NCBiotech News

Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem has won a $579,961 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to define the workforce skills technicians will need for manufacturing jobs at the intersection of biomedical devices and tissue engineering.

bluebird bio, a gene therapy company with operations in Durham, has received Breakthrough Therapy designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for Lenti-D, its potential treatment for a rare and life-threatening neurological disorder in boys.

AveXis, an Illinois-based clinical-stage company developing gene therapies for neurological genetic diseases, is investing $55 million in a new Durham manufacturing facility that will create 200 jobs. 

Dova Pharmaceuticals of Durham has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its first commercial drug, a tablet for treating thrombocytopenia, or low blood platelet counts, which can cause dangerous bleeding.

Thaddeus Wadas, Ph.D., assistant professor of cancer biology at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine whose research has been funded by the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, has gained international recognition for his achievements in cancer imaging and radiotherapy research.

Precision medicine is opening the door to enormous opportunity. And that’s driving an influential group of leaders from academia, business and government—through the North Carolina Precision Health Collaborative — to establish our state as one of the country’s key precision health knowledge hubs.

Renovion, a Durham pharmaceutical company developing a therapy for chronic inflammatory airway diseases, has added $350,000 in private equity to the $1.8 million raised in 2017.

Advanced Chemotherapy Technology of Raleigh is developing an implantable device to infuse chemotherapy drugs directly into the pancreas, targeting difficult-to-reach tumors while largely sparing surrounding tissues, organs and blood vessels. 

Three bioscience executives from industry and academia have been appointed to roles on the Advisory Committee for Biotechnology in the Piedmont Triad, which advocates for bioscience development in the region, and the Committee’s Executive Advisory Council.

URO-1, a medical device startup company in Winston-Salem, has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin marketing its first product, a new system using existing endoscopes for injecting Botox into the bladder to treat overactive bladder.

Even though Biogen’s headquarters are in the Boston suburb of Cambridge, the global biopharmaceutical company’s ethos of community reinvestment continues to enrich North Carolina. That was again evident this week when Biogen marked the opening of its first-ever Global Business Services (GBS) Center by announcing the addition of 150 new, local jobs during the next two years.

Two dozen bioscience companies that previously received loans from the Biotech Center raised about $115 million in follow-on funding from other sources in the last two quarters, according to research by the Biotech Center’s Life Science Intelligence staff.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center awarded 44 grants and loans totaling $2.65 million to universities, bioscience companies and other organizations in the second and third quarters of its fiscal year.

While presentations by ag bio startup companies highlighted the North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s recent Crop, Animal and Food Tech Showcase, two panels also provided food for thought.