"Visual optogenetics is a disruptive technology which affords the opportunity to restore life-transforming levels of vision to blind and visually impaired patients with conditions such as retinitis pigmentosa,” said Paul Bresge, chief executive officer of Ray Therapeutics. “We have developed a next generation bioengineered optogenetic payload which we believe is optimized for human vision."
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With the Golden Tickets, ARIZ and Catena each win one year of free office and lab space at Bakar Labs and access to BrightEdge’s robust network of resources to develop their cancer therapies. They will be able to access Berkeley campus resources, connect with Bakar Labs' business affiliates, and network with more than 30 fellow tenant companies. The combination of support from Bakar Labs and BrightEdge will, most importantly, allow ARIZ and Catena to bring their technology to patients sooner.
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Ben has been working as a medicinal chemist since 2011. After completing his postdoc, he joined Novartis, where he conducted discovery-phase research for oncology indications. While at Novartis, he transitioned to infectious disease drug discovery. He then joined Via Nova Therapeutics, a Novartis antiviral spinout founded by Don Ganem and Kelly Wong, when Novartis exited the infectious disease space.
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Anyone who’s had a blood draw as a patient – in short, everyone – knows that what the doctor gets to work with is a basic count of red and white blood cells. But there’s so much information that we’re missing, which could help inform and develop much more precise treatment. Daniel Georgiev and Sampling Human want to solve this problem. Their solution: using biology to analyze biology.
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HOPO 14-1 is an investigative drug that is hoped can protect and treat victims of nuclear fallout, by binding (or chelating) contaminated heavy metals and removing them from the body. It is thought to be effective against Uranium and other materials used in nuclear weapons, such as dirty bombs or ballistic missiles.
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Ray Therapeutics, housed in the Bakar Labs incubator at UC Berkeley, will use the new funding led by Novo Holdings A/S to push a unique treatment for eye diseases into a clinical trial within the next year, if not sooner. It is zeroing in on diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration that slowly degrade vision.
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Ray is creating what it hopes to be a one-time treatment that is delivered into the eye so retinal cells can respond to light and give patients’ the ability to see again. The biotech says its intravitreal injection can be delivered in five minutes in an outpatient setting.
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A disused Brutalist building on the University of California, Berkeley’s campus was transformed into a modern life sciences facility supporting the academic and commercial needs of its student body.
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On 26 January, Profluent came out of stealth mode with $9 million in seed funding to support the company’s efforts to apply machine learning to engineer novel functional proteins. This is just the latest in a steady flurry of investment in this space.
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CEO Katy Digovich recently gave a passionate TED Talk about her motivation for launching and leading Minutia. A former Princeton basketball player, Katy lives with diabetes. Working with the Clinton Global initiative in Africa, she learned that people with diabetes in the Third World face an early death sentence due to the cost of insulin monitoring and delivery. Minutia is developing cell therapy in the form of cells engineered with nanosensors to measure insulin levels and deliver dosage.
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“I always used to enjoy science and technological innovation. For a scientist, curiosity leads to discovery, but it is a need that leads to invention. In the back of my mind, I always knew that to make a clinical product into a reality, I have to take the technology out of the lab and develop it in an industry setting. Patients and their caregivers motivated me to take this leap into entrepreneurship," says Navneet Matharu.
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Until 2010, leading a biotech wasn’t on Paul Bresge's radar. He’d built a long and successful career as a leader in unrelated industries -- industrial tools and a courier service, for example. Then, his 15-year-old daughter was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a rare genetic disease that causes degradation of retinal cells over time. She was going blind. Ophthalmologists told him there was nothing that could be done to save his daughter’s vision.
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The summit, which takes place in New York City from May 18-20, will showcase wagyu beef from Ohayo Valley on the second day. The company was founded in 2020 by Dr Jess Krieger, one of the earliest pioneers of cell-based – also known as cultivated – meat.
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“The session provided a great platform to present our company and technology to venture and potential industry partners, said Tandis Vazin, PhD, corporate advisor and incoming Ciznor CEO, who presented on behalf of the company. “This award will be instrumental to our new company as it will help us with our initial legal needs and intellectual property strategy.”
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“I think anyone who meets me understands my passion for what I’m doing,” Terry says. “I’m not here to make a business per se. I am here to impact people’s lives."
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Endometriosis is a chronic condition that affects women causing severe pain and infertility. It affects around 10% of women of reproductive age, diagnosis takes up to 8 years and requires surgery. Endometrics develops a unique solution for diagnosing endometriosis non-invasively by identifying specific genomic features of endometrial cells.
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