NCBiotech News

Two North Carolina agricultural biotechnology leaders share their thoughts on the continuing need for innovation in agriculture, and North Carolina's growing power in driving the sector.

A Morehead City company using innovative materials to help restore North Carolina oyster habitats is among 11 finalists vying for $50,000 funding packages in the spring 2016 round of NC IDEA grants.

A dozen agricultural biotechnology companies from North Carolina, seven other states and even a European startup from Portugal will share their breakthrough technologies for crop and animal health advancements at the day-long Ag Biotech Entrepreneurial Showcase 2016 May 18 at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.

Two North Carolina companies are among 39 biotechnology firms competing in a Buzz of BIO contest to recognize the most innovative companies prior to this summer’s BIO International Convention in San Francisco, June 6-9.

Durham’s Deep Blue Medical Advances, founded in 2014 by a plastic surgeon as an incubator for developing Duke medical device inventions, is the sole bioscience-related semifinalist in the spring 2016 round of NC IDEA grants.

Bayer's crop science division hosted more than 160 fifth graders and high school students from central North Carolina this week at its Research Triangle Park campus, letting the students tour facilities, talked with Bayer staff and participate in hands-on exercises demonstrating how new crop seeds and ag chemicals move from an idea in someone’s mind to a product used in a farmer’s field.

We all know it. The world needs twice as much food by 2050.

We all know it. But commodity prices are low. And that decreases available resources for innovation in food production, pointed out one attendee at Tuesday's Ag Biotech Workshop.

Not so, responded one of the panelists. It's actually psychology.

For when food production is slightly ahead of demand, we think that there is plenty of food. Nothing to worry about.

Chapel Hill gene therapy startup Bamboo Therapeutics raised a whopping $49.5 million from six investors, to advance its battle against childhood neurological diseases.

Several of North Carolina's life science companies announced acquisitions in 2015.

North Carolina today doubled its core of actively working Nobel Laureates when the Royal Swedish Academy announced Duke University researcher Paul Modrich and Aziz Sancar of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill winners of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

 

Morrisville-based Locus Biosciences just got a $77 million shot in the arm to develop its new antibacterial therapy to treat E. coli bacteria-causing recurrent urinary tract infections.

NCBiotech awarded 11 grants and loans totaling $623,136 to bioscience companies, universities and nonprofit organizations in the first quarter of its fiscal year.

Dignify Therapeutics, a drug development company focused on restoring bladder and bowel control for the elderly and for people with spinal injury, multiple sclerosis or diabetes, continues to draw federal grants from the National Institutes of Health for its research and development.

A $76,527 Institutional Development Grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center earlier in 2017 has given Western North Carolina university scientists and students access to an important new research tool.