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Bioengineering, gene technology, schools
Health Care Firms Haul In Total Of $3.2 Billion in Year’s First Half
William Walsh, manager of Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown Inc.’s $300 million fund of funds, saw a co-worker get his hip replaced one day and return to work the next.
While most people can just sit and marvel at such medical breakthroughs, Mr. Walsh sees them as compelling reasons to back health care-only venture firms like Palo Alto-based Prospect Venture Partners.
He is certainly not alone. Health care firms are off to their best fund-raising start ever this year, with $3.2 billion going into 23 funds during the first six months. Although the pace is likely to slow in the second… Continue reading
Genentech Employees Helping to Meet Needs of Life Sciences Firms
Genentech Inc., a long-time source of executive talent for the biotechnology industry, has become a feeder system for venture firms.
In recent months, several Genentech staffers have departed to take junior partner positions at venture firms such as MPM Capital, Cambridge, Mass., and Patricof & Co. Ventures Inc. and J.P. Morgan Partners, both of New York. Overall, at least 10 Genentech employees have moved on to the venture business since 1999 alone. “My Genentech network is two orders of magnitude of all my other networks put together,” said Michael Powell, who left Genentech himself in 1997 to join Sofinnova Ventures,… Continue reading
Biomedical Engineering Concentration Draws SEAS Students
Several administrators within the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences said that they believe the new undergraduate concentration in biomedical engineering will attract a large number of students—some of whom might not have otherwise chosen to major within SEAS—when sophomores declare their concentrations next month.
While no administrator could offer an official projection for the number of concentrators, SEAS Assistant Dean for Academic Programs Marie Dahleh said she believes the new concentration will be a “popular option” because it will meet “many if not all of the premed requirements, and also has an interesting curriculum to supplement the course load… Continue reading
The basics of Intentional Biology
Intentional Biology is about the use of biology as technology. Humans have explicitly herded, farmed, and bred plants and animals for thousands of years, and now this effort is moving to the molecular level. Biology is a medium for creation. But because we don’t yet know enough to manipulate biological systems with either certainty or safety, IB is also about the science we need to do to get to that point.
The portrayal of current genetic engineering as precise and well defined is inappropriate today. Few genes are known quantities and the process of introducing a foreign gene into an… Continue reading
The Origin of Life
Approximately 20 billion years ago (bya), all matter in the universe was condensed into a single point. At this point it is believed that the BIG BANG was believed to have occurred, spewing clouds of H2 shrapnel as the universe expanded. Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is believed to have been created ~13bya.
During this time the huge H2 cloud began to condense and nuclear fusion began, forming all of the heavier elements. This humongous “star” went supernova, scattering these heavier elements to form clouds of dust and gas. Such a cloud condensed into our present day sun, and the… Continue reading
Ten Most Innovative Entrepreneurs
Fortune has chosen ten female small-business entrepreneurs to join the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. The ten women join 400 of the world’s most influential women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, education and the arts for panel discussions, on-stage interviews, and interactive sessions over the course of three days.
Wendi Goldsmith, CEO of Bioengineering Group, a woman-owned science and engineering firm headquartered in Salem, MA, was recognized as one of the ten winners. The program, which debuted at the 2009 Summit, targets entrepreneurial women who are game changers, ground-breakers and innovators in their fields. Hundreds of business owners were… Continue reading
What Artificial Neural Networks Can Do
The potential of achieving a great deal of processing power by wiring together a large number of very simple and somewhat primitive devices has captured the imagination of scientists and engineers for many years. In recent years, the possibility of implementing such systems by means of electro-optical devices and in very large scale integrations has resulted in increased research activities.
Artificial neural networks (ANNs) or simply Neural Networks (NNs) are made of interconnected devices called neurons (also called neurodes, nodes, neural units or merely units). Loosely inspired by the makeup of the nervous system, these interconnected devices look at patterns… Continue reading
Biomedical Engineering and the Implantable Ventricular Defibrillator
Sudden cardiac death, often called a massive heart attack, is the leading cause of death in America. Many of these deaths are caused by cardiac arrest (ventricular fibrillation), a breakdown in the normally well-choreographed electrical activity of the heart. In the United States, approximately 500,000 out-of-hospital episodes of ventricular fibrillation occur each year. About 25% survive. Survival is often attributable to the rapid response of paramedics coupled with a bystander’s use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
Without treatment, fibrillation survivors are almost certain to suffer another episode within a year. Even when treated with drugs, survivors have a one-year mortality rate… Continue reading
The first Artificial Enzyme has been created
An artificial enzyme has been created that functions normally in gut bacteria, an achievement that marks a big step for synthetic biology—the creation of artificial organisms and biological systems. The experiment, reported in the June 25 Science, represents a valuable step in the quest to design enzymes from scratch.
The Duke researcher Homme Hellinga and colleagues used a computational method to redesign the noncatalytic ribose-binding protein’s active site so that it would bind both the initial substrate and the product molecule. Their computational technique involves mutating a protein inside a computer by selectively altering its individual amino acids. The method… Continue reading
The first synthetic virus created
“The world had better be prepared. This shows you can recreate a virus from written information,” Eckard Wimmer, leader of the biomedical research team and co-author of the study published in the journal Science, told newsagents. “One has to be aware that humans can recreate a virus,” Wimmer said, “even if you think it’s not around anymore.”
Poliovirus does not have DNA like most organisms, but starts out with RNA instead. Normally DNA carries the genetic code in cells, and is transcribed into RNA, which controls the production of individual proteins. To make a poliovirus, Wimmer and colleagues Jeronimo Cello… Continue reading
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