Looking to shave $65 million from its annual expenditures while streamlining the first stage of its two-level grant review process, the U.S. NIH is proposing to centralize the peer review of all applications for grants, cooperative agreements and R&D contracts within its Center for Scientific Review.
Citing recent executive orders that suggest additional cuts to the federal workforce may be in the offing, U.S. Sens. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy urging him to end “indiscriminate cuts that will cause lasting harm to FDA’s public health mission” and to protect the agency’s statutory obligations.
Neu Health Ltd. received $2 million in funding from Cedars-Sinai Intellectual Property Company and Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE) to bring its platform, designed for Parkinson’s disease and dementia care, into the U.S.
The U.K. government recently unveiled £148.4 million (US$193.7 million) in funding for a raft of initiatives to tackle cancer. Backed by public and private sector investment, the projects will deliver new technologies to speed up cancer diagnosis and new methods to transform treatment.
Noze Inc. is hot on the trail of tuberculosis with its Diagnoze hand-held system that can detect the disease by its smell. The company, formerly known as Stratuscent, received additional support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund a study evaluating a breathalyzer designed to detect tuberculosis in high-burden countries.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was quite vocal in its statement regarding a recent hospital cybersecurity breach, but HHS recently suffered an undisclosed data breach that cost $7.5 million in taxpayer monies.
The European Innovation Council (EIC) equity fund will no longer be managed internally by the European Commission (EC) after September. Alterdomus Management Co. SA, a Luxembourg-based fund manager, will make the final decisions on which life science companies to invest in. The aim is to optimize how the EU’s main tool for driving innovation and economic growth in Europe operates.
Syntach AB has been awarded up to $17 million in equity financing by the European Innovation Council (EIC) for the development of its cardiac support system, a breakthrough device for heart failure patients. This approval follows the $2.67 million EIC grant announced in December 2021 constituting the equity portion of the $18.7 million of blended finance under the EIC accelerator program. “Thanks to this funding, we are on the way to offering our treatment on a global scale,” said Tor Peters, CEO of Syntach.
While COVID-19 remains a top research priority globally for government and nonprofit entities in partnership with biopharma companies, deal activity also is heavily focused on other infectious diseases, such as smallpox and influenza.
