Three young bioscience companies started with funding and other help from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center will be presenters at the Innovation Showcase Feb. 26 during the 2014 CED Life Science Conference in Raleigh.

They include:

  • BioKier, a Chapel Hill company developing a diabetes drug designed to mimic the anti-diabetes effect of bariatric weight-loss surgery without the physical trauma and cost of surgery.
  • CanDiag of Charlotte, developing cancer screening technology for early detection of breast cancer.
  • Nova Synthetix, a young Chapel Hill agricultural biotechnology company, which is developing a non-toxic castor plant to replace the toxic ones now in use for creating feedstock for chemicals and biofuels.

They’re among the five companies chosen to present at the Innovation Showcase during the conference, co-presented by NCBiotech, CED and NCBIO.

The others are Improved Patient Outcomes and KinoDyn.

The companies’ leaders will each have 10 minutes to pitch their wares to a panel of experts, who will then provide feedback.

Improved Patient Outcomes is a joint venture between Duke University and mobile health firm CellepathicRx, using technology to send patients messages about tendencies associated with 75 diseases.

KinoDyn is a cancer diagnostic and drug discovery company built on a proprietary UNC-CH technology using multiplexed inhibitor beads and mass spectroscopy.

“These are some of the most promising early-stage companies in North Carolina,” said Dhruv Patel, CED program director and conference organizer.

(C) N.C. Biotechnology Center