NCBiotech News

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center has launched an initiative to help grow the state’s agricultural economy by creating more crop choices for North Carolina farmers.

Following months of discussions with partners statewide, NCBiotech has established the Biotechnology Crops Commercialization Center, targeting potentially valuable crops adapted to the state’s diverse soil, climate and agribusiness conditions.

Attention academic postdocs and other Ph.D. scientists: You have until May 3 to finish an application that could change your life.

That’s the deadline to apply for the North Carolina Biotechnology Center’s Industrial Fellowship Program.

These fellowships give select Ph.D. scientists a unique chance to get industry experience. In turn, they give companies access to new talent and expertise.

A $30,000 loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center is helping NovaTarg grow in the Research Triangle Park area.

NovaTarg, founded in Durham in 2009, is developing novel pharmaceutical products targeting liver diseases and diabetes.  The company received a $30,000 Company Inception Loan from the Biotech Center. The loan will help position it for raising outside funding that can advance its experimental therapies into clinical trials.

Three women from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center have been selected from among several thousand nominees as 2011 winners of Business Leader Media’s 10^th Annual Women Extraordinaire Awards, which honor top women business leaders of the South.

Biotechnology touches virtually every aspect of contemporary life, from food and clothing to health, environmental protection and transportation.

No wonder, then, that it’s also a focus of scrutiny as scientists continue to tweak cells in ways that open new challenges and opportunities to mankind. If we are suddenly able to do something never before possible, does that mean we should?

In 1994 Malcolm Campbell, Ph.D., got a $45,000 Educational Enhancement Grant from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center to develop a molecular biology program at Davidson College.

The Biotechnology Center is now accepting fellowship applications for the Industrial Fellowship program. This program provides North Carolina’s Ph.D. scientists with an opportunity to gain industry experience and companies to benefit from new talent and expertise. The program is for recent doctoral graduates and postdoctoral fellows who would like to transition from academia to permanent employment in the state’s life sciences industry.

Kenneth Tindall, Ph.D., senior vice president for science and business development at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, has become chairman of the Southeast BIO trade organization.
 

Thirty years ago, textiles, tobacco and furniture drove North Carolina’s economy. As each of these industries lost jobs to improved technology and cheaper overseas labor, a new industry – biotechnology – was emerging.

North Carolina science educators and their students have a new way to stay informed about life-science businesses and activities around the state.

The quarterly life science magazine Impact, published in Charlotte, is now being mailed free to science teachers, guidance counselors and career and technical-education coordinators in North Carolina public and private high schools.

NCBiotech's Biomanufacturing and Process Development Exchange Group of industry professionals gathered for a symposium and vendor show earlier in April to confront the challenges of making cell and gene therapies.

Novo Nordisk has officially begun building a $1.8 billion production facility for diabetes medicines at its Clayton site that will create 700 high-paying jobs, doubling its workforce there.

 

Novozymes has received an award of up to $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to find new and more efficient enzymes for turning corn stover into fuel for cars and trucks.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center awarded 22 grants and loans totaling $2,050,778 to universities, bioscience companies and other organizations in the fourth quarter of its fiscal year.

A Research Triangle Park company that sells tools for cell studies is celebrating new funding to accelerate its selling.