Jim Shamp

Lucerno Dynamics, a Morrisville company developing noninvasive sensor technology that can show the effectiveness of radiotracer injections in patients undergoing PET/CT scans, has launched a nationwide study to demonstrate the benefits of its system. The study, called “Lara-QI,” is to enroll more than 10,000 patients in up to a dozen sites around the country during 2017. A $300,000 Strategic Growth Loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center provided funding for the study. Lucerno said it’s the world’s largest quality improvement study ever conducted on the radiotracer injection process. The company, founded in 2011, was awarded a $47,000 NC IDEA grant in...

​Sometimes the road to drug discovery can be really long, and take you far afield. For Cary-based Trana Discovery, that long road has just taken a sharp turn – smack into farm fields. Global agricultural giant Bayer and Trana have signed a collaboration agreement to explore ways to use Trana’s disease-fighting technology to identify plant-protection products. Bayer has numerous facilities across North Carolina, including a North American and global seeds headquarters on its 124-acre Research Triangle Park campus. Both companies have declined to reveal financial terms of the deal. But for Trana, it’s about more than money anyway. It’s...

Oliver Smithies, D.Phil., who was recruited to North Carolina with grant funding from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 20 years later, died Tuesday at the age of 91. In 1987, the Biotechnology Center helped recruit seven researchers from the University of Wisconsin in Madison to start the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s molecular biology and biotechnology research program. Among them were British-born geneticist Smithies, D.Phil., and his wife, Nobuyo Maeda, Ph.D. The Biotech Center’s faculty recruitment grant program, inaugurated to help attract that group of Wisconsin scientists, was...

G1 Therapeutics, a clinical-stage oncology company based in Research Triangle Park, is expanding its search for new anti-cancer weapons by launching three clinical trials targeting breast cancer patients. The move by G1, a spinout from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, comes a month after the company announced a partnership with biotech pioneer Genentech on a clinical trial involving patients with small-cell lung cancer who are receiving chemotherapy. Privately held G1 is developing novel therapies that address significant unmet needs in people with various cancers. The company was bootstrapped with $500,000 in loans from the North Carolina Biotechnology...

MILLS RIVER—RAUMEDIC, a family-owned German company, is nearing its first anniversary at its $27 million development and production facility in western North Carolina and plans to hire in 2017. The 60,000-square-foot plant, in the Henderson County town of Mills River, produces medical and pharmaceutical plastic and rubber components. When it opened in January 2016 it became the company’s U.S. headquarters and its first North American production facility. The company enters 2017 with 55 employees at its 10-acre site in the Broadpointe Industrial Park, south of the Asheville Regional Airport. It plans to add an undetermined number more in 2017,...

Research Triangle Park–based curasan Inc. is poised for growth in 2017, thanks to an important December 2016 milestone for its synthetic bone regeneration material CERASORB Ortho FOAM. The American subsidiary of publicly traded German regenerative medicine company curasan AG received marketing approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell its pliable bone patch material throughout the nation. “The FDA approval of CERASORB Ortho FOAM is an extremely important milestone for us in the re-orientation of our U.S. business, which will open up a potential market worth more than $ 900 million,” said Michael Schlenk, CEO of curasan...

ASHEVILLE—Two years after announcing plans for a yeast production facility in craft brewing hotspot Asheville, West Coast fermentation specialty company White Labs is about to start “Yeast Coast” production at its new factory in January 2017. Things are hoppin’ at the 26,000-square-foot building that will soon be the new Eastern U.S. and European R&D headquarters of the San Diego-based company. The company began hiring in early fall of 2016. The first 25 employees will start work January 3, and a total workforce of 65 people is expected to keep the plant running when everything is complete. Overseeing the site...