A Medical Device Daily
Allied Minds (Boston), a pre-seed-investment company specializing in early stage university business ventures, has partnered with Wayne State University (Detroit) to establish a start-up company, GliaGen, which will specialize in diagnostic and therapeutic technologies specifically tailored to treat neurodegenerative diseases.
GliaGen has exclusively secured platform technology developed by Drs. Leon Carlock and Maria Cypher of the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics at Wayne State University School of Medicine. “These technologies provide new tools for understanding neural disease processes, as well as cellular repair mechanisms. This will significantly improve our ability to target these processes for diagnostic and therapeutic applications,” said Carlock.
In addition to commercializing the patent-pending technology, GliaGen will support further research at Wayne State. “We expect our research support at the University in conjunction with the development efforts within GliaGen to enable the rapid translation of these early stage discoveries into research, pharmaceutical and clinical applications,” said Chris Silva, CEO of Allied Minds.
Allied Minds also has partnered with the University of Missouri-Columbia (MU) to establish a faculty start-up company to bring new breast cancer screening technology to the market.
Allied Minds is making its first major investment at MU to create LifeScreen. The partnership will aid in the development of the technology and market it to hospitals and clinics around the world.
“Cancer-screening technology saves lives,” said Mark Pritchard, founder of Allied Minds. “We can think of no better investment than for the advancement of early cancer detection systems and making these products readily available to the medical centers that need them.”
The new technology works non-invasively by analyzing breast fluid for early warning signs of cancer. Ninety-nine percent of breast cancer forms in the cells lining the milk ducts, according to Ed Sauter, professor of surgical oncology at the University of Missouri and one of the inventors of the new technology. Those cells slough off and can be retrieved by collecting breast fluid. The fluid is then analyzed for two related carbohydrates that are generally present when a person has cancer and absent in people who do not have cancer.
LifeScreen has exclusive license of the technology. In exchange, MU will gain equity in the company and royalties on sales when the product becomes commercially available. As the first step, LifeScreen will sponsor research at MU to validate the original findings by Sauter and co-inventors Tom Quinn, professor of biochemistry, and Sue Deutscher, associate professor of biochemistry.
In other grants/contracts news:
• Advanced Arm Dynamics (Redondo Beach, California), a provider of upper extremity prostheses, reported that it had been awarded a multimillion-dollar contract from the Department of the Army.
The company will be working closely with the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC; Washington) to provide comprehensive prosthetic services to injured soldiers. Advanced Arm Dynamics is the sole contract provider for upper extremity care at WRAMC.
The mobile team from Advanced Arm Dynamics, which consists of certified prosthetists, technicians, a patient coordinator and an occupational therapist, has been working with WRAMC for the last three years and has provided upper extremity prosthetic care to more than 125 upper extremity amputee soldiers. During that time, more than 500 prostheses have been designed and fit for this challenging population.
• American Bio Medica (ABMC; Kinderhook, New York), a global provider of immunoassay diagnostic test kits, and Nanogen (San Diego), a developer of advanced diagnostic products, reported that they have entered into a supply agreement in which ABMC will sell its rapid drugs-of-abuse (DOA) tests to Nanogen.
Nanogen will market the tests, under their own Tox STATus brand name, to customers in hospital- related markets using its existing sales force and distribution network.
The immunoassay DOA tests, which can be used to detect up to 15 commonly abused substances including cocaine, methamphetamine and THC (active ingredient in marijuana), are FDA-cleared and CE-marked.
Nanogen currently manufactures and markets its Cardiac STATus immunoassay tests for rapid emergency room detection of heart attacks on a global basis. The ABMC-manufactured tests will deliver results using Nanogen's portable hand-held I-Lynx reader.
Nanogen expects to begin distribution of the DOA rapid tests before the end of the year.
“The drugs-of-abuse products supplied by ABMC expand our ability to meet the point of care needs of our current customers,” said Howard Birndorf, Nanogen's chairman/CEO, “and they will also help to attract additional customers.”
• Premier Purchasing Partners (Charlotte, North Carolina) reported new agreements with three small business enterprises in the new surgical headlight product category.
Contracted suppliers include Designs for Vision (Ronkonkoma, New York), Luxtec (West Boylston, Massachusetts) and Sunoptic Technologies (Jacksonville, Florida).
The 36-month agreements, effective Oct. 1, are available in both the acute-care and continuum-of-care markets.
Premier Purchasing Partners also reported it has added a third contracted supplier to its new clinical headwalls category. Hill-Rom (Batesville, Indiana) joins Hospital Systems (Pittsburg, California), a small-business enterprise, and Steris (Mentor, Ohio), in the category.
The 33-month agreements, which became effective July 1, are available in both the acute-care and continuum-of-care markets. The category previously was ceiling/wall arms.
Purchasing Partners is the largest unit of Premier, a healthcare alliance owned by more than 200 of the nation's not-for-profit hospitals and healthcare systems.
Headquartered in San Diego, Premier has offices in Charlotte, North Carolina and Washington.
• Pluristem Life Systems (Haifa, Israel) reported that its wholly owned subsidiary, Pluristem Ltd., received a $470,000 grant from Israel's Chief Scientist Office (CSO). The royalty-bearing grant is part of the government's Ministry of Trade and Industry program that offers incentives to high-tech companies for capital investment, scientific research and development. The monies were designated by the Office of the Chief Scientist to further develop first-time-recipient Pluristem's stem cell product PLX-I, a breakthrough potential solution that could be used to replace the traditional bone marrow transplant search-and-match process.
Pluristem Life Systems is a life sciences-driven company that is developing and commercializing stem cell expansion technology products for the treatment of severe blood disorders.