Last chance for discounts at BIO's Mid-America VentureForum

Looks like you'll be able to learn something at BIO's conference this September 21 to 23 in Minneapolis. The lineup of speakers and topics is eloquent:

• Opening session: The Future of Emerging Markets in Biotechnology, Pharma, and Medical devices


• Partnering Workshop: The Future of Strategic Alliances


• Finance Workshop: Financing Health Care Companies: Trends in Deal Structures, Medical Devise versus Biopharmaceutical Companies, and Financing Companies in Various Geographic Markets


• University Tech Transfer Workshop: Creating Bridges Between the Worlds of University Technologies, Industry, and the Investment Community


• Valuation and IP Workshop: Under the Microscope: How IP Valuation Influences Investment Decisions


• Are We There Yet - Raising a Life Science Company in the Midwest


• Convergence Workshop: Biotech - Medical Device Convergence


• Reimbursement Workshop: Changes and Trends in Third Party Payer Policy: Impact on Novel Drugs and Devices

Today's the last chance to get discounted registration and hotel rates. See more at BIO's website.

Nano statistics

Speaking of nano, which I was in the last post, very informative article about the industry in a newsletter a friend forwarded. It's a new publication called the EnergyBizInsider newsletter--you've got to register, but it's free and if you're intereted in sustainability and energy issues, it looks like a good resource.

This issue of the e-newsletter gives a really good description of the nano industry and its possibilities (quotes lots of researchers from universities all over the U.S.)

"...700 nanotech companies now exist. About $711 million in venture capital funding was directed to such companies in 2002 and 2003, says Lux Capital. By 2015, the National Science Foundation says that $1 trillion will get invested into those companies with the most promise."

Sorry I can't give you a link to the newsletter itself--can't seem to locate it on the site. But I'll be happy to forward it if you email me with "Forward energy article" in the subject line.

Cleveland Nano-Week idea contest names judges

A whole week of nano-related companies, people, facilities and ideas is coming to Cleveland this October. Today the conference announced the names of those who will be judging the nano-business idea contest (which apparently drew considerable national attention to the region last year). As always, the prestige of the judges makes a strong statement to the press and the public about how important an event is. Check 'em out:

-- VC panelists: Jonathan P. Murray of Early Stage Partners; James L. Bildner of New Horizons Partners (Boston); and Ted Schroeder of the KAL Equity Capital Fund (Los Altos, Calif.).

-- Tech corporations: Alan Olson, director of technology for Ferro Corp., and Scott Rickert, chief executive of Nanofilm

-- Researchers: Don Blewett of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship at Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.) and Zachary Shulman of The Johnson School at Cornell University (Ithaca, N.Y.)

The Nanotechnology competitions (Northeast Ohio and National) sare the culminating event of NANO Week, October 17-21. All they want is an idea--you don't have to write a whole business plan.

And the NEO winner gets $75,000--even if she lives somewhere else, as long as she's willing to relocate to the region. Now there's a nice incentive.

Post-traumatic stress keeps killing soldiers years later

No surprise here. Whether you're a hawk or a dove, the evidence of how negatively war affects the people who have to fight it has been around for years. Now science has taken another step and found that not only do soldiers tend to die and becomd disabled in greater numbers than the average citizen, they also develop all kinds of diseases in signficiantly greater numbers for years to come. New research says: "soldiers who fought in theatres as diverse as Vietnam and Lebanon...are also twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease, diabetes and even cancer later in life"

The Centers for Disease Control have data that soldiers tend to die more often from accidents, overdoses and so on within the first five years after returning from a war. Then their numbers even out with non-combatant participants (still higher than regular citizens). But then, even 30 years later, those who were subjected to the horrors of war increasingly contract the conditions that kill us--earlier and in greater numbers than others. Stress, disease, and death are now definitively linked, both early and late--and war, as my dad and U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower (a commander through many battles) used to say, is bullshit.

A WWWII tank commander who spent two-and-a-half uninterrupted years overseas fighting, dad had a heart attack at 70. They found he'd had a serious one much earlier, but his vascular system had found a way to bypass the damage. Here's a man who never spoke about the war--at all--until he was in his late 60s. And besides saying that he saw his best friend cut in half by gunfire, one of his only utterances on the subject was, "I guess the government lost money on me in that war--because if I heard anything at all move, I emptied my gun at it."

Progress in FITs and starts

Sorry, I couldn't resist the headline. A new colorectal cancer screening test called FIT (fecal immunochemical tests) promises greater sensitivity for some types of cancerous tumors but not others. In the never-ending battle to find less expensive, more effective, less intrusive testing options, scientists must often take a step back when they take one ahead.

In this case, the FIT test might successfully be combined with sigmoidoscopy instead of using the pricier colonoscopy. These investigators tested asymptomatic patients simultaneously with FIT and with colonoscopy to get a good comparison. ANyway, no one's yet thinking of throwing away the old fetal occult blood test FOBT. Read the results here.

News you can use

If you like to keep track of a lot of different websites (professional journals, medical news, etc.) and you've hesitated to get into RSS, I don't blame you. Until now, it's had a very techie-oriented way of presenting itself and many of us don't have time to navigate that kind of interface. As a result, you may not even know how incredibly useful RSS can be.

Now comes our friend Google introducing a new desktop software that's going to revolutionize your workday.

Read my opinion here. Read the article itself here.

Dreaming down a new path

The ethical argument's been raging for a couple of years now. With all the miraculous things scientists can do with stem cells--especially the fresh, eminently moldable embryonic stem cells (the use of which cause outrage among many traditional religious groups)--it's been a sore spot that the U.S. has banned use of them if they come from embryos--even ones that are going to be destroyed anyway because they're "extras" from in vitro fertilization efforts.

I've written in previous posts here and here (use the "search" box to find others) about how many other countries have no such concerns about embryonic stem cells and how this could easily predicate a fall in U.S. competitiveness in this arena. Now comes the discovery that blood from the embryonic cord yields embryonic stem cells that bypass the usual ethical objections.

And I was just remarking on how changing the way you think about something often leads to dramatic discoveries. It reminds me of the time I was writing a white paper on the subject of asthma--everything I was learning led me to think of the research as both a puzzle and a map. Fortunately, Valdis Krebs who created the mapping software sold at www.orgnet.com helped me create a map that even the doctors were amazed to find clearly demonstrated how current medicine was attacking the problem at a certain place on the map--whereas the client's research was attacking it at a point one step earlier on the map.

Dreaming down a different path this time means that now there's a way to use embryonic stem cells without crossing the ethical border. What a miracle--for future beneficiaries of the therapies--and also for U.S. scientists.

No escape? Wild salmon severely polluted

They found out by examining the systems of a dozen legally hunted bears that the pollutants in the bodies of those who ate spawning salmon were "profoundly" different than those who ate mostly berries, nuts and insects. The salmon-eating bears showed up with "90 percent of the PCBs researchers found, 70 percent of the pesticides and 85 percent of the less-brominated flame retardants."

The concepts of responsible coporate practices and ethics in business take on new and deeper meanings when we realize how much smaller the planet grows every day--evidence indicates most of the pollution in these salmon came from Asia. Read more about PCBs here.

And I don't think I need to give a reference to prove how much we don't want pesticides and flame retardants in our bears, our salmon, or our fellow human beings.

Fear funds discovery

Fortunately, scientific discoveries themselves are neutral, no matter why they got funded. It's the uses to which a discovery or development is put that imbue it with moral or ethical value.

So even though the government is passing out $4.1 million in SBIR funds for research on a single potential source of anti-terrorist activity--identifying anthrax currently requires days-long lab tests--that will help medical facilities perform tests faster and in greater quantities, the company says the research will eventually prove "useful for key clinical and industrial applications including flu testing and detection of pathogens in food."

The funding is going to a company called Genomic Profiling Systems Inc. (even the company name evokes thoughts of defensiveness) to "enable prototype development of an automated portable MultiPath(TM) instrument and consumable test cartridges designed for rapid, high capacity, easy to implement emergency diagnostics." Expected to be significantly faster and more sensitive than standard commercial strip tests, this item could well control the spread of a virus--like keeping an epidemic like bird flu from turning into a pandemic.

Genetics influences rate of physical decline in adults over 70

Not surprising. Based on my observations of friends and family over the years, it seems unfair but it happens that as we age, so-and-so easily keeps a fairly trim figure while so-and-so somehow can't keep the midsection from spreading. I remember years ago asking one woman who was well over 40 how much she exercised to keep her figure. Her answer was, "I don't. And my mother was like this til she died at nearly 80, and she never did either."

Well, here it is. Scientists have now discovered a gene variation that's linked with better mobility for older individuals who exercise. That means you may not even be able to exercise to keep yourself moving because the genetic code dictates you'll have difficulty walking. And like the guy who for years after a first hear attack sticks religiously to a fat-free, no-salt, no-sugar vegan diet in an attempt to reverse heart disease--but then has another heart attack--you might feel you've gotten a raw deal.

And if the world were anything like what we all recognize as "fair," you'd be right.

Turning off genes -- mapping a new approach to cancer?

What an idea. Trying to head cancer off early by stepping backwards on the map that shows the process by which it develops, scientists are looking at stopping gene expression. They've discovered that synthetic peptide nucleic acids (PNAs) or RNAs can interact directly with genomic DNA and block the expression of genes.

"Antigene agents recognize genomic DNA when its guard is down. Single-stranded DNA is exposed momentarily when RNA polymerase initiates transcription by opening an approximately 20-base-pair segment of double-stranded genomic DNA, resulting in a transcription start-site structure called the 'open complex.' Antigene agents of complementary sequence interact with one of the open complex's single DNA strands, causing transcription and gene expression to be blocked.
Because every gene has a transcription start site, the technique may be widely applicable. So far, Corey and coworkers have been able to inhibit the expression of nine genes (of nine tested) in cancer cells."

Another avenue of investigation that may one day lead us to where we can eliminate the prehistoric and cruel approach to treating cancer that we call chemotherapy.

Stem cells from a relative help kids with high-risk leukemia more than chemotherapy

The headline hit me like a ton of bricks. Instead of the horrors of chemotherapy--which yields only a poor prognosis anyway in these cases--researchers have found that transplanting stem cells borrowed from a close relative gives kids with acute lymphoblastic leukemia a much better chance of maintaining remission.

Yes, it has to be given during a period of remission and there are other conditions. I'm not up on every research alleyway that's being explored, but it seems to me this is a new way of thinking about cancer treatment.

This is how doors open--when we start dreaming down different paths. Read more here.