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Cascade Microtech  up 17% [Jul 1, 09]

Acorda Thera  down 15% [Jul 1, 09]  after the biotechnology company announced a licensing and collaboration agreement with Biogen Idec -- a deal analysts said will make Acorda a less attractive takeover target.  [Wall Street Journal,  Jul 2]

Immersion  down 23% [Jul 1, 09]  is conducting an internal investigation into certain previous revenue transactions in its Medical line of business. [Business Wire, Jul 1]

Intevac  up 10% [Jul 1, 09]

Myriad Genetics  down 27% [Jul 1, 09]  said that fiscal 2009 revenue from its molecular diagnostics division, which accounts for most of the company's top-line, would come in around $326 million. The company previously forecast $330 million. [MarketWatch, Jul 1]

Geron up 15% [Jun 30, 09] agreed to provide stem cells to GE Healthcare for use in tools that will test for the toxic effects of medicines. [Wall Street Journal, Jul 1]

Venture capital investment in green technologies totaled $1.2 billion in 85 deals in the second quarter of 2009, up from $836 million in 59 deals in the first quarter, Greentech Media Inc. said.  [Boston Globe, Jul 2]

Once again, Velazquez with the help of major Wall Street lobbyists have turned this SBIR small business reauthorization into a Wall Street vs Main Street battle, with the deck stacked on the side of the Wall Street special interests such as BIO and NVCA. [Rick Shindell, SBIR Insider, Jul 1]  House and Senate still far apart on SBIR re-authorization.

Oops, More Time for Paper. Due to technical difficulties, NIST is extending the deadline for proposal submission for its Technology Innovation Program competition to 3 p.m. Eastern Time, Tuesday, July 7, 2009. NIST will accept only paper submissions during the extended time period. ... one original and fifteen (15) copies of the proposal. http://www.nist.gov/tip/comp_09/comp09_home.html

ProCertus BioPharm  (Madison, WI; $1.6M SBIR), developing drugs to protect cancer patients from common chemotherapy and radiation side effects will announce Tuesday it has raised $2.1 million. ...  has also started enrolling patients in a clinical trial to determine whether its DermX product prevents burns caused by radiation therapy, said Paul Weiss, the company's acting chief executive officer. ....  ProCertus licenses its technology from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. The company raised $2.3 million in 2007. [Kathleen Gallagher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jun 30, 09]

NanoReturn. Will any of this stuff translate into an economic windfall for Minnesota? So far, the U has licensed nanotechnology to three companies, two of them local, with mixed results.  Nanocopoeia (St. Paul , MN; $1M SBIR) is trying to divest its original medical device coating business to focus on pharmaceuticals. Rushford Hypersonic (no SBIR) next month will open the world's first hypersonic plasma particle disposition plant in southeastern Minnesota. Innovalight, (Austin, TX to St. Paul, MN to Sunnyvale, CA; $900K SBIR in TX), which originally focused on light bulbs, is now making solar cells. ...  The U's uneven experience with nanoscience mirrors corporate America's teasing and often frustrating flirtation with a technology that's failed, so far, to match hype with reality. Despite millions of dollars in government research money and venture capital, making big bucks off nanotechnology remains an elusive dream. [Thomas Lee, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Jun 28, 09]  Nanostuff, GaAs, CVD diamond, SiC substrates, and such, are the kind of futures that SBIR should invest in until economic barriers show that it has only a long term possible future. Then it should be turned over to long term investors with long green, not slogged away in a small high tech nursery program. SBIR's goal should be economic visibility for a technology, not long term development a few bucks at a time in life-style companies.

BioMimetic Thera down 10% [Jun 29, 09]

Cleveland Biolabs up 17% [Jun 29, 09]

Ultralife up 10% [Jun 29, 09]

Genzyme spent five hundred million dollars developing the drug Myozyme, which is intended for a condition, Pompe disease, that afflicts fewer than ten thousand people worldwide. That’s the quintessential modern drug: a high-tech, targeted remedy that took a very long and costly path to market. Myozyme is priced at three hundred thousand dollars a year. Genzyme isn’t a mining company: its real assets are intellectual property—information, not stuff. But, in this case, information does not want to be free. It wants to be really, really expensive. [Malcolm Gladwell reviewing Chris Anderson’s, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, The New Yorker, Jul 6, 09]

PolyPlus  (Berkeley, CA; $100K SBIR a decade ago)  is developing lightweight, high-energy batteries that can use the surrounding air as a cathode.  is partnering with a manufacturing firm to develop single-use lithium metal-air batteries for the government, and it expects these batteries to be on the market within a few years. The company also has rechargeable lithium metal-air batteries in the early stages of development that could eventually power electric vehicles that can go for longer in between charges.  [Katherine Bourzac, MIT Tech Review, Jun 26, 09]

Spire has expanded its existing line of credit to $8 million with Silicon Valley Bank. The revolving credit facility adds $5 million of export-import credit facility to the company’s existing $3 million credit. Officials at the solar equipment manufacturer said the loan will be used to add liquidity and grow the company. [Mass High Tech, Jun 26]

BioCryst Pharma up 10% [Jun 26, 09]

Cytokinetics up 10% [Jun 26, 09]

SIGA Tech up 13% [Jun 26, 09]

AeroVironment hoped to make its plane, called Helios, into a cheaper version of a telecom satellite. That hasn't panned out yet. So the company instead makes most of its money closer to the ground, selling planes with 4-foot wingspans that fly at 500 feet. Small enough to fit in a soldier's backpack and outfitted with cameras that feed real-time video in color or infrared to a handheld screen, these drones have quickly become cherished equipment to soldiers searching for terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. .... had been working on small unmanned planes for a decade, so it was able to offer the military a series of small planes that were quickly adopted by several services.  [Jonathan Fahey, Forbes, Jul 13, 09]

Microvision  (Redmond, WA; $2.5M SBIR) , a display and scanner technology company, is getting a $15 million investment from Walsin Lihwa, a wire and cable manufacturer based in Taiwan. [Sharon Pian Chan, Seattle Times, Jun 26, 09]

Safety in Increments.  The cancer institute has spent $105 billion since President Nixon declared war on the disease in 1971. The American Cancer Society, the largest private financer of cancer research, has spent about $3.4 billion on research grants since 1946. Yet the fight against cancer is going slower than most had hoped, with only small changes in the death rate in the almost 40 years since it began. One major impediment, scientists agree, is the grant system itself. It has become a sort of jobs program, a way to keep research laboratories going year after year with the understanding that the focus will be on small projects unlikely to take significant steps toward curing cancer.  [Gina Kolata, New York Times, Jun 28]  Bureaus, public or private, including legislatures, find comfort in statistics about percent "success"; they do not think like capitalists who want the largest return over the entire investment portfolio.  Which is one explanation for SBIR's high "success" and negligible return. 

Massachusetts has seen a spate of recent medical device funding rounds, even as capital remains tight. Analysts say a combination of pent-up demand and wariness about investments in biotechnology has helped fuel a string of venture capital rounds for medical device companies. [Mass High Tech, Jun 26]

General Electric will build a $100 million manufacturing technology center in Michigan that eventually will employ about 1,200 workers. [AP, Jun 27]

UC Berkeley plant scientist Chris Somerville said it is already technically feasible to convert the entire cellulose content of perennial grasses into biofuels. ... at about $10 per gallon ... and it could be eight years or so before large-scale production becomes economical. [Tom Abate, SF Chronicle, Jun 26]

NASA will issue the combined STTR/SBIR solicitation (web only) starting at noon Eastern time on July 7.

“Opening up the SBIR program is exactly the kind of legislation Congress should be passing to help small businesses create new, good-paying jobs,” said bill sponsor Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo. [Mass High Tech, Jun 26] Although Republicans don't like corporate subsidies (unless their folks get a piece of the pie), Graves hits on SBIR's problem of paying for a lot of dead-end projects in life-style companies that have no economic future even if the technology worked.

Cooley Godward & Kronish's John Hession: For those biotech companies who have the cash reserves to remain independent and self sustaining, licensing deals will continue to drive growth. For the less fortunate, “exits in extremity” may be the new watchword. [Mass High Tech, Jun 26]

Biotech firms need a new burst of innovation in fields like diagnostic testing and biofuels production to adapt to a changing marketplace, a veteran biotech financier said. .... "I'm afraid that innovation is declining. We're losing it at a time when we need it the most," Stelios Papadopoulos said in the opening address of the BioEconomy Summit. Papadopoulos, chairman of the Bay Area biotech firm Exelixis and one of the industry's original investment bankers, said biotech did well in the past by developing novel medicines. [Tom Abate, SF Chronicle, Jun 26]

Total Cost Matters. A growing number of companies are moving beyond the usual considerations of labor and raw material costs in deciding where to produce goods to calculate the "total cost of ownership." That means tallying expenses associated with things such as storage and delays. By this light, the so-called China price, which always seemed to be at least 40% below U.S. costs on everything from bedroom furniture to telecom gear, isn't so low. In fact, China's once-formidable edge in manufacturing has all but disappeared in some industries, according to a new study by Southfield (Mich.) firm AlixPartners, which researches and consults on outsourcing.  [Pete Engardio, Business Week, Jun 15]  NB: the same total cost criterion applies to sweet technology. No amount of government sponsored "commercialization" classes will make a too-dear technology competitive. We put technologies into a capitalist, profit-centered marketplace, not in an R&D contest.

there's growing evidence that the innovation shortfall of the past decade is not only real but may also have contributed to today's financial crisis. ...  With the hindsight of a decade, one thing is abundantly clear: The commercial impact of most of those [1990s] breakthroughs fell far short of expectations ....  the gains in health as a whole have been disappointing, given the enormous sums invested in research ... With far fewer breakthrough products than expected, Americans had little new to sell to the rest of the world. Exports stagnated, stuck at around 11% of gross domestic product until 2006, while imports soared. That forced the U.S. to borrow trillions of dollars from overseas.  [Michael Malone, Business Week, Jun 15] Borrow, spend, borrow, spend, borrow, .. crash.

....  To see both the reality of the innovation shortfall and its potentially happy ending, look at Organogenesis (Canton, MA; $300K SBIR). Back in 1998, Organogenesis received approval from the Food & Drug Administration to sell the world's first living skin substitute - Appligraf ...  but Apligraf cost more to make than the company could sell it for ... couldn't figure out how to deliver Apligraf reliably, since it was shipping a product made out of living cells ...  By 2002 the early enthusiasm for Apligraf had vanished, along with the money. Novartis pulled out, Organogenesis declared bankruptcy ... enter new CEO Mackay By bringing down costs, "we now have margins that are pharmaceutical-like," says MacKay. Sales of Apligraf are growing at more than 20% per year, the company is taking over two more buildings on the same street in Canton, and it has FDA approval to install high-reliability robots from Japan's Denso, the same supplier Toyota (TM) uses, he says. Employment is expected to climb from 350 jobs to about 600, the company is introducing products ...  Organogenesis is fulfilling the promise of 1998—a decade later.  [Michael Malone, Business Week, Jun 15]

Incentives and Relevance. [Presidente] Chávez said that researchers should stop working on "obscure projects,"such as whether life exists on Venus, and instead go into the barrios to make themselves useful. The words sent a chill through the scientific community, as did Chávez's comment that his recently appointed minister for science, technology, and intermediate industry, Jesse Chacón Escamillo, should "put the screws" on "feeble scientists" to get better results. .... Chávez's dismissal in April of science minister Nuris Orihuela, a geophysical engineer,and her replacement by Chacón, an engineer and Army lieutenant. [Science, May 29]

Dyax says it is raising $15 million through a follow-on offering of 7.4 million shares of its common stock at a price of $2.02 per share.  ... development and commercialization of DX-88, the company’s treatment for the rare and often fatal condition hereditary angioedema [Mass High Tech, Jun 25, 09]

Symyx up 12% [Jun 25, 09]

Metabolix up 14% [Jun 25, 09]

Taris Biomedical (Lexington, MA; no SBIR) announced it has received a $15 million Series A round of venture financing to commence early stage trials of its bladder disease drug device. .... had been operating in stealth mode for about 10 months before emerging at a technology conference Wednesday [Mass High Tech, Jun 25, 09]

The next time the world's most selfish lobby comes to Washington demanding drought relief, someone ought to have the good sense to tell them to go pound sand. .... True to form, [the farm lobby] has demanded another boost in his already lavish government subsidies before he'll even consider doing something about global warming. [Steve Pearlstein, Washington Post, Jun 26]  No matter how big your present subsidy, demand more!  After all, what's a Congress for except to grease squeaking wheels?

Molecular Insight Pharma down 10% [Jun 24, 09]

Sequenom up 10% [Jun 24, 09]

Targacept up 13% [Jun 24, 09]

BioDelivery Sciences International (Raleigh, NC; $1.7M SBIR) is apparently on the verge of winning approval for its first drug, the culmination of a regulatory process that began more than 18 months ago. .... founded in 1997 in New Jersey. In 2004, it moved its headquarters to the Triangle shortly after it acquired Arius Pharmaceuticals, a Research Triangle Park startup. ...  Shares have more than tripled since August. [Raleigh News & Observer, Jun 25, 09]

Osiris Therapeutics said interim data from a Phase II clinical trial of its stem-cell-based treatment showed no significant improvement in lung function.  [Wall St Journal, Jun 25,09]

Innov-X Systems (Woburn, MA; no SBIR, founded 2001) , maker of handheld chemical and elemental analyzers, has landed a $4.5 million investment ... a three-pound portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF) device that can determine the presence of elements such as lead or mercury ....  received $27 million in venture funding [Rodney Brown, Mass High Tech, Jun 24]

Intelligent Medical Devices (Cambridge, MA; $200K SBIR), which makes technology that fights superbug infections, has pulled in $3 million ... In November 2007, [it] told Mass High Tech after years of silence it had raised a total of $15 million from angel investors [Mass High Tech, Jun 23, 09]

The virus hunters have arrived at Genzyme. Dozens of decontamination specialists are busy stripping insulation from pipes at the company’s biotech drug plant overlooking the Charles River in Allston. Their prep work involves dismantling equipment, peeling gaskets from the lids of 2,000-liter vats called bioreactors, and scrubbing down every surface in sight with spore-killing bleach. [Robert Weisman, Boston Globe, Jun 25, 09]

The board of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, a quasi-public agency charged with implementing the state's life sciences initiative, today awarded nearly $1.4 million in research grants to seven scientists whose research ranges from malaria to neural regeneration. Each of the grants will be matched by the scientists' institutions. [Boston Globe, Jun 25, 09]

Hogs, Keep Out. Last week the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee approved a bill (S.1233) to reauthorize [SBIR] and increase the percentage of their budgets that some federal science agencies must devote to it. The legislation would require annual incremental increases in the percentage set-aside for SBIRs, from the current level of 2.5 percent to 3.5 percent over a 10-year period. Some scientific advocacy groups oppose that part of the bill, saying that SBIR funding should be increased through total agency funding boosts rather than increasing the amount of the set-aside formula. Agencies impacted by the legislation include NIH, NSF, DOE, and Department of Agriculture. [AAAS, Jun 24] The SBIR hogs must believe that if a policy isn't working, we need more of it.  Like the Republicans on taxes: whatever the problem tax cuts are the answer, regardless of larger issues, like financial sanity. 

On the one hand, it appears that the sky is falling yet again. Science is caught up in a competitive arms race for funding, universities are driven by internal and external forces to enter into questionable relationships with the for-profit sector, scientists’ integrity buckles under pressure and, in short, as Daniel S. Greenberg puts it, “much is amiss in the house of science.” On the other hand, despite this general mayhem, scientists as a group demonstrate altruism, work with the best intentions toward scientific progress, and maintain a collective sense of ethical responsibility. Such is the two-handed perspective that dominates Greenberg’s Science for Sale  [Melissa Anderson, Issues in S&T, Winter 09]

Aware down 12% [Jun 23, 09]

Symyx up 11% [Jun 23, 09]

Protein Sciences facing possible bankruptcy and liquidation has been awarded a $35 million federal [HHS] contract to develop a faster way to make vaccines for pandemic influenza. ...  But only a day earlier, creditors filed a petition in federal bankruptcy court seeking to force Protein Sciences into bankruptcy and liquidation, saying they were owed $11.7 million. Almost all of that money is owed to Emergent BioSolutions, a vaccine company in Rockville, Md., that lent Protein Sciences $10 million last year in advance of the pending acquisition of virtually all the assets of Protein Sciences by Emergent. The acquisition deal fell apart, and Emergent sued Protein Sciences and its top executives, accusing them of fraud and breach of agreements. [Andrew Pollack, New York Times, Jun 23]

Superconductor Tech down 17% [Jun 22, 09]

Symyx down 14% [Jun 22, 09]

Medarex up 13% [Jun 22, 09]  after the Mayo Clinic said three patients taking the company's prostate cancer treatment are now cancer-free [Wall St Journal, Jun 23]

Progenics Pharma down 11% [Jun 22, 09]

Dendreon expects to spend up to $50 million to expand its therapeutic biotechnology processing facility in Morris Plains, New Jersey, the company said Monday in a regulatory filing  [Seattle Times, Jun 22, 09]

Hydrogel-based therapeutics company I-Therapeutix (Waltham, MA; no SBIR, founded 2006). reports it has raised $15 million in as Series C round of financing. [Mass High Tech, Jun 22, 09]

Cascade Microtech up 12% [Jun 19, 09]

A director recently sold $6.7M of Tessera Tech stock. [WSJ, Jun 20, 09]

Aneesh Chopra, who holds the newly-created title of Chief Technology Officer in the Obama Administration, and is also associate director for technology at OSTP, said that his major goal was "economic development using government policy to create business around technology." Chopra said he wants to change how the government looks at its R&D spending, focusing more on technologies that can be developed rather than purely on basic research. Measuring how much research is being commercialized is a key part of this, he noted. [AAAS, Jun 17] If the President is serious about such an objective, SBIR in the mission agencies is in for a big shift.  On the other hand, those agencies have seen bright ideas coming from many other geniuses with new White House power.  The hard rules will emerge from the Congress's prescriptions and action will depend on the willingness of the White House to pressure the agencies to focus SBIR on Chopra's ideas. But since Congress will try to please everybody and SBIR is too minor to engage the agency heads, don't expect any revolution.

Axis Semiconductor (Marlborough, MA; no SBIR) a stealthy startup launched by veterans of Analog Devices Inc., has landed $1 million of a planned $2 million financing round, according to regulatory documents. [Mass High Tech, Jun 18, 09]

Eden Bioscience (Woodinville, WA; one small SBIR years ago) which went public in 2000 and raised $133 million over the years, said it will delist and deregister its stock at the end of the month as it winds down the business.  [Seattle Times, Jun 19]

ImmuRx (Lebanon, NH) vaccine developer for cancer and chronic infections, has pulled in $250,000 in seed funding ....  brings additional funding to the $329,000 SBIR grant from the NIH [Mass High Tech, Jun 18, 08]

MIT chemical-engineering professor Karen Gleason and MIT postdoc Sreeram Vaddiraju have developed a process that aims to solve the problems of high fabrication costs and instability for OLEDs while still maintaining their flexibility. Gleason's solution is a hybrid light-emitting diode, or HLED. The device would incorporate both organic and inorganic layers, combining the flexibility of an OLED with the stability of an inorganic light-emitting material.  [Ann-Marie Corley, MIT Tech Review, Jun 15]

CLEARLY, the innovation meeting [invitation-only affair was organized and moderated by John Kao, a former professor at Harvard Business School and founder of the Large Scale Innovation.] in California was a gathering of enthusiasts. ... the main participants were innovation-policy practitioners from nine countries: Australia, Brazil, Britain, Chile, Colombia, Finland, India, Norway and Singapore. ...  One view not heard was that innovation policy itself is a mistake — government meddling in decisions best left to the marketplace — as free-market purists contend. [Steve Lohr, New York Times, Jun 21]

Give Us More. While the pundits wring their hands about The next great crisis: America's debt (Shawn Tully, Fortune, Jun 22), the SBIR advocates cry for a bigger handout of government money.  They just don't hear any call to conserve government spending, nor to maximize the economic return from government investment.  Nor do they even show any sign that they understand America's financial dilemma. If there's any justice, Congress will treat them as just another grasping interest group loaded with platitudes.

Concluding that the Fed is leading us into inflation assumes a degree of incompetence that I simply don’t buy. ...  [The Fed] might miss and produce, say, inflation of 3 percent or 4 percent at the end of the crisis — but not 8 or 10 percent. [Alan Blinder, New York Times, Jun 21]

Society will never be able to control the large-scale consequences of its actions, but the realization of the imperative for sustainability positions us at a critical juncture in our evolutionary history.  [Michael Crow, Issues in S&T, Winter 09]

ImmunoGen ($1.6M SBIR in the 1990s) today priced its public offering of 5 million shares of common stock and expects proceeds of $33 million. [Boston Globe, Jun 19, 09]

Armed with a $1 million loan from the Wisconsin Department of Commerce, Exact Sciences (no SBIR) said Thursday that it will move from the Boston area to Madison's University Research Park.  [Kathleen Gallagher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jun 19, 09]

New Albany and TechColumbus have created a business incubator in the village that will widen the organization’s reach in fostering tech development in the region and satisfy the village’s push to step up economic development. .... funded by state grants and private investments. New Albany contributed $750,000 toward its project, which was complemented by $1.5 million from the state’s Third Frontier technology development program.   [First Business of Columbus (OH), Jun 18]

Molecular Insight Pharma up 42% [Jun 16, 09]  said clinical data showed its Trofex drug has the potential to both detect and to treat metastatic prostate cancer [Wall St Journal, Jun 18]

Savara Pharmaceuticals (Austin, TX, no SBIR, founded 2007) has secured $833,000 of a $1.4 million Series A financing round, ... late 2008, it moved to the Austin Technology Incubator five months after Austin entrepreneur Rob Neville was named the company’s chairman and CEO.  Neville previously was founder and CEO of another ATI-based company, Evity Inc. That startup was acquired in 2000 by Houston-based BMC Software Inc. for $100 million about a year after it was founded. Savara’s pulmonary — or via the lungs — drug delivery product, initially developed in 2004, is based on nanotechnology and dry powders rather than conventional propellants. It plans to offer its platform to drug makers seeking alternative delivery methods and to develop its own drugs. [Austin Business Journal, Jun 9]

Private, federal and state investments at the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering have topped $5 billion, the college reported today.  Employment at Albany NanoTech, which is 10 years old this year, has also exceeded the 2,500-mark. That’s the number of scientists, researchers, engineers, students and faculty that now work at the 800,000-square-foot complex. With an average salary of $81,000, those numbers translate to an annual payroll of $202 million.  [The Business Review (Albany), Jun 9]

researchers at MIT have integrated a collection of light sensors into polymer fibers, creating a new type of camera. Yoel Fink, a professor of materials sciences and engineering and the lead researcher on the project, notes that a standard camera requires lenses that are usually rigid and heavy. A camera made from fibers, however, could be lightweight, robust, and even foldable. Although Fink admits that the applications aren't yet well defined, he suggests that such a fiber-based camera could be used in a large foldable telescope or integrated into soldiers' uniforms.  [Kate Greene, MIT Tech Review, Jun 17]

The U.S. needs a clear strategy to remain a competitive leader in industry and other sectors of an economy in crisis, business leaders told a national summit ... Although industrial policy is often equated with protectionism, Ford and other speakers said the U.S. needs to be tougher with trading partners to maintain prosperity.   ....  co-chair Andrew Liveris, chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical Co., called for "a modern-era industrial policy, one built for the 21st century  [Rob Lever, Industry Week, Jun 16]  Industrial policy usually involves subsidies to uncompetitive companies - aka corporate welfare. The SBIR world, of course, is calling for even greater subsidy than it already gets bacause any subsidy worth having is worth doubling.

Genzyme is shutting down production at its main U.S. plant for several weeks, marking the latest manufacturing misstep for the company, which faces potential shortages of some of its best-selling drugs.  The company said it acted after discovering a virus in one of six bioreactor vats used to develop drugs at the plant, which is the only facility that makes two of Genzyme's top sellers. .... Over the past year, Genzyme has been hit by other manufacturing-related concerns and the company's stock has declined 28% over the past four months. [David Armstrong, Wall Street Journal, Jun 17, 09]  SBIR firms often way underestimate the intense demands of manufacturing their sweet technology for competitive markets. And the government R&D agencies typically aren't much help on the subject.

CeNeRx BioPharma  (Cary, NC; no SBIR) developing a new type of antidepressant and other experimental medicines has raised $9 million to continue research on its products.  also used some of the money to buy the rights to an early stage compound that could be developed into treatments for degenerative nerve diseases such as Alzheimer’s. ...  a small work force and hires out much of its research and clinical testing. The company, founded in 2005, has raised about $42 million to date.  [Raleigh News & Observer, Jun 16, 09]

Gentel Biosciences  (Madison, WI; no SBIR) maker of chips that help researchers test for proteins said Tuesday it has been invited to join a research consortium using novel technologies to gain insight into major diseases of pregnancy.   ... will participate in the development of a protein test with the SCOPE (Screening for Pregnancy Endpoints) Study centers that operate in New Zealand, Australia, the UK and the United States, Gentel said. [Kathleen Gallagher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jun 16, 09]

CombiMatrix ($1M SBIR) Reinvents Itself From Lab Toolmaker to Cancer Diagnostics Player.  tried for years to sell sophisticated genetic analysis instruments to laboratories, and essentially got overrun by big competitors like Santa Clara, CA-based Affymetrix and San Diego-based Illumina. ... after capturing a little more than 1 percent of the R&D market, decided to move on to the greener pastures. “We didn’t have the balance sheet to fight with them on price in the R&D market,” Kumar says. “But we have an advantage on diagnostics, and we’re establishing a beachhead before they turn their attention to the market.” [Luke Timmerman, xconomy.com, Jun 16, 09]

TriQuint down 10% [Jun 16, 09]

Enzo Biochem down 12% [Jun 16, 09]

Norian (West Chester, PA; one SBIR in 1991) illegally tested bone cement during spinal surgery on about 200 patients, three of whom died on the operating table, federal prosecutors in Philadelphia charged. A lengthy indictment accuses the [company] of training dozens of surgeons to conduct unofficial clinical tests of the product on humans, subverting FDA safeguards. The company is charged with conspiracy and 51 other felonies. Prosecutors say the surgeries took place from 2002 to 2004 but ended after the third death. [AP, Jun 16, 09]

Roomba, made by iRobot, which has sold more than 3m of the frisbee-sized vacuuming robots. The latest model, the fifth incarnation of the Roomba, has more sensors and cleverer software than its predecessors. Press the “Clean” button and the robot glides out of its docking station and sets off across the floor. [The Economist, Jun 6, 09]

Arena Pharma up 10% [Jun 15, 09]

American Science and Engineering reports it has won a patent infringement suit against three New Jersey companies. [Mass High Tech, Jun 15, 09]

California investor Carl Berg bought 1.2 million shares of Valence Technology  for $2.5 million in a private placement, according to a regulatory filing. Berg, who is Valence's chairman and co-founder, already was the company's largest shareholder and has provided regular cash infusions. Valence has not made a profit since it was founded in 1989. Valence, which makes lithium-ion batteries, has applied for federal stimulus money to help build an advanced battery plant in Leander. [Austin American Statesman, Jun 16, 09]

Rick Shindell - aka SBIR Insider - has an excellent review of the bidding in the SBIR re-authorization game. Much negotiation to go.

Symyx up 19% [Jun 12, 09]

Genzyme said that the European Commission has approved Renvela in the treatment of some patients with chronic kidney disease.  [Boston Globe, Jun 12, 09]

Spire agreed with partner Gloria Solar Co. Ltd. of Taiwan to dissolve their joint venture, Gloria Spire Solar LLC, which performed photovoltaic systems integration in the U.S. ..  Spire chairman and CEO Roger Little said in a statement that the new direction is expected to free the company to develop new opportunities in the U.S. systems market, which is being stimulated by federal funding. [Mass High Tech, Jun 12, 09]

The government's massive intervention has shifted the way companies do business. Many are now are competing on the basis of their ability to tap government money, opening a divide between the gets and get-nots. [Wall Street Journal, Jun 15]  Sounds like the SBIR scramble for money.

Tax Revenue Drought, Services Demand Storm. States face a cumulative shortfall of $230 billion from this year through 2011, and there is little sign in bailout-weary Washington of any attempt to create yet another aid program to solve that problem. .... So far, 42 U.S. states have slashed enacted budgets to cope with rising demand for services and plunging revenue, according to the National Governors Association. About half have also raised taxes. Those policies run counter to Washington's efforts to prime the economic pump,   [Jonathan Weisman, Wall Street Journal, Jun 15] The gap is a natural consequence of the competitive bidding wars among interests in representative legislatures.

This month, the Supreme Court agreed to reconsider what can be patented. At stake are tens of thousands of existing patents and a rethinking of why we have patent protections in the first place. ...  patent law is at the shifting tectonic plate between the fading Industrial Age and today's Information Age. ... As one Silicon Valley lawyer says, "Unlike in the Industrial Revolution, many of today's inventions would not hurt if you dropped them on your foot."  ... Studies indicate that aside from the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the cost of litigation now exceeds the profits companies generate from licensing patents. [LG Crovitz, Wall Street Journal, Jun 15]

BioCryst Pharma up 11% [Jun 11, 09]

Illumina is launching a futuristic service that will give consumers the chance to get their DNA sequenced. But it's not cheap: $48,000. The company, which specializes in DNA research tools for scientists, thinks consumer gene sequencing could become widespread within a few years. That could give patients quick access to personalized information as the role of specific genes in disease becomes better understood.  [Thomas Kupper, San Diego Union Tribune, Jun 11, 09]

Science wins one over mythology.  Anti-Evolution Bills Die in Texas Legislature.  One would have required the State Board of Education to reinsert language on so-called "weaknesses" of scientific theories into the state science standards. The other would have paved the way for the Institute for Creation Research to offer its master's degree in science education, a proposal which was rejected by a state higher education board. [AAAS, Jun 10] 

SatCon Technology said it is looking to raise $20.2 million in a follow-on public offering. [Mass High Tech, Jun 10, 09]

Fuel Cell down 10% [Jun 10, 09]

Sequenom down 23% [Jun 10, 09]

Semprius (Durham, NC; $900K SBIR) is developing what it hopes will become the next generation of solar-energy devices with the help of $6.4 million in new venture capital.  ....   previously raised $4.1 million in April 2007. ...  Semprius' solar modules take advantage of technology licensed from the University of Illinois that allows it to make smaller semiconductors. Those semiconductors are combined with special lenses that concentrate sunlight 1,000-fold.  [David Ranii, Raleigh News & Observer, Jun 10, 09]

LaamScience (Raleigh, NC; no SBIR, founded in 2006) raised about $5 million from wealthy individuals to continue developing its first products, including surgical masks that can kill viruses on contact. [David Ranii, Raleigh News & Observer, Jun 10, 09]

IBM Research is beginning an ambitious project that it hopes will lead to the commercialization of batteries that store 10 times as much energy as today's within the next five years. The company will partner with U.S. national labs to develop a promising but controversial technology that uses energy-dense but highly flammable lithium metal to react with oxygen in the air. [Katherine Bourzac, M IT Tech Review, Jun 11]

Obama's Cancer Plan Faces Opposition. During a hearing last week, House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-WI) said that he opposes dedicating extra money to cancer research on the grounds that lawmakers should not pick and choose one disease over others. President Obama hopes to double the cancer research budget over eight years. "The result will be political chaos in an area that ought to be determined by science," Obey said. [AAAS, Jun 10] It used to be that Senators favored research in the diseases of white men; then the Army suddenly developed programs for breast cancer. But politics should determine where public research money will be spent. If the research agencies have a great idea on how to allocate research spending, let them convince the public's representatives who have to raise the money.