AxoGen

The grant will support the development and expansion of nerve regeneration technologies. The program at Vanderbilt Medical School will be led by Dr. Wesley Thayer, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University’s Department of Plastic Surgery and Curt Deister of AxoGen.

AxoGen has three cleared nerve repair technologies on the market. Its Avance Nerve Graft is used to bridge gaps in peripheral nerves with grafts sourced from human donors. Its Nerve Protector is used to wrap and isolate nerve tissue during healing. Its Nerve Connector is used to approximate nerve endings.

In financial year 2013, the orthopedic research program allocated $30 million for grants. In financial year 2011, improving limb  injuries using nerve repair was one of three areas where funding was allocated. It also funded the prevention and treatment of post-traumatic osteoarthritis and the development of a modular, interoperable prosthetic wrist.

The Congressional Directed Medical Research program provided nearly $500 million in financial year 2012 with $30 million allocated for orthopedic research grants.

[Photo from Flickr user Virginia Guard Public Affairs]

Neurotrack, the startup that won the health prize at this year’s SXSW, has pulled in a round of seed funding, according to a Form D filing.

The $90,000 boost from angel investors is the first outside capital for the company with a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease.

CEO Elli Kaplan is aiming her life’s work at Alzheimer’s and related dementia. “I watched two of my grandparents die ‘alone’ because they could no longer remember their family members who were sitting at their bedsides,” she said.

Neurotrack’s test is bolstered by 25 years of neuroscience research. Millions of dollars from foundations and grants have already been poured into the technology, which was developed by researchers at Emery University.

The company offers a computer-based cognitive test that can detect an impairment on the hippocampus, the first structure in the brain to be impacted by Alzheimer’s. The program evaluates patients’ eye movement — and the time spent looking at the familiar and new images.

Kaplan was impressed by the technology, which she claims could predict patients with a high risk of Alzheimer’s up to six years prior to the onset of the disease. So Neurotrack licensed it, and is beginning to commercialize the test by selling to pharmaceutical companies.

“The biggest issue that pharma companies have is populating clinical trials with people who are pre-symptomatic,” said Kaplan. To develop drugs to treat Alzheimer’s, they need access to patients before irreparable damage is done.

The Alzheimer’s Association reports that about 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s – and that number is expected to rise to 16 million by 2050. But, Kaplan is convinced that we’ll someday develop a drug that can cure the disease.

For now, informed patients can make lifestyle changes (exercising more, adapting eating habits), and take medication to delay the onset of the disease. “We know that some of the symptom-treating drugs are more effective the earlier you can start them,” said Kaplan.

Results from the most recent research is very promising — according to Kaplan, the participants who scored below 50 percent on the test have all received an Alzheimer’s diagnosis within six years. None of those scoring above 67 on the test have converted to Alzheimer’s. 92 people participated in the study.

Neurotrack isn’t ready for the public yet — but if and when it becomes available, Kaplan said that people in their 50s will get tested every year. Patients with a family history of Alzheimer’s may receive the test earlier.

Kaplan would not yet disclose pricing information for the test when it becomes available. The company is in the throes of fundraising for its next round, and is still fleshing out its go-to-market strategy. It is a graduate of Rock Health Boston, which has a strong relationship with venture firm Kleiner Perkins, and first launched at DEMO.

Top image of the founders at DEMO via Flickr

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

Karyopharm’s approach, in phase 1 development, targets a group of proteins associated with cancer. These proteins, referred to as Exportin 1, thwart tumor suppressor proteins from doing their job by “escorting” them from the cell’s nucleus into the cytoplasm.

If tumor suppressor proteins remain in the cell’s nucleus they can program the cancer cells to self-destruct.

Karyopharm’s selective inhibitors of nuclear export will treat advanced hematologic and solid tumors.

The financing round included Delphi Ventures, which will get a seat on Karyopharm’s board in return for its investment. Deepa R. Pakianathan will represent Delphi on the board.

In a CEOCFO interview earlier this year, CEO Dr. Michael Kauffman said the company’s plan is to take the drug through to the approval stage in the U.S. and Europe “largely on [its] own,” though it would look for a partner for Asia.

It is presenting data from its phase 1 trial at the upcoming American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual meeting in Chicago next week.

UPDATE: In a phone interview with MedCity News, Sharon Shacham, Karyopharm’s chief scientific officer, said its fundraising has been helped by “robust preclinical validation” as well as by the clinical data it has collected so far. Although the mechanics of cancer cells have been known for years, a previous effort to develop a treatment proved too toxic for noncancer cells. Among the indications it is evaluating for its therapeutics are hematological indications — acute myeloid leukemia, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia — as well as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and myeloma.  Although it currently employs 23, it expects to grow its staff to under 30 in the next two years, mainly with lower- and middle-management roles.

[Photo Credit: freedigitalphotos user Salvatore Vuono]

It’s been just over one year since the JOBS Act was passed, which makes equity- and debt-based crowdfunding legal for accredited and nonaccredited investors. Although the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to finalize and implement specific rules around those provisions, several online platforms have plowed ahead and created private portals for accredited investors and startups to find each other in the meantime.

Within the last two weeks, two new platforms focused on equity-based crowdfunding for healthcare have launched. Last week, a company called Healthfundr came forward with a new site for funding later-stage healthcare startups.  Created by a pair of former securities attorneys and a doctor, the platform exposes investors to a handful of companies that have been vetted by the Healthfundr team.

Today, a similar new portal called VentureHealth announced its launch to give investors better access to compelling healthcare innovations and enable them to diversify their portfolios. Founded and managed by Mir Imran and Andrew Farquharson, both entrepreneurs and managing directors at life sciences venture fund InCube Ventures, VentureHealth says it targets opportunities in medical devices, pharma, diagnostics, digital health and health services where its investors can potentially contribute at least $1 million to a deal that’s syndicated with institutional investors.

In its announcement, VentureHealth said it already raised $875,000 as part of a series B for cryoablation startup Channel Medsystems.

These platforms join a collection of other online platforms for accredited investors that include CircleUp, AngelList, the FundersClub and MicroVentures (which said this week that angels have invested $16 million in 34 startups through its site). Then there are all of the other donation- and reward-based models like MedStartr in healthcare, Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

Although crowdfunding has stirred up a lot of hype, lots of questions remain to be answered. What will make certain platforms more successful than others? And, how many different ones are really needed?

It will also be interesting to see how these platforms react once the SEC comes forward with guidelines on equity crowdfunding for unaccredited investors. Which sites will offer that option? At least one general platform, StartupValley, has said it will open to nonaccredited investors.

It may be a while before any of that plays out, though. The SEC has said it does not know when the rules will be finalized.

[Crowd photo from BigStockPhotos]

The “Crowds Care for Cancer: Supporting Survivors Challenge” contest includes two parts. First, there’s the initial application in which participants submit wire frames to show a skeletal blueprint for the tool and documentation that describes how their tool or app is supposed to work and layout the plan to develop it. Up to three will be picked from this first phase and awarded $5,000. They’ll get feedback and support to improve their apps and will get promoted on Medstartr’s crowdfunding portal in the run-up to the second part of the contest.

In the second part, the competitors are judged and the winner gets $25,000.

Here are some of the areas the challenge seeks to address, according to the ONC’s website:

1. Optimizing patient-provider communication and customizing management of survivor care.
2. Follow-up care needs like medication tracking and adherence, health promotion, appointment and symptom tracking.
3. Improving communication across survivor care networks using tools to improve health data and interoperability standards such as Blue Button+.

Submissions will also be assessed on their ability to adapt to the evolving care needs of survivors, including the potential for integration with electronic care platforms and between family, friends and healthcare providers.

The deadline for the competition is May 28 at 11:59 pm Pacific time. To apply, click this link. The winners will be announced over the summer.

The latest city that incubator program TechStars will expand into is bustling tech city Austin, Tex., the organization announced today.

For those not familiar with it, TechStars is an incubator program that selects only a handful of startups in each city it operates in, which receive $118,000 in seed funding ($18,000 + optional $100,000 convertible note), support from plenty of mentors at successful startups, opportunity to pitch investors, and lots of perks that an up-and-coming company would need to make a big impact. Hundreds apply for a spot in the program but only 10 are selected in each location. The program itself runs three months and is only conducted once per year.

Austin seems like a shoo-in for the program, as its already a booming tech city with tons of vibrant startups and a good base of offices from large tech companies like Intel, Dell, Samsung, Applied Materials, IBM, National Instruments, and plenty of others. A handful of the company’s successful startups — Mass Relevance and Stormpulse, both of which count the White House as a client of its services — even got praise from President Barack Obama on his recent trip to Austin last week. There’s also the week-long (or two-weeks if you count music) SXSW event every March. So, what exactly took so long for TechStars to get here?

“We know that Austin is one of the top startup communities in the country. But timing is everything,” TechStars co-founder David Cohen told VentureBeat via email. “We don’t do anything unless we can do it with very high quality, and we haven’t been ready until now. It’s not so easy to just launch new locations and do it with extreme quality.”

TechStars Austin will be managed by Jason Seats, who previously founded Slicehost and was VP of software development at RackSpace. He’s also managed TechStars Cloud in San Antonio, Tex. for two years, which means he has a very good background when it comes to running the Austin branch.

Applications for the Austin program open today. As for what TechStars is looking for, Cohen said:

“In terms of company selection, we’ll be opportunistic in Austin, like we are anywhere else. We are not focusing on any particular vertical area for that program – it’s just like our others in New York, London, Boston, Chicago, Boulder, and Seattle in that sense. As you know, we generally see about a 1 percent acceptance rate, so we’re looking for disruptive companies which leverage the power of the Internet, most importantly founded by amazing entrepreneurs. Team, team, team, market, progress, idea – in that order.”

The new Austin branch will also see support from the city’s most notable venture firms and investors, including Austin Ventures, Silverton, Live Oak, Brett Hurt, Sam Decker, Jeff Dachis, Josh Baer, Rony Kahan, Bill Boebel, and others.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

What should a patient portal for a statewide health information network look like? That’s a question New York eHealth Collaborative has been considering for awhile. If the interface characteristics of the three winners of a design competition for portal prototypes are anything to go by, it should be aesthetically driven, intuitive and easy to use for a public representing a wide spectrum of health literacy.

Mana Health, a big proponent of making data beautiful, won first prize and $15,000. iHealthNY, by Applied Informatics, took a Facebook approach to its layout and also used natural language systems in its search tool in their portal design, won $7,500. My Health Profile by RDE Systems netted $2,500. They were among the nine companies to participate in a demo day last month to make a case for their designs.

Probably the biggest talking points between judges and participants at the event was how to balance making personal health records accessible and readable enough so that users will get the most benefit from using the portal. How do you include enough information about people’s health without overwhelming them and without making it too technical?

The technology vendor who wins the contract to develop the patient portal for the SHIN-NY is expected to take on board some of the features embraced by the winning designs.

“One of the most important achievements of the Challenge is that it engaged New Yorkers in this crucial discussion,” said David Whitlinger, New York eHealth Collaborative executive director.

Although there are a handful of private patient portals, New York is on track to be the first public health information network with a patient portal. In a recent interview with MedCity News, Paul Wilder, vice president for product management at the NYeHealth Collaborative, said a big benefit to the approach it is taking with the portal is it will provide more data to patients such as lab results and their medical history because it’s coming directly from providers as opposed to a middle man like a payer or another third party.

“You don’t see many full clinical histories because it’s not provider generated data. As the HIE, we are responsible first and foremost for getting the clinical records uploaded and normalized for use by other clinicians. The byproduct is we have the data to share with patients too. Free the data! With less effort to boot.”

[Photo Credit: Big Stock Photo Healthcare Network]

His proposal to set up his software-as-a-service marketing platform for the big pharma company to launch drugs into multiple markets won the $50,000 prize along with $1,000 worth of Amazon web service credit.

On the bright side, the days ahead as he works with Teva and launches his new company with the $50,000 he won to help develop the platform are not likely to get any more stressful.

“After that, I slept for two days,” he told MedCity News in a phone interview.

Quillen is a veteran of GlaxoSmithKline where he worked for 12 years in bioinformatics on the research and development side until he was laid off. He later started a life sciences consulting company, Euclidean Group.

“When I was at GSK I developed customized software internally, but as the market matured, we started using more and more off-the-shelf solutions, comparing business requirements with systems on the market,” said Quillen. “I was excited by the hackathon because ideally [Teva] wants this as a software as-a-service — they want something custom built for their needs that fills a gap in the market, but they want to make it available to others in the market to reduce its cost.”

The platform needs to do two things: provide transparency so management can observe how the countries are moving along on their plans to execute but also have a standard process to operate efficiently in each country.

The offering price values Quintiles at $6.6 billion including debt, according to Bloomberg.

Morningstar Senior Equity Analyst for Biotechnology Lauren Migliore is bullish about how Quintiles will fare in its return to the stock market, according to a report authored by Migliore this week.

“We think the firm’s unparalleled size and exposure outfit it with a narrow economic moat and the strongest competitive advantages in the CRO industry. Drugmakers’ increased use of outsourcing and the emerging strategic partnership model are further bolstering Quintiles’ already-formidable defenses against weaker rivals…”

and

“We think Quintiles will see 8 percent compound annual revenue growth over the next five years, at the top range of management’s 5 percent to 8 percent forecast. This growth will be driven by both increased outsourcing (we project CRO penetration will improve roughly 5 percentage points in the near term) and market share gains as Quintiles continues to take a greater share of the dollars spent on R&D.”

And Quintiles is a giant among CROs. By Morningstar’s calculations, it is 70 percent larger than the next largest CRO by sales — Covance.

The Burrill Report counted 16 life science IPOs among the 37 that were filed last year. Companies in many sectors, including life science companies, have taken a cautious approach to IPOs in the past couple of years, according to Fenwick. because of the volatility and uncertainty that has hung over the stock market in recent years.

But there seem to be some signs that 2013 could turn things around. In 2010, the BIO industry organization predicted that 2013 would mark a resurgence in the number of life science IPOs filed, comparable to 2007 levels thanks in part to the JOBS Act which loosened the pre-IPO marketing requirements for emerging growth stage companies. BIOtech Now noted that 20 life science companies had filed to go public as of the third quarter of 2012 under the looser rules.

The Wall Street Journal underscores the 2007 feeling. Referencing capital markets research firm Ipreo, it said the Durham, NC, company’s debut is the biggest of 11 US-listed IPOs this week — the most for any week since November 2007.

Quintiles initially went public in 1994 but was taken private in 2003.

Are would-be entrepreneurs letting the funding-equals-success myth stand between them and true success?

Too many startup founders crave the validation of big-name investors and end up buying into the idea that getting venture capital somehow means their business has a better shot.

I became an entrepreneur to own my business and operate it in a way that puts my customers first — not the board. Bootstrapping isn’t for everyone or every business, but the tips below might just help you go the distance.

1. Make the commitment

Bootstrapping your business requires that you’re prepared to forgo outside capital, no matter what. Necessity being the mother of all invention, you’ll be much more determined to generate revenue if there’s no safety net of investor money available.

No investors would have been excited about my co-founder and I changing direction five times. Since we answered to no one, we could make many adjustments that eventually led to success.

2. Protect your time and attention

Ideas have power. Often, your great idea will inspire others to waste your time. Everyone and their cousin will want to “set up a meeting” and “explore some new opportunities.” Fiercely defend your time from people who use words like “collaborate” and “white-label.”

You’re not likely to develop a true shared vision by smashing together your ideas with someone else’s. Instead, meet with people who inspire you and meet with people who have large audiences (customers, traffic, fans, and followers) where potential overlap exists.

Not only will you learn a lot, but those relationships will create marketing channels to reach your future users and customers.

3. Make your first dollar ASAP

The information you’ll learn from your first customer is priceless. Knowing their likes, dislikes, and frustrations lets you create a vastly improved experience for your second customer. Never stop measuring and improving your offering.

If you can make $1, repeat the process and make $2. Don’t stop.

Remember: If you build it, they won’t come. You need a population of potential consumers to experiment against. If you don’t get foot traffic with a storefront, begin attracting your potential customers before you open shop. Do this via SEO or social media, and then capture email addresses, fans, and followers.

4. Fail fast, calibrate quickly

Your initial idea can evolve into a different opportunity. Be objective in assessing your business’s viability, and let the data do the talking. Turn the part of your business that works into your core offering.

Our first product concept was CoinPiggy, an online banking app that let friends make deposits toward a predetermined savings goal. Making deposits to your own account didn’t make much sense given the processing fees involved.

However, we liked how friends and family could contribute towards a user’s savings goal. That one feature helped spark what would become crowdfunding, and it resulted in GoFundMe.com.

5. Find your A team

Resist the urge to bring on interns and entry-level employees; they’re not nearly as committed to your company as you are. The oversight and hand-holding will crush your productivity.

Since you are your company’s biggest asset, you need to remain free from distractions that don’t add to the bottom line. Focus on generating enough revenue to bring on true A players.

I purposely handled all customer support for GoFundMe well into 2012. We used the revenue to hire the most talented developer available, and the impact was immediate.

When it came time to hire our first customer support agent, we didn’t. Instead, we hired the best VP of Operations we could find. Six months later, that same VP manages five customer happiness agents and achieves five-minute email response times. Our customer happiness team should double in size by the end of the year, and boy, are we glad all the management, systems, and training materials are already in place.

?Brad Damphousse founded GoFundMe, a crowdfunding website for personal causes and life events.

Image credit: cyberesque/Flickr

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

The Emergency Room is often a chaotic place where precision and agility mean the difference between life and death. DocuTAP has raised $11.9 million from Bessemer Venture Partners to make sure that if something does go wrong, it is not the result of disorganization.

DocuTAP helps urgent care clinics digitalize their operations to make them more efficient and less reliant on paper. The software integrates electronic health records (EHR) and “practice management” technology so all the information and tools needed to operate an efficient practice is one place. The platform is accessible on tablets so clinicians can use it on-the-go. DocuTAP also features automated and customizable tools so each clinic can tailor the software to their needs as well as billing services.

In a statement issued this morning, Steve Kraus of Bessemer Venture Partners said that urgent care is one of the fastest growing sectors within the healthcare marketplace. The healthcare industry as a whole is undergoing a digital transformation. The U.S. government mandated that doctors need to be fully transitioned to electronic records by 2014, and companies are raising large amounts of venture capital to help them do that.

In November 2012, Hello Health raised $11.5 million and companies like CareCloud (backed by $20 million) and Practice Fusion (backed by $64 million) are experiencing significant growth. The market for electronic medical records is estimated at between $6 billion and $10 billion.

DocuTAP stands to capitalize on this transition as well, all the way from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The company was founded in 2000 and this marks its second round of funding. Bluff Point Associates led the first round of $12 million in March 2012. This financing will be used to increase market presence, accelerate sales, and continue to improve the products.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

Somewhere between venture funding and bank loans is a kind of investment that seems to fly under the radar, but apparently over the last several years has become increasingly popular for biotech companies beyond the startup stage looking for  growth capital.

Royalty financing is the vehicle that Capital Royalty L.P. will use to invest its new $805 million fund in healthcare products and technologies. But (sorry startups), it’s not looking for early-stage companies. Capital Royalty says it invests in companies with FDA-approved healthcare products that are generating revenue. These are companies looking to make acquisitions, expand into new markets or develop new products with investments of $20 million to $200 million.

As venture capital investments continue to decline in life sciences, it seems likely that more companies would be willing to explore royalty financing. Already this year the fund has closed deals with TriVascular, a device company with a recently cleared treatment for aortic aneurysms, and Tandem Diabetes Care, in support of the company’s launch of a new insulin pump. Another firm, Cowen Healthcare Royalty Partners, closed $1 billion in capital last year.

Executives behind TearScience, the maker of a device for treatment of dry eye, told Fierce Medical Devices the financing is ideal for companies that aren’t startups, between venture financing and a bank loan. It generally comes as a loan with payments that are based on a certain percentage of revenue generated by a product or service. It’s non-dilutive financing, so business owners don’t give up large chunks of equity, and because payments aren’t fixed it’s generally less restrictive than traditional debt financing. But it’s not ideal for companies that haven’t yet established a stream of recurring revenue.

Capital Royalty is headquartered in Houston with offices in Boulder and New York City.

[Photo Credit: Financial Success from BigStock Photo]

The collaboration, which will also develop drugs for other metabolic diseases, is valued at up to $430 million for three products, according to a company statement.

It’s the second Type 2 diabetes drug development collaboration Merck announced this week. On Monday, Merck said a subsidiary would help develop and commercialize a Pfizer drug to combat the condition.

The enzymes at the heart of the technology are referred to as serine hydrolases. Harnessing the power of these enzymes could have broad therapeutic applications since they play an important role in the human physiological processes, such as regulating CNS signaling, digestion, metabolism, inflammation, blood clotting, and life cycle of viruses and pathogens.

Professors Ben Cravatt and Dale Boger developed the enzyme selection technology at The Scripps Research Institute.

Although drugs have been developed using serine hydrolases, a lack of specific inhibitors for the vast majority of the 200 or so serine hydrolases identified means that, to date, the biological functions of most of these enzymes remain poorly characterized, the statement said.

The collaboration is a logical move considering Abide CEO Alan Ezekowitz’s previous gig was at Merck Research Laboratories where he was a senior vice president and franchise head for bone, respiratory, immunology, endocrine, dermatology and urology from 2006 to 2011.

In an interview with BioCentury last year, Ezekowitz said that while the group has no shortage of targets (it has a small molecule library of 1,000 compounds  across five different structural classes) the trick is to validate targets and define pathways with small groups of patients.

According to the terms of the deal, Abide is eligible to receive an upfront payment, research funding, with potential milestone payments for up to $430 million for three products. Merck will have worldwide commercialization rights to any products coming out of the collaboration. Abide will be entitled to receive royalty payments on global sales from these products.

Last year Abide said it partnered with ActivX Biosciences in La Jolla, CA, which has a strong focus on activity based proteomics to help fight cancer.

[Photo Credit: digitalart]

The company raised a total of $39 million, including $6.8 million from previous closings. Valence Life Sciences led the financing round and its managing director Scott Morenstein will get a seat on Celator’s board.

In an interview with MedCity News, Celator CEO Scott Jackson said that its partnership with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society led to an additional $5 million allocated toward its phase 3 study.

The Princeton, New Jersey-based treatment developer’s phase 3 clinical study will be a 300 patient, randomized, controlled study comparing CPX-351 to conventional cytarabine and daunorubicin therapy with a primary endpoint of overall survival, according to a company statement.

Its proprietary drug ratio technology platform, CombiPlex, identifies ratios of chemotherapy drugs cytarabine and daunorubicin that will deliver a synergistic benefit, and locks the desired ratio through a drug-delivery method that maintains the ratio in patients, according to a company statement.

The drugs approved for acute myeloid leukemia are few and far between. The last one approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000 was developed by Wyeth (now owned by Pfizer) and was called gemtuzumab ozogamicin. The FDA later pulled it from the market in 2010 over concerns about its safety and because it said it failed to demonstrate clinical benefit to patients enrolled in trials.

Jackson said the chemotherapy drugs that are used in Celator’s patient platform–cytarabine and daunorubicin–have been the standard of care for patients with acute myeloid leukemia for the past 30 years.

It estimates its initial target patient population for its treatment platform falls somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500. But it expects to expand that in the future when the treatment regimen can be applied to other AML patient populations. It also took a more conservative approach by doing two randomized-controlled phase 2 studies. The company was able to show a statistically significant advantage in survival rates for its treatment platform.

The company’s future is an open question that Jackson has no desire to answer just yet. But the funding is a critical step toward what could be its first product approval.

[Photo Credit: freedigitalphotos user Salvatore Vuono]

Among the backers of the Series E round for the Lexington, Massachusetts business are Mohr Davidow Ventures, Quaker BioVentures, Alloy Ventures, Acadia Woods Partners and Sectoral Asset Management. It also signed on molecular diagnostics company Myriad Genetics as a strategic partner.

In addition to growing the market for its technology, RainDance will use the funds to boost its commercial operations and manufacturing capacity. It is also relocating its headquarters to a new facility in the Boston area sometime this summer.

The company’s core customers are genetic laboratories carrying out research for personalized drug development and diagnostics. Although it has traditionally been a laborious process to test different regions of the human genome, the company’s core platform can assess individual reactions in single cells, molecules, proteins and nucleic acids for targeted sequencing. It has also developed two different DNA sequencing tools. The goal of all of these technologies is to expedite and improve the uniformity of the samples labs can process. It also lowers the cost and makes the technology easier to use.

Its ThunderStorm sequencing system is designed to help scientists look at lots of different sections of the genome to pinpoint the biomarkers or variations that might be associated with a particular disease or condition.

Google Ventures

23andMe The startup has helped make personal genetics and DNA analysis much more accessible to consumers. The company, co-founded by Anne Wojsicki, offers DNA test kits that for $99 and a little saliva help people better understand what conditions they are at risk for developing, whether they are carriers for any diseases that they could unwittingly give to their children. It can also provide information on whether people’s genetic makeup makes them particularly sensitive to certain drugs. It also uses results from user queries, with their consent, to conduct in-house research.

Adimab has developed an antibody discovery engine that accelerates antibody drug discovery. Yeast biotechnologists Tillman U. Gerngross, CEO and K. Dane Wittrup co-founded the Lebanon, New Hampshire-based company, which has built an impressive list of collaboration partners including Merck, Roche, Genentech, Pfizer, Novartis, Eli Lilly, Biogen Idec, Novo Nordisk Gilead and Kyowa Hakko Kirin, among others.

DNAnexus The bioinformatics company that provides DNA data management and analysis for sequencing centers and researchers was founded and is led by Andreas Sundquist. The Mountainview, California-based company provides data management support for next generation sequencing centers as well as next generation sequencing and analysis to researchers. Researchers can use ts platform to map genomes, find variants and mutations, visualize the data, and share that data with others. Its customers include academic researchers, big pharma, and clinical and diagnostic testing labs. It relies on Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud for its cloud computing needs. Sundquist told Wired magazine that his company makes it easy to take huge data sets, do all the data crunching, and come down with a list of genes impacted in a relatively short amount of time.

Flatiron Health  Nathaniel Turner and Zachary Weinberg founded the software as a service company to offer oncology analytics that can provide useful insights to clinicians and drug developers based on their own oncology data. The goal is allow providers to track hundreds of metrics tied to cancer care, monitor adherence to national guidelines across their clinicians, match patients to clinical trials in real-time, and help them to ask questions using their data, according to its website.

Foundation Medicine has a personalized diagnostic test called Foundation One that analyzes tissue biopsies for irregularities across 280 genes that have some link to tumor growth. It is expected to have a significant impact on finding the right drugs for the right patients to help physicians make more informed treatment recommendations as well as screening candidates for clinical trials. As of January, about 700 oncologists had ordered the test, according to The Wall Street Journal. The Cambridge, Massachusetts company is led by Dr Michael Pellini, the CEO.

iPierian is a therapeutics company led by CEO Nancy Stagliano that’s using Noble Prize winning stem cell research to develop therapeutics for neurodegenerative conditions. The technology involves converting cells taken from a biopsy of the arm for example, converting them into stem cells and then converting those cells into brain cells. It’s lead indications are to combat Alzheimer’s Disease.

Predilytics is a healthcare data analytics platform founded by Chris Conloian. The Boston-based company works with payers and providers. Its platform uses data sets to create their own specific predictive model and analytic rule. The company’s approach is similar to what has been done by financial service and marketing companies, using computer science to provide automated analysis to continually create new insights.

Transcriptic is a biotechnology company that produces cloud-based lab automation software. Max Hodak founded the company to make basic lab work more efficient by having robots carry it out for life science companies. He purchased industry standard machines, robots and incubators from big pharma companies, stripped them and wrote custom programs that send messages from the Web to give them lab work orders from customers, according to PandoDaily.

The alliance with Becton Bioscience will help CytoVas assess cardiovascular disease progression, as well as evaluate the side effects of existing and experimental medicines for cardiovascular disease.

Last year CytoVas became the first company to get funding as part of the American Heart Association’s accelerator program, an initiative designed to speed up the investigation and development of products for cardiovascular disease patients. As of February it had begun to enroll patients in a proof of concept trial for its diagnostic to evaluate an individual’s vascular health profile. The test would be administered to patients being treated for cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer who may be symptom-free for cardiovascular disease and stroke but face an elevated risk for developing those condition.

CytoVas was co-founded by Dr. Emile Mohler, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a co-inventor of the technology, as well as Jonni Moore and Wade Rogers, of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and faculty with Perelman School of Medicine

Moore said in the statement: “The partnership with BD is a promising step in bridging the gap from research to patients for this potentially life-saving diagnostic.”

Ross Tonkens, a cardiologist and head of the American Heart Association’s Science and Technology Accelerator Fund said: “This test not only offers the promise of identifying symptom-free individuals at high risk, but could also assess the effectiveness of new therapies to prevent heart attack and stroke.”

More than 82 million people in the US have at least one type of heart or blood vessel disease, according to data from the Stroke Association.  The idea is that if people who are likely to suffer strokes and heart disease earlier, there’s more time for healthier lifestyles to be adopted and reduce healthcare costs associated with hospitalization. The direct costs of medical care and therapy to treat strokes every year are estimated at $28 billion per year, with indirect costs from lost productivity and other factors estimated at $15 million per year, according to the Stroke Center at Newark, New Jersey-based University Hospital.

Although the increase coincided with a decrease in the overall number of active investors in 2012, it’s a notable development that reflects a long-term trend, according to Jeffrey Sohl, the director of the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire which published the report.

“One has to surmise that more women are coming in than leaving,” said Sohl in a phone interview with MedCity News. “It’s a healthy development and I’m optimistic that the trend will continue.”

Although women-led angel groups like Golden Seeds and Seraph Capital are contributing to the increased number of women angel investors and more entrepreneurs, Sohl called attention to the influence wielded by women in other angel groups — the focus of a report published by the center in 2011. “When there are fewer women in the group they are not seen as viable players.” But when more than 10 percent of the investors in an angel group are women, they increase the investment activity of the group.

Another factor contributing to the trend is that there are more women than men in universities right now.

Women-owned ventures accounted for 16 percent of the entrepreneurs that were seeking angel capital and 25 percent of these women entrepreneurs received angel investment in 2012, according to the report.

Among some of the other significant findings in the report by the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, the angel investors who did participate in 2012 contributed 20 percent more than 2011. Average investments were $85,435.

“The women investors we speak with at the angel groups are pretty adamant that they they are not doing it for philanthropy,” Sohl said. “They are looking for a good deal and when it’s a choice between a good deal with a startup led by a man versus a bad deal with a startup led by a woman,  a woman-led business won’t overcome that risk.” But if there is a good deal to be done with a woman-led business, it’s seen as a win-win.

The healthcare category, which includes healthcare services, medical devices and equipment, came second to software as far as investment priorities were concerned, with companies in the sectors getting 14 percent of the $22.9 billion in total angel investments in 2012. Investments in biotechnology companies accounted for 11 percent of investments, closely following retail.

And yet, angel investment at the early stage fell to 33 percent of investments in 2012 compared with 40 percent in 2011, a trend that suprised Sohl.

“It is possible that given the robust returns in the public equity markets, some angels may have reallocated their portfolios and reduced their angel investing activity, but those angels that continued to invest remained quite active,” Sohl said. “We really need that investment at the seed stage. My hope is that this is an anomaly.”

[Photo Credit: Digitalart]

In an emailed statement Jamie Richter, who is now the president and CEO of CardioVIP where before he was corporate vice president, said the investment would be used to help the company expand in Texas and beyond.

The lead investor in the Series B round was CMS Companies’ private equity fund — a Wynnewood, Pennsylvania-based business. Its CEO Bill Landman joined the board of directors, underscoring the company’s ties to the Philadelphia area.

Last year when Richter presented before the Villanova Entrepreneurs Network he said a near term goal would be to expand the Houston, Texas business to the Philadelphia region.

CardioVIP has been working with Cleveland HeartLab to analyze data produced by diagnostic tests, understand a patient’ disease risk and produce tailored treatment plans to patients’ primary care physicians.

The assessment produces a set of treatment plan considerations, which the physician converts into a personalized treatment plan for the patient. It also uses Web-based health coaches or “iCoaches” that help patients follow a treatment health plan to improve outcomes and engage patients and provide continuity of care.

The funding will also help advance the development of the iCoaching program and enhance the proprietary clinical algorithms built into the electronic medical communication system, according to the email.

Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men and women with 600,000 deaths from the disease each year and medical costs of $109 billion for coronary heart disease alone, according to the Centers for Disease Control’s website. But a significant number of people also have risk factors like high blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking.

Richter is also a co-founder and principal with Jericho Equity Partners.

And, while founders are seeing evidence of an A-round crunch, angels and accelerators are picking up the slack.

Mark Cannice, professor of entrepreneurship and innovate at the University of San Francisco, recently completed his 37th consecutive survey of Silicon Valley venture capitalist confidence. And VC confidence is up for each of the last three quarters, hitting 3.73 on a 5-point scale.

This quarter, even the depressed exit market for venture-backed firms typified by Zynga and Groupon was not enough to dampen VCs’ increasingly rose-tinted view of the future.

I talked to Cannice this morning.

VentureBeat: VC confidence is up. Why?

Cannice: It runs a little bit counter to some of the quantitative numbers that have come out recently, however, there’s confidence in the future over the 6-18 months.

Part of the reason is that VCs tend to have a longer-term horizon, they look further down the road, so even though current measures of performance for Q1 aren’t that good, it looks like some of the pressures on the VC model will ease somewhat, and acquisitions from corporations are likely to pick up.

VentureBeat: Which Q1 measures aren’t good?

Cannice: The national VC association measures each quarter for IPOs and fundraising, and they found that for fundraising the amount raised is not that different from a year ago, but the number of funds is down.

What that points to is a concentration in funds which corresponds to a lot of funds closing up over the last year or so.

In addition, acquisitions and IPOs of venture-backed firms and capital raised is down significantly over the last year.

VentureBeat: Which Q1 measures aren’t good?

Cannice: Particularly in life-sciences … some of the regulatory hurdles have tightened up over the last few years. That extends the time for approval, and extends the time for medical device and life science companies to appear to be good investments. And, of course, it requires more money.

When you change the structure … then the finance and metrics may not work. As a result, most of the funds are not able to perform as well; therefore the LP investors are started to draw the purse strings tighter.

The long-term effect is less private capital available for some life science related new ventures, and this will have an impact on the level of innovation in life-sciences.

In clean-tech … some of the headlines like Solyndra have had a negative impact.

But some of the lower venture captial requirement industries like software have been more effective.

VentureBeat: We’ve been hearing in the last few months about an A-round crunch. What’s going on?

Cannice: There’s a few things at work here.

Over the last few years the overall return on funds hasn’t been great. So while there’s more money going into venture capital, it’s tending to concentrate into fewer, name-brand funds.

But that requires some of those funds to make larger investment than if they were smaller, so some of the dynamics are working to necessitate larger investments … which tends to squeeze out some of the earlier, lower capital needs business.

Which has opened up a opportunity for smaller, angel-type funds and accelerators to replace them – angel groups are filling the hole.

VentureBeat: VC confidence has been boomeranging around the last few years. Why?

Cannice: There’s a clear correlation with the macro-economic environment, which has boomeranged too.

And there’s also — from a government point of view — the oversight of the industry is not necessarily as popular as it could be.  When there’s external influences that has a negative impact on any part of the VC business model, that tends to find its way into the confidence levels.

VentureBeat: What’s the take-away for founders and entrepreneurs?

Cannice: What I’ve seen really consistently is while there’s waves of positive and negative sentiment related to macro-economic factors, throughout all that, I’ve always seen confidence in both venture capitalists and entrepreneurs.

That’s never wavered.

And that’s the hope for the future, that Silicon Valley continues to attract many of the best and brightest of the entrepreneurs around the world.

photo credit: dariusmonsef via photopin cc

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

Attracting attention from venture capitalists is often compared to dating. With investment, as with love, it is not always clear what the other party is thinking. Morgan Stanley Wealth Management recently conducted a survey to discover the attitudes high net worth investors have towards startups.

The results found that 37 percent of Bay Area investors have put money into a startup, and yet fewer than 23 percent plan to do so within the next three years. It would seem the wealthy are looking elsewhere for investment opportunities. As Morgan Stanley’s regional manager Michael Struckman said, “it appears that despite the boost the small companies have given the region, local investors are beginning to cool on the idea of startups.”

73 percent of respondents cited risk as the primary deterrent and expressed fear over losing their money. Millionaires, however, were less concerned on this front than people with between $100K and $1 million in assets. One-third of investors were concerned about possible legal difficulties, while 16 percent were afraid of personal failure.

When they do decide to invest in startups, investors said that innovative ideas are the most important characteristic. 19 percent expect to take a significant role in the ventures, and 58 percent of investors prefer to invest as part of a group.

The survey included 1,000 US investors aged 25 to 75 with $100,00 or more in investable household financial assists, with an “oversample” of 305 San Francisco investors. Of those, one-third interviewed had $1 million or more in household financial assets. 46 percent of the men polled said they have invested in startups, while only 29 percent of women polled had done so.

Photo Credit: Simone van den Berg/Shutterstock 

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

IBM has acquired software delivery startup UrbanCode to better help businesses push out updates of mobile, cloud, social, and big data applications, the company announced today.

Cleveland-based UrbanCode claims to reduce the time it takes to move new apps or updates of apps onto the market. The company offers up its DevOps platform, which includes apps like uDeploy, uBuild, uProvision, and uRelease. These serve to help companies push out updates, take in feedback, and improve quality of apps faster.

Ideally, it will help IBM better connect with social, cloud, and big data app makers that rely on rapid software development and releases.

“Companies that master effective software development and delivery in rapidly changing environments such as cloud, mobile, and social will have a significant competitive advantage,” Kristof Kloeckner, general manager of IBM Rational Software, said in a statement. “With the acquisition of UrbanCode, IBM is uniquely positioned to help businesses from every industry accelerate delivery of their products and services to better meet client demands.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. IBM said it plans to continue supporting UrbanCode clients.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the National Venture Capital Association released trends from their quarterly MoneyTree Report on venture capital investing on Friday, and while the findings aren’t surprising, they don’t spell much good news for life science companies.

Both biotech and medical device companies saw a marked decrease in the number of deals and dollars compared to last quarter. In fact, life sciences saw 167 deals — the fewest since the first quarter of 2009.

In biotech, though, the dollars being invested actually went up 12 percent from the first quarter of last year. Even with three fewer deals in comparison to Q1 2012, the biotech sector raked in $875 million in the first quarter of 2013, representing the second-largest sector overall for dollars invested. That supports the notion that deals size is getting bigger as VCs focus on later-stage companies.

In medical devices, though, the opposite seemed to happen. Total dollars invested dropped 20 percent from Q4 of 2012 to $509 million. Compared to Q1 of last year, the number of deals stayed about the same but the dollars invested dropped about 26 percent from $687 million last year.

Over all industries, VC investments fell 12 percent in dollars and 15 percent in number of deals compared to Q4 2012.

“The venture industry has been raising less capital than it has been investing now for several years, and ultimately this dynamic flows through and manifests itself in lower investment levels overall,” said John Taylor, head of research for NVCA, in a statement.  “We expect these overall trends to continue until exits and subsequent fundraising activities pick up, and dollars start to flow back into more venture funds.”

To end on a better note, here are a few bright spots from this quarter: early-stage investor Third Rock Ventures raised a $516 million fund, Domain Associates launched a partnership to help startups succeed in China and Hatteras Venture Partners closed a $125 million early-stage fund.

[Photo from WikiCommons]

Set aside the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations’ offer to reinvent the condom, condom manufacture Durex is conducting its own research and development — for underwear.

The company unveiled its new “Fundawear” product this week, which is basically a set of undergarments (bras, panties, briefs, etc.)  that will vibrate whenever your partner decides you need some sexual attention. Oh, and you can control it from your smartphone — sort of brings new meaning to the definition of phone sex.

According to the demo video, the vibration sensors are supposed to mimic real human touch. You use the smartphone app to specify the portions of your partners body you’d like to stimulate, which are represented through circles on those body parts. When you touch those circles, it activates the underwear’s vibration sensors.

Fundawear isn’t yet available to consumers, so we don’t really know what this kind of tech will set you back. However, the company is running a contest on their Facebook Australia page that offers you a chance to win a set of Fundawear before it goes on sale.

Check out the demo videos below, and please make a slightly inappropriate and witty comment below in our comment section.

Via io9

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat

On Thursday, March 28, Canada announced that a new startup visa program would begin accepting applications.

Governments can be notorious for slow change, especially in the eyes of entrepreneurs who move at an incredibly fast-pace. But Canada’s federal government moved impressively quickly to implement this new visa, which is aimed at encouraging entrepreneurs from all over the globe to call us home.

What does the startup visa accomplish?

Immigrants — who are 30 percent more likely to start a business than non-immigrants, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration – can now be fast-tracked into Canada if they receive a $200,000 investment from a designated Canadian venture capital fund or $75,000 from a designated Canadian angel investor group. This makes it much easier for entrepreneurs to avoid bureaucratic red tape and the stress of immigration status uncertainty.

But the program doesn’t just make it easier for immigrants on a financial level. It makes it easier on a volume level as well. In 2012, a mere 700 of the old startup visas were issued, while the new program has carved a path for up to 2,750 entrepreneurs to launch their startups in Canada per year.

While the Canadian government is garnering praise for making the visa a reality, the truth is that in order for the program to come to fruition, everyone had to make it a priority: government, investors, and entrepreneurs worked together for two years to make things happen. Everyone, to use startup terminology, hustled.

How Summify provided the impetus for Canada’s startup visa

But what started it all? To find the answer, look no further than a Canadian startup success story: Summify. Romanian founders Mircea Pa?oi and Cristian Strat overcame everything that was wrong with Canada’s old system, creating a popular company that was acquired by Twitter for a tidy sum in January 2012.

Summify’s founders came to Canada in 2010 to start their company and were quickly backed by top-tier venture capital. Yet Pa?oi and Strat — who turned down Silicon Valley jobs at Facebook and Google to build a company in Canada — could only get six-month visas, forcing them to leave and return to the country repeatedly.

They also weren’t allowed to work for their own company because the old immigration law book considered the two entrepreneurs to be potential drains on Canadian society, even though the opposite was evidently true: Summify was creating jobs in Canada and attracting significant investment.

It was their story of frustration and adversity that inspired me and other Vancouver-based entrepreneurs Danny Robinson (co-founder of Perch) and Maura Rodgers (co-founder of Strutta) to lobby for an easier way for foreign technology entrepreneurs to start their company in Canada. Fortunately for us, the government expressed strong interest to push our initiative forward.

A startup visa for the U.S.?

So now you’re wondering, what about the U.S.? Where is its startup visa? And how did Canada — a smaller nation with a less established technology ecosystem — beat its neighbor to the South on this front?

It would be easy to argue that the U.S. doesn’t need any help attracting entrepreneurs. It has Silicon Valley, which was ranked by Startup Genome as (to no one’s surprise) the world’s best startup ecosystem. Entrepreneurs from every corner of the planet are naturally drawn to the Valley. But to make that argument would be to go against the very nature which made the Valley so successful: if the US sits back and watches other countries implement startup-friendly visa programs, it’s going to get left in the dust — just like when a big company is disrupted by a scrappy startup.

Startupvisa.com, a site dedicated to raising awareness about the situation, contends that U.S. immigration policies are “now hurting our competitive edge in the global economy.”

Last year, four of the world’s five top-ranked startup ecosystems were American cities. But Canada has two cities in the top 10 (Vancouver and Toronto) and a third in the top 20 (Waterloo). If Canada continues to beat the US to the punch on important issues such as these, it won’t be long before the tables are turned.

The importance of foreign entrepreneurs building their companies in the US cannot be underestimated. Few realize that nearly half of Silicon Valley startups are founded by immigrants. Without them, the Valley would not be the world-leading startup ecosystem that it is today.

But there’s a problem — this trend is reversing. From 1995 to 2005, foreign entrepreneurs founded 52 percent of Valley startups, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Yet since then, they’ve founded just 44 percent. A startup visa would get immigrant entrepreneurship back on track and allow Silicon Valley and the rest of America to retain its competitiveness.

Unfortunately, there’s a major drag on the U.S. initiative’s progress in the form of political battles. While in Canada everyone generally agreed the startup visa was simply about improving entrepreneurship, in the US the initiative became a political issue. And we all know, things don’t usually don’t move forward so long as they’re mired in politics.

Many Americans have made the startup visa a priority, like Canadians did — just not enough of the ones who have the power to make it a reality. With the legislation already out there, foreign entrepreneurs are now stuck in limbo as it sits in the House and the Senate. At this point, they still don’t know whether politics will push it past the finish line or kill it.

In the meantime, they can always apply for a Canadian visa.

Boris Wertz is one of the top tech early-stage investors in North America and the founding partner of Version One Ventures. His portfolio encompasses over 40 early-stage consumer internet and mobile companies, including GoInstant (acquired by Salesforce), Indiegogo, Top Hat Monocle, Indochino, Summify (acquired by Twitter), Wattpad, Sparkbuy (acquired by Google), Julep, Suite101, Yapta, Chloe & Isabel, Edmodo, and Flurry. Before becoming an investor, Boris was the Chief Operating Officer of AbeBooks.com, which was sold to Amazon in 2008.

This article originally appeared on VentureBeat