In today’s Bulldog wrapup of life science and technology news:

  • Entegrion lands $7.8 million Department of Defense contract for platelet development
  • Zuckerbergs donate to fight Ebola
  • Bioventus acquires a product line
  • Yelp fights extortion claims

The details:

  • Entegrion Lands More Funding to Develop Platelet Technology

Durham-based Entegrion has won another Department of Defense contract – this one worth $7.8 million – to continue development of blood platelet technology.

The agent under development, called Stasix, that can be stored up to three years vs. standard platelets that expire in a week or less.

Entegrion has received nearly $88 million in funding from the DoD.

  • Zuckerbergs Fight Ebola

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are donating $25 million to the CDC Foundation to help address the Ebola epidemic.

The money will be used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ebola response effort in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and elsewhere in the world where Ebola is a threat, the foundation said Tuesday.

The grant follows a $9 million donation made by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen last month. Zuckerberg and Chan are making the grant from their fund at the nonprofit Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

  • Bioventus Acquires Product Line

Durham-based Bioventus has acquired a product that is used by spine surgeons to promote natural bone growth and healing from OsteoAMP.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Surgical orthobiologics is a priority for Bioventus and this acquisition puts the company in position to engage with customers in this market and grow the segment,” said Anthony P. Bihl III, Chief Executive Officer of Bioventus. “We are very pleased to be in business with the talented team at Advanced Biologics. The well developed and successful clinical data set distinguishes OsteoAMP from competitive technologies. In addition, this agreement also includes R&D and product supply which could lead to future innovations in this space.”

  • Yelp Fights Extortion Claims

First the chefs of a small Italian restaurant got mad at online review site Yelp. Instead of trying to get better reviews, they decided to take a different approach: get terrible ones.

The campaign helped Botte Bistro get a rating of one out of five stars, as more than 1,000 reviewers left hundreds of tongue-in-cheek reviews panning the Richmond, California, eatery, said chef Michele Massimo, adding that it boosted business.

It was the latest protest among businesses who for years have complained that Yelp was extorting them by raising or dropping ratings depending on whether they advertised with the Internet’s most popular review site.

Yelp has persistently denied those claims on its website, in court and at every opportunity when the question is put publicly to the company.

“It wouldn’t pass the straight face test,” Yelp spokesman Vince Sullitto said of the extortion claims.

Sullitto said Yelp attracts millions of viewers and sells advertising to 80,000 businesses because of the site’s credibility with consumers. Sullitto said many of the company’s critics are businesses that have received bad reviews.

Last month, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out a lawsuit filed by several businesses claiming Yelp extorted them by removing positive reviews after advertising sales pitches were turned down.

The court is one rung below the U.S. Supreme Court and the ruling could have been a definitive one for Yelp.

Instead, it served to fuel the company’s critics because the court said that, even if Yelp did manipulate reviews to penalize businesses, the practice would not constitute extortion.