NCBiotech Helps 3 Rising Stars
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Three young bioscience companies started with funding and other help from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center will be presenters at the Innovation Showcase Feb. 26 during the 2014 CED Life Science Conference in Raleigh.
They include:
- BioKier, a Chapel Hill company developing a diabetes drug designed to mimic the anti-diabetes effect of bariatric weight-loss surgery without the physical trauma and cost of surgery. NCBiotech awarded BioKier two separate $250,000 loans, one in 2010 and the other in 2013, and the firm has subsequently landeda $1.7 million funding package from Broadview Ventures and the American Heart Association’s Science & Technology Accelerator Program.
- CanDiag of Charlotte, was recently awarded a $182,053 Small Business Research Loan from NCBiotech to help it develop its novel blood test for early breast cancer detection .
- Nova Synthetix, a young Chapel Hill agricultural biotechnology company, was awarded a $50,000 Company Inception Loan by NCBiotech in 2013. The firm made the winning presentation at NCBiotech's Ag Biotech Entrepreneurial Showcase, thereby garnering the presentation spot at the CED Life Science Conference to talk about its development of a non-toxic castor plant to replace the toxic ones now in use for creating feedstock for chemicals and biofuels.
The three are among the five companies chosen to present at the Innovation Showcase during the conference, co-presented by NCBiotech, CED and NCBIO.
The others are Improved Patient Outcomes and KinoDyn.
The companies’ leaders will each have 10 minutes to pitch their wares to a panel of experts, who will then provide feedback.
Improved Patient Outcomes is a joint venture between Duke University and mobile health firm CellepathicRx, using technology to send patients messages about tendencies associated with 75 diseases.
KinoDyn is a cancer diagnostic and drug discovery company built on a proprietary UNC-CH technology using multiplexed inhibitor beads and mass spectroscopy.
“These are some of the most promising early-stage companies in North Carolina,” said Dhruv Patel, CED program director and conference organizer.