By Jim

Venture Philanthropy is a huge opportunity within the red hot life sciences community in North Carolina and throughout the Southas an alternative source of capital. Last week, Executive Search Firm Carlyle and Conlan, among other sponsors, partnered with the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and the Center of Innovation Network to renew the Life Sciences Forum, a quarterly event for networking and trending industry discussions among Life Sciences leaders. The renewed forum discussed venture philanthropy. Venture philanthropy is a great way to de-risk some of the early expensive research into solutions for specific patient populations that the typical life sciences...

The federal faucet is opening again to pour $25.5 million into solithromycin, a promising drug being developed by Cempra, a Chapel Hill company that has declared war on bacterial infections. Cempra is now authorized to receive the $25.5 million as part of its contract with the federal Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to develop solithromycin for pediatric use. Three formulations — intravenous, oral capsules and a suspension formulation – are in a phase one-b trial in children from two months to 17 years of age. Next-generation class of drugs Solithromycin is a next-generation macrolide, a class of...

Research Triangle Park-based medical diagnostics company BioMedomics has received a $222,950 grant from the National Institutes of Health to boost its development of a diagnostic test to aid in treating people with sickle cell disease (SCD). The company, started in 2006 with the help of a $19,000 loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, will use the phase one Small Business Innovation Research funding to help it develop a test for use in hospitals or doctors’ offices to more quickly determine levels of blood components for improved SCD treatment. Frank Wang, Ph.D., CEO, who is also a co-founder of...

Editor’s note: Writing today’s Skinny is Jim Roberts, the founding executive director of the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council and the Blue Ridge Angel Investors Network. CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — OK, I know some tech geeks’ eyes glaze over when people make a sports reference to teach a business lesson, but stay with me, please. (Would it help if there were an ACC connection to this story?) There is a football coach who has turned around a university program and has turned it into a dynasty. One of his keys to success was to remove the fear from his life....

Editor’s note: Today’s Skinny is written by Jim Roberts, a frequent contributor to LTW. Roberts is the former Founding Executive Director of the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council and the Blue Ridge Angel Investors Network. CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – North Carolina is blessed with several entrepreneur councils that are a great source of job creation to help make a healthier statewide economy. There are councils in Asheville, RTP, Charlotte, Boone, Greenville, Triad and Wilmington. At the base of these entrepreneur councils, we basically follow the Council for Entrepreneurial Development model of educating entrepreneurs, creating mentoring and networking events, communications/ calendar...

Editor’s note: Jim Roberts is the former Founding Executive Director of the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council and the Blue Ridge Angel Investors Network. RALEIGH, N.C. – I thoroughly enjoyed the recent 24th annual Emerging Issues Forum at N.C. State. This is always a humbling event as the forum always finds the brightest people to discuss a variety of issues. This year the topic was energy, and North Carolina former Gov. Jim Hunt found a way to get superstar Tom Friedman to speak. Hunt created the forum, and his pride in it is quite obvious. And there was much more...

Editor’s note: Jim Roberts is the former executive director of the Blue Ridge Entrepreneurial Council and the Blue Ridge Angel Investors Network. He wrote today’s Skinny. CHAPEL HILL – So how should an entrepreneur go about winning investors? Here are my 10 recommendations – plus a bonus. 1. Get to know the investors before you need the money. This is a common piece of advice even if you are looking for a bank loan for your home. The more rapport you have with the people you need money from, the easier and less time it will take to get...

If the United States and the world are to successfully deal with rapidly growing energy, climate and economic challenges, government and private sector leaders must embrace innovation, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman told the Emerging Issues Forum on Monday. Addressing a record crowd at the annual event put on by former N.C. Gov. Jim Hunt, Friedman said innovation, not conservation or increased energy production, is essential to deal with global warming and $100-a-barrel oil. “I’m an innovation guy,” he said in a speech that lasted more than 40 minutes. No other measures can “scale” to transform the world’s...