Type | Private |
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Industry | Biotechnology |
Headquarters | , |
Stem Cell Theranostics is a privately held biotech company based out of Redwood City, California that provides drug companies with a method to more accurately predict cardiotoxicity and cardiovascular drug efficacy. [1]
Stem Cell Theranostics was one of the first med tech startup to come out of the StartX incubator program. The company uses technology developed at Stanford, [2] [3] to create a "clinical trial in a dish" drug screening platform, which reduces the risk of drug development. [4] The company currently works with drug discovery and biotechnology companies to use patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells for development of novel therapeutics. [5]
Gene therapy is a medical field which focuses on the genetic modification of cells to produce a therapeutic effect or the treatment of disease by repairing or reconstructing defective genetic material. The first attempt at modifying human DNA was performed in 1980, by Martin Cline, but the first successful nuclear gene transfer in humans, approved by the National Institutes of Health, was performed in May 1989. The first therapeutic use of gene transfer as well as the first direct insertion of human DNA into the nuclear genome was performed by French Anderson in a trial starting in September 1990. It is thought to be able to cure many genetic disorders or treat them over time.
A blood substitute is a substance used to mimic and fulfill some functions of biological blood. It aims to provide an alternative to blood transfusion, which is transferring blood or blood-based products from one person into another. Thus far, there are no well-accepted oxygen-carrying blood substitutes, which is the typical objective of a red blood cell transfusion; however, there are widely available non-blood volume expanders for cases where only volume restoration is required. These are helping doctors and surgeons avoid the risks of disease transmission and immune suppression, address the chronic blood donor shortage, and address the concerns of Jehovah's Witnesses and others who have religious objections to receiving transfused blood.
Geron Corporation is a biotechnology company located in Foster City, California, which specializes in developing and commercializing therapeutic products for cancer that inhibit telomerase.
ViroPharma Incorporated was a pharmaceutical company that developed and sold drugs that addressed serious diseases treated by physician specialists and in hospital settings. The company focused on product development activities on viruses and human disease, including those caused by cytomegalovirus (CMV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infections. It was purchased by Shire in 2013, with Shire paying around $4.2 billion for the company in a deal that was finalized in January 2014. ViroPharma was a member of the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index and the S&P 600.
Stem-cell therapy is the use of stem cells to treat or prevent a disease or condition. As of 2016, the only established therapy using stem cells is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. This usually takes the form of a bone-marrow transplantation, but the cells can also be derived from umbilical cord blood. Research is underway to develop various sources for stem cells as well as to apply stem-cell treatments for neurodegenerative diseases and conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.
Automated insulin delivery systems are automated systems designed to assist people with diabetes, primarily type 1, by automatically adjusting insulin delivery to help them control their blood glucose levels. Currently available systems can only deliver a single hormone—insulin. Other systems currently in development aim to improve on current systems by adding one or more additional hormones that can be delivered as needed, providing something closer to the endocrine functionality of a healthy pancreas.
Tanox was a biopharmaceutical company based in Houston, Texas. The company was founded by two biomedical research scientists, Nancy T. Chang and Tse Wen Chang in March 1986 with $250,000, which was a large part of their family savings at that time. Both Changs grew up and received college education in chemistry in National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan and obtained Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. For postdoctoral training, Tse Wen shifted to immunology and did research with Herman N. Eisen at the Center for Cancer Research, M.I.T. The two Changs successively became research managers and worked with a range of monoclonal antibody projects in Centocor, Inc. based in Malvern, Pennsylvania, from 1981 to 1985. The Changs were recruited by Baylor College of Medicine toward the end of 1985 and offered faculty positions in the Division of Molecular Virology. Soon after their arrival, they were encouraged by a high-ranking Baylor official and local business leaders to start a biotech venture in Houston. This was in a period of time when the economy of Houston was in slump as the result of the collapse of the oil industry.
The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) is a nonprofit research and technology commercialization institute affiliated with three campuses of the University of California in the San Francisco Bay Area: Berkeley, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz. QB3's domain is the quantitative biosciences: areas of biology in which advances are chiefly made by scientists applying techniques from physics, chemistry, engineering, and computer science.
ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was an American oncology company, now part of Takeda Oncology, which was founded in 1991 by Harvey J. Berger, M.D. and headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ARIAD engaged in the discovery, development, and commercialization of medicines for cancer patients.
Christoph Westphal, M.D., Ph.D., is a biomedical entrepreneur.
The Ohio bioscience sector strength was ranked #4 among USA states in 2008 by Business Facilities magazine.
Demcizumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody which is used to treat patients with pancreatic cancer or non-small cell lung cancer. Demcizumab has completed phase 1 trials and is currently undergoing phase 2 trials. Demcizumab was developed by OncoMed Pharmaceuticals in collaboration with Celgene.
Moderna, Inc., is an American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that focuses on RNA therapeutics, primarily mRNA vaccines. These vaccines use a copy of a molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA) to produce an immune response.
OncoMed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was a public American pharmaceutical development company headquartered in Redwood City, California. The company was founded in August 2004 by two University of Michigan investigators, Michael Clarke and Max S. Wicha. As of 2013, the company had 83 employees. OncoMed's drug discovery work focuses on developing "targeted antibodies against cancer stem cells". The cancer stem cell technologies on which OncoMed depends are licensed from the University of Michigan where they were developed by the founders of the company. OncoMed went public in 2013 and was listed on NASDAQ under the stock symbol OMED. In April 2019 the company was acquired by Mereo BioPharma and delisted from the Nasdaq.
Editas Medicine, Inc.,, is a clinical-stage biotechnology company which is developing therapies for rare diseases based on CRISPR gene editing technology. Editas headquarters is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and has facilities in Boulder, Colorado.
Roivant Sciences is a healthcare company focused on applying technology to drug development. Roivant builds subsidiary biotech and healthcare technology companies. Roivant was founded by Vivek Ramaswamy in 2014.
Gregory L. Verdine is an American chemical biologist, biotech entrepreneur, venture capitalist and university professor. He is a founder of the field of chemical biology, which deals with the application of chemical techniques to biological systems. His work has focused on mechanisms of DNA repair and cell penetrability.
Divya Nag is an American stem cell biologist, biotechnology entrepreneur, and a leader of Apple's Health and Research initiatives. At the age of 20, Nag co-founded Stem Cell Theranostics which uses patient-specific stem cells in a drug discovery platform. Nag is also the founder of StartX Med, Stanford University's healthcare accelerator program. At Apple, Nag leads a team designing tools that help ease communication between healthcare professionals, researchers, and patients to guide scientific innovation and improve health outcomes.
Mind Medicine Inc., also known as MindMed, is a New York-based psychedelic medicine biotech company that develops psychedelic-inspired medicines and therapies to address addiction and mental illness.
Cambrian Biopharma ("Cambrian") is a New York City-based multi-asset longevity biotechnology company that develops and funds therapeutics aimed at lengthening healthspan. It studies the biological basis of aging, such as cellular wear and tear or mutations in DNA, and funds related treatments to slow the processes.