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Vitatex Awarded NCI Contract

Vitatex, a Stony Brook-based biotechnology company located in the Long Island High Technology Incubator, has announced that it was awarded an SBIR Phase I/II Fast Track contract in September 2015 from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for its Vita-Cap™ CTC Capture and Preservation tubes. A modification to exercise the option for a two-year SBIR Phase II of the contract was executed on June 8, 2016.

Vitatex Inc. provides proprietary invasive circulating tumor cell (iCTC) enrichment technology and products to develop revolutionary cancer genetic and cell tests. These “liquid biopsies” focus on next generation sequencing (NGS) detection, gene expression profiling and flow cytometry and have recently been adopted by the clinical laboratory community to characterize cancer cells and/or their RNA/DNA in blood samples non-invasively and serially, and to acquire genetic alternations and drug resistance information, which have the potential to replace tests run on surgical biopsies.

Clinical metastasis of solid tumors is linked to blood-borne dissemination of viable tumor cells in the circulation and clinical instrumentation is now available to isolate, enumerate, culture, generate metastatic mouse models and perform molecular analyses on these circulating tumor cells (CTCs). However, CTCs are fragile and tend to degrade within a few days when collected in standard blood collection tubes.

“The functional CTC preparation tube is designed to collect, enrich and preserve the viability/functionality of cancer cells in blood all within a closed system” said Wen-Tien Chen, PhD., Chief Scientific Officer of Vitatex. “The goal is to define conditions of Vitatex CTC preparation tubes for capturing and preserving cancer cells in the blood of patients with breast, ovarian and other types for up to 96 hours of transit.”

Specific terms of the contract were not disclosed.

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CFB Client, IAMBIC has been awarded approximately $1M in grant funding from the National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research program. IAMBIC is an innovative shoe company disrupting the centuries-old footwear industry with their sizeless, precision-fit footwear driven by proprietary AI algorithms. This substantial funding from NSF enables IAMBIC to scale its cutting-edge precision-fit shoe design and manufacturing.

The Center for Biotechnology and its accelerator programs have been instrumental in assisting IAMBIC with their SBIR pursuits and commercialization development.

Read more about IAMBIC and their recent funding here.

[post_title] => IAMBIC Receives $1 Million NSF SBIR Phase II Grant [post_excerpt] => This substantial funding from NSF enables IAMBIC to scale its operations. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => closed [post_password] => [post_name] => iambic-receives-1-million-nsf-sbir-phase-ii-grant [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2024-08-09 15:38:43 [post_modified_gmt] => 2024-08-09 19:38:43 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => https://centerforbiotechnology.org/?p=4439 [menu_order] => 0 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [1] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 2439 [post_author] => 4 [post_date] => 2016-10-27 00:01:04 [post_date_gmt] => 2016-10-27 00:01:04 [post_content] => DepYMed Inc. has announced the completion of a Series ‘A’ Round of funding with TopSpin Fund, L.P. for a total of $2 million. At closing, $1 million was received by Depymed, and another $1 million will be provided pending the achievement of specific development milestones. DepYmed, Inc., headed by a Center for Biotechnology BioEntrepreneur-in-Residence Andreas G. Grill, is a pharmaceutical company focused on phosphatase inhibition for multiple therapeutic applications. The company is currently conducting a phase 1 clinical trial of its lead compound, MSI-1436C (Trodusquemine), as a therapeutic candidate for HER2-positive breast cancer. DepYMed was founded through a joint venture between Ohr Pharmaceutical, Inc. and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Read more about the financing here. [post_title] => DepYmed Announces $2 Million Series A [post_excerpt] => DepYMed, a joint venture between Ohr Pharmaceutical, Inc. and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, has announced the completion of a Series ‘A’ Round of funding with TopSpin Fund, L.P. for a total of $2 million. [post_status] => publish [comment_status] => closed [ping_status] => open [post_password] => [post_name] => depymed-announces-2-million-series-a [to_ping] => [pinged] => [post_modified] => 2016-12-22 17:27:57 [post_modified_gmt] => 2016-12-22 17:27:57 [post_content_filtered] => [post_parent] => 0 [guid] => http://centerforbiotechnology.org/?p=2439 [menu_order] => 162 [post_type] => post [post_mime_type] => [comment_count] => 0 [filter] => raw ) [2] => WP_Post Object ( [ID] => 1643 [post_author] => 4 [post_date] => 2015-09-15 18:44:52 [post_date_gmt] => 2015-09-15 18:44:52 [post_content] => Independently documented economic impact: $1.2 Billion Jobs created: 1,125 New corporate revenues: $812 Million Supported additional funding: $238 Million Center for Biotechnology documented economic impact over recent fifteen-year period Perhaps it is numbers like these which best illustrate the success CFB has had on the biotechnology industry and economy. And perhaps they contributed to the redesignation of the CFB as a Center for Advanced Technology for ten years by the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) as a Center for Advanced Technology (CAT). The New York State redesignation recognizes the impact of the CFB over 30 years driving innovation toward commercial goals and resulting in accelerated product development cycles "from bench to boardroom to bedside." It recognizes the key role played by the CFB in facilitating a regional bioscience innovation ecosystem, collaborating with Stony Brook University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The redesignation by New York State validates all of the work we have done over the last 10-year period to create the foundation for exponential growth. We would not have secured the National Institutes of Health REACH award without it, says Clint Rubin, Director of the Center for Biotechnology."The REACH designation represents an $8.1M investment in technology development, commercialization, and new company formation. Visionary's like New York State Senator Kenneth La Valle deserve the credit. They recognized thirty years ago that universities represented a largely untapped pool of innovation and economic potential. Strikingly, it validates and provides the foundation for the new Long Island Bioscience Hub (LIBH), a CFB-led initiative to formally bring these institutions together to foster technology development, commercialization, and new company formation. The LIBH is a bold step made possible by a partnership with the National Institute of Health REACH initiative (Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub). The NIH award places the CFB in the national spotlight along with other elite institutions. (Read more on the NIH REACH award here) "This redesignation occurs in an interesting and changing environment, where varying elements in the regional, state, and national biotech ecosystem are aligning. There is a confluence of events and issues that are creating a unique opportunity to build the biotech economy in the region and across the State." Commented Diane Fabel, Director of Operations, CFB. "We have learned a lot about the process of moving academic innovation into the commercial sector over time. And there have been such tremendous scientific advances recently that represent new commercial opportunities and life saving technologies. There is still much to learn and do, and it is an incredibly exciting time to be doing it.     [post_title] => Center for Biotechnology Redesignated by New York State: 'Unique Time of Change and Growth' [post_excerpt] => The New York State redesignation recognizes the impact of the CFB over 30 years driving innovation toward commercial goals and resulting in accelerated product development cycles from bench to boardroom to bedside. 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November 9-10, 2021 | Virtual

The Life Sciences Summit is an exclusive early stage investor and business development conference that highlights innovation. The objective of the event is to provide an intimate setting allowing emerging biotech companies and academic innovators to connect with the capital and strategic partners they will need to move new discoveries through clinical development.

The virtual 2021 program features thought provoking plenary sessions, presentations by promising young companies with transformative science, the "innovation pipeline" featuring academic innovators and pre-seed stage companies working on cutting edge technologies, and 1:1 networking opportunities.

View the program online and register at lifesciencessummit.org

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CFB Client, IAMBIC has been awarded approximately $1M in grant funding from the National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research program. IAMBIC is an innovative shoe company disrupting the centuries-old footwear industry with their sizeless, precision-fit footwear driven by proprietary AI algorithms. This substantial funding from NSF enables IAMBIC to scale its cutting-edge precision-fit shoe design and manufacturing.

The Center for Biotechnology and its accelerator programs have been instrumental in assisting IAMBIC with their SBIR pursuits and commercialization development.

Read more about IAMBIC and their recent funding here.

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IAMBIC Receives $1 Million NSF SBIR Phase II Grant

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