 80 companies from 16 countries applied, according to an announcement.

Redox, a Madison, WI-based startup that develops digital tools that enable healthcare applications to access data from electronic health records systems, says it has raised $9 million from investors.

New York-based RRE Ventures led the Series B financing. Other participants in the funding round included return backers .406 Ventures (in Boston), HealthX Ventures (Madison), and Flybridge Capital Partners, which has offices in Boston and New York. .406 Ventures led Redox’s $3.5 million Series A round, which was announced in late 2015.

Since its inception, biotechnology has been preoccupied with virus filtration, the clearance of invasive and adventitious viruses from biopharmaceutical products. And now, far from waning, virus filtration is set to become even more important. Virus filtration, reports Markets and Markets, constitutes a global market that is growing 12% each

The NIH has awarded MIMETAS and the University of Pittsburgh a prestigious SBIR grant to develop a Liver-on-a-Chip platform for high throughput discovery and development. Accurate prediction of hepatotoxicity is a major problem in the development of new drugs leading to high development costs.  Animal hepatotoxicity testing is expensive, unsuited to high throughput and overall has unreliable concordance with human hepatotoxicity. MIMETAS scientists have teamed up with the University of Pittsburgh Drug Discovery Institute led by D. Lansing Taylor, Ph.D. to develop a liver-on-a-chip platform of unprecedented throughput, predictivity and usability. “We’re extremely happy to be working with Lans and his team on this project”, says Dr. Anthony Saleh of MIMETAS. “Prof. Taylor is a frontrunner in developing in vitro liver cultures and has vast experience with microfluidic techniques." “We were extremely impressed when we learned about the MIMETAS OrganoPlate platform”, commented Prof. Taylor. “It enables High Throughput, 3D co-culture with a vascular and hepatic compartments, as well as ease of handling. There is really no equivalent in the Organ-on-a-Chip space”.

Great news in the happiest season of the year. We've published our 3D neuronal models for drug screening in Nature Scientific Reports and we received a grant with Pittsburg University for liver-on-a-chip. Of course we're looking forward to meet you at the SLAS2017 in Washington and at the ISSCR in Basel. And Christmas would not be Christmas without our warm wishes for the holiday season and the year 2017. We're definitely looking forward to it!

In Africa, the team building Sisu Global Health is stepping up the introduction of its blood transfusion device. In Baltimore, the team is posting fundraising gains.

Sisu recently raised $500,000 from the Camden Partners Exelixis Fund, CMO Katie Kirsch said.

Every year, millions of fish raised in aquaculture die of nervous necrosis virus (NNV). “The disease affects the brain, and the fish lose their vision and balance,” says Vikram Vakharia, professor of marine biotechnology at UMBC. As a result of damage to the nervous system, “the fish just swim in circles,” Vakharia says. His lab is housed at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET) on Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Leiden-based biotechnology company Mimetas has received 1.6 million USD funding for development of an organ-on-a-chip model for neurotoxicity. The aim of the project is to improve existing neurotoxicity tests and to reduce experimentation on animals. A panel of experts from BASF, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, Abbvie, NC3Rs and renowned academic institutions has selected the Mimetas solution from a lineup of strong competitors. Mimetas will lead the consortium, which also includes the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (Utrecht, The Netherlands) and Cellular Dynamics International (Wisconsin, USA).

Rockville, MD, November 19, 2014 – BeneVir BioPharm, Inc. today announced it closed a Series A investment round with Pansend, LLC, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of HC2 Holdings, Inc. (OTCQB: HCHC). BeneVir’s core technology was licensed from New York University (NYU) and originally developed by Ian J. Mohr, Ph.D., NYU Langone Medical Center.

BeneVir used this core technology to develop a pipeline of cancer immunotherapy drug candidates that affect antigen presentation in both tumor cells and antigen presenting cells. BeneVir’s pipeline consists of oncolytic viruses delivered locally or systemically. Once inside tumors, the viruses selectively destroy cancer cells, evade elimination by the immune system, and activate multiple classes of anti-tumor immune cells. This multi-mechanistic approach builds upon key elements of both oncolytic virus and immune-checkpoint inhibitor approaches to cancer treatment and is designed to block the major methods that tumors use to subvert the immune system. Proceeds of the financing will be used to conduct initial proof- of-concept clinical studies of BeneVir’s lead product, further develop the pipeline, and establish partnerships to test promising combination therapies in a diverse set of metastatic solid tumors.

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Benevir has been accepted into the Hive program and will be taking part in the TEDMED 2014 convention from September 10-12, 2014 in Washington, DC and San Francisco.

BeneVir's cancer therapeutic is designed to induce the immune system to recognize and rid the body of two types of tumor cell. The first type is responsive to current immunotherapies, and many patients experience complete remissions. Tumor cells of the second type have evolved to hide from the immune system and are refractory to current immunotherapies. These tumor cells are ultimately responsible for tumor recurrence and poor clinical outcomes. To our knowledge, there is no technology in development that can induce immunity to both types of tumor cell. We feel we have a unique perspective in the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy and that our technology will exhibit enhanced clinical benefit for a wide range of cancer patients.

Read the full interview after the jump!

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We are pleased to announce that emocha Mobile Health launched its video-based directly observed therapy application, miDOT, in Harris County, Texas. miDOT will be used to bridge the distance between healthcare workers and the tuberculosis (TB) patients that are dispersed across the nearly 1,800 square miles surrounding Houston, which has one of the nation’s highest Tuberculosis rates. The roll-out began in early February after emocha won a competitive bidding process based on a head-to-head pilot with competing technologies.

July 8 - 9, 2015, Boston, MA, USA

The first ever Organ-on-a-Chip World Congress focuses on Organ-on-a-Chip technology, Biofabrication and 3D-Bioprinting in the life sciences. The conference will be held on 8-9 July 2015 in Boston, organized by Selectbio.

MIMETAS is corporate sponsor of this inaugural conference.

Oral Presentation Abstract Submission Deadline: February 27, 2015

Poster Submission Deadline: June 30, 2015

Maarssen, the Netherlands, 14 June 2013 - MIMETAS was awarded the prestigious LifeSciences@Work award during yesterdays' Dutch Life Sciences SME Event. 75 recently established Life Science companies were invited to compete through an on-line video pitch contest. The video pitches were analyzed by a professional jury, consisting of primarily investors and life science professionals.

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MIMETAS today announces the appointment of Herbert L. Heyneker, Ph.D. as Chairman of the Board of Directors. Dr. Heyneker will be supporting MIMETAS in her mission to develop high-throughput Organ-on-a-Chip products for predictive therapy testing.

"Organ-on-a-Chip technology is extremely hot in the United States today. But none of the technologies I've seen so far comes even close to the level of elegance and sophistication that MIMETAS is offering." says Herb Heyneker, who is based in the San Francisco Bay area. "I am strongly convinced that MIMETAS technology has the potential to create a revolution in medicine development and therapy selection. [...]"

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MIMETAS' co-founder Paul Vulto has won the Audience Award and the runner up Jury Award for Best Proposition at the International Conference on the Commercialisation of Micro- and Nanosystems (COMS). The jury, which included serial entrepreneur Steven Walsh and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Janusz Bryzek, called the MIMETAS proposition a technology that will change the world, having the potential to grow into a billion-dollar company.

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The UK-based National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs) has awarded MIMETAS with £100k in the NephroTube Crack-it Challenge, sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer and Roche.

The NephroTube Crack-it Challenge aims to develop a microfluidic renal model predicting renal toxicity during pre-clinical development. In collaboration with the UMCN Pharmacology-Toxicology Department and the Swiss FHNW, MIMETAS will develop a kidney-on-a-chip by combining its OrganoPlate™ 3D-culturing technology with the human renal cell line ciPTEC™.

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