NCBiotech News

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.

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.

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.

The Life Science Economic Development Summit
On Monday, April 30, economic developers, educators and elected officials from across the state gathered in downtown Raleigh to discuss attracting and growing the life science industry in North Carolina. Hot topics at this year’s Life Science and Economic Development Summit included:
•    How the state can attract life science companies to rural parts of the state
•    What companies need when they launch or relocate their business 

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.

When North Carolina State University leaders asked, “What can we be best at,” agriculture research and innovation was a compelling answer. And it will start taking physical form later this year as the Plant Sciences Research Complex, part of the state's new Plant Sciences Initiative (PSI).

Two speakers at this week's NCBiotech Ag Biotech Professional Forum described how their companies are harnessing peptides and metabolites to boost the innate immune response in plants.

The Johnston County Workforce Center (JCWC) will be getting a $1.3 million renovation. Upgrades will support the skills needed with the expansions being done at Grifols and Novo Nordisk to name a few.

Since the center’s grand opening in 2005, it has been a model for life sciences training and development centers in North Carolina. The updates being done will help keep up with the emerging opportunities in the life science field.

Asklepios BioPharmaceutical (AskBio), a gene therapy platform company based in Chapel Hill, has spun out its fourth company, Actus Therapeutics, to develop gene therapies for rare genetic diseases including Pompe disease and epilepsy.

Why is the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) interested in agriculture? 

North Carolina entrepreneurs looking to validate and advance their business startup ideas are being encouraged to apply now through May 14 for NC IDEA’s new “no strings attached” SEED Micro-Grant Pilot Program.

Morrisville-based Metabolon, a metabolomics company, will analyze biomarkers of wellness and disease in U.S. veterans through the Million Veteran Program (MVP) of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.