January Product and News Briefs

January 25, 2013 | Briefs for January include news briefs from ERT, Flatiron Health, ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Mayo Clinic, CDISC; new products from PerkinElmer; and more. 

January News Briefs
ERT has completed registration for Kabushiki Kaisha (KK) in Japan and has formed a fully-owned subsidiary, ERT Asia Group, Ltd. The KK registration enables ERT to broaden the local services it provides in Japan and establishes a solid foundation to expand its Asian presence.  Along with this registration, ERT will grow the number of local resources in Japan that will work directly with its customers to deploy Japan-based projects.  Local teams will further enhance the quality of services that ERT is known for providing. ERT

Flatiron Health, the developers of an intelligent oncology data platform, has raised $8 million in a Series A round of funding led by Google Ventures with participation from First Round Capital, Laboratory Corporation of America, Great Oaks Capital, The Social+Capital Partnership, SV Angel, IA Ventures and angel investors. Flatiron Health is the brainchild of Invite Media founders Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg. The pair began to investigate the inner workings of the oncology industry and realized that most cancer care centers, oncologists and researchers were deprived of even the most basic data analysis tools that other industries used daily. So Turner and Weinberg decided to start another company to help solve this problem. The result, Flatiron Health, is building an “oncology data platform”, which allows cancer care providers to aggregate, structure and mine their clinical oncology data. Flatiron

Alexandria Real Estate Equities has announced that ARIAD Pharmaceuticals will establish its state-of-the-art corporate and research and development headquarters at the Alexandria Center at Kendall Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ARIAD has executed a 15-year lease with an affiliate of Alexandria for approximately 244,000 rentable square feet, or 63%, of 75/125 Binney Street, an approximately 386,000 rentable square foot life science facility, with additional potential expansion opportunities through June 30, 2014. ARIAD’s decision to locate its headquarters at 75/125 Binney Street affirms the Alexandria Center at Kendall Square’s reputation as one of the world’s most desirable locations for life science innovation and collaboration. Press Release 

Optum and Mayo Clinic jointly launched Optum Labs, an open, collaborative research and development facility with a singular goal: improving patient care. Based in Cambridge, Mass., Optum Labs provides an environment where the health care industry can come together to combine information and ideas that benefit patients today while also driving long-term improvements in the delivery and quality of care. Optum and Mayo Clinic will make their information assets, technologies, knowledge tools and scientific expertise available to organizations interested in pursuing practical new solutions to patient care challenges. As the first and largest integrated, not-for-profit medical group practice in the world, Mayo Clinic will also contribute valuable insights directly from patient experiences. Press Release 

BioData, developer of lab management software Labguru, and Altmetric, both portfolio companies of Digital Science, today announced a collaboration that will allow Labguru users to track in real time the popularity of research papers important to their work. Labguru users will now see related news articles, blog posts and publicly visible social shares on sites including Facebook, Google+ and Twitter for the papers they upload. Metrics are available for any research paper with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and published since the beginning of 2012. Here’s an example.

Joseph M. Marasco, Ph.D., has joined Diffinity Genomics as its President. Jeffrey L. Helfer will be stepping down from his role as CEO and member of the Board of Directors. The Diffinity Genomics Board of Directors has appointed Dr. Marasco to the board to replace the vacancy. These changes are all part of the Diffinity’s succession plan to help ensure that the Company has access to the expertise necessary to lead the company through its present growth stage. Diffinity Genomics 

CDISC is pleased to announce that five highly qualified individuals will add invaluable expertise to the CDISC Board of Directors (BoD) for a three-year term beginning this month (2013—2016). Dr. Carolyn Compton, Michael Glickman, Dr. Douglas Peddicord, Stephen Pyke, and John Speakman each contribute unique skillsets to the BoD that will greatly assist CDISC as it moves forward with its Strategic Goals in 2013. Sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Steven Hirschfeld and Robert Goodwin, who completed their CDISC Board service in December 2012 and to Wayne Kubick who has become the Chief Technology Officer for CDISC.  CDISC 

January New Products
PerkinElmer  launched the JANUS BioTx Pro automated workstation for improved process development of protein therapeutics at the 12th Annual Protein Science Week (PepTalk) in Palm Springs, California this week. Designed for high throughput, small scale protein purification, it is the only workstation that accommodates multiple chromatography modes (column, tip and batch) eliminating the need for multiple instruments, resulting in more efficient and cost effective sample processing. Read more. The company also Introduced IVIS Lumina Series III for improved in vivo imaging for researchers in the life sciences. The series integrates leading bioluminescence and full spectral fluorescence in vivo imaging technologies, providing an expandable and sensitive bench-top imaging system that is easy to use for both fluorescent and bioluminescent in vivo imaging. Read more.