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Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Biotech June 5, 2017

An SBU sweep in Bioscience Hub’s latest round

By GREGORY ZELLER // Five research projects targeting advanced medical-imaging applications, computer-based drug discoveries and a range of new pharmaceutical treatments will be backed by the Long Island Bioscience Hub. The Center for Biotechnology at Stony Brook University, on behalf of the LIBH, announced Tuesday the fourth funding round of the Hub’s technology-commercialization initiative. This time around, a total of $400,000 has been earmarked for two “feasibility” and three “proof of concept” awards, each backing biomedical…

Analysis April 11, 2017

Donald Trump, Long Island and the war on science

By GREGORY ZELLER // There’s worry, if not panic, among the scientists at the heart of the Long Island innovation economy. Certainly, none are surprised that President Donald Trump, in his first proposed budget, took square aim at the federal funding that is the lifeblood of the nation’s scientific research programs. This is, after all, a president who calls climate change a hoax, champions coal and selected a former ExxonMobil CEO as his secretary of…

Health March 1, 2017

Children’s Heart Foundation grant is a Long Island first

For the first time, Long Island-based research has been backed by The Children’s Heart Foundation. The CHF’s New York Chapter recently presented Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory researcher Michael Ronemus with a $50,000 grant, supporting the assistant research professor’s studies of the genetics of congenital heart disease. Ronemus’ work will include a “high-resolution genomic DNA analysis” of 125 families with a child suffering from congenital heart disease, CSHL said in a statement. The goal, according to…

Health January 17, 2017

Northwell takes cancer research to the biobank

By GREGORY ZELLER // A collaboration between New York’s largest healthcare system and a German oncology-research expert will look to customize cancer care to individual patient needs. New Hyde Park-based Northwell Health on Tuesday announced a new partnership with Indivumed GmbH, an International Organization for Standardization-certified R&D company based in Hamburg. The collaboration will focus on cancer-tissue “biospecimens” in an attempt to better understand cancer genetics – and ultimately create “individualized diagnostics and therapeutics,” Northwell…

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Technology Transfer Chief Teri Willey

News April 19, 2016

Plotting career choices beyond the lab

In what may be a collaborative first for Long Island’s innovation community, all of the region’s top research institutions will come together – along with representatives of the nation’s biggest pharmaceutical conglomerates – to lead life science out of the laboratory. “Beyond Academia: Bench to Bioscience Enterprise” is a day-long forum on “career paths and strategies outside the lab,” scheduled for Friday at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Wendt Laboratory. The program is a collaborative effort…

Biotech April 15, 2016

Andrew Whiteley is now executively in residence

By GREGORY ZELLER // It’s become vogue for research institutions to staff “entrepreneurs-in-residence,” experienced innovators who can help science-based startups find their commercial footing, because they’ve been there and done that. Leave it to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to give the notion an innovative spin with a first-ever “executive-in-residence,” a 25-year life-sciences and drug-discovery veteran named Andrew Whiteley. In Whiteley, the lab doesn’t really have an entrepreneur – he’s never actually launched a new business himself – but it does…

Biotech December 22, 2015

DepYmed wins Accelerate funding

By Gregory Zeller // A Cold Spring Harbor biotech startup is the 10th and final recipient in the first co-funding round backed by Accelerate Long Island and the Long Island Emerging Technologies Fund. DepYmed, a joint venture of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and New York City-based biotech giant Ohr Pharmaceutical, will receive the 10th matching investment, with $50,000 coming from the regional business booster and $50,000 from the LIETF, a venture vehicle powered by Setauket…

Biotech December 18, 2015

Biohub awards $900K in research funding

Thirteen grants totaling $900,000 have been awarded by the Long Island Bioscience Hub in its first-ever funding round. The hub – a National Institutes of Health-supported partnership between Stony Brook University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory designed to help commercialize technologies created at the member institutions – is funded by a $3 million NIH award and over $5 million in contributions from its members, the SUNY Research Foundation and Empire State Development….

Biotech September 27, 2015

Monday Debrief: Bruce Stillman. The Man.

There’s barely enough room on the Internet to list Bruce Stillman’s educational credentials and professional accomplishments – his list of awards and honors runs the length of your typical DNA strand. Suffice it to say: In the annals of scientific research, particularly cellular-structure research, the Australian-born biochemist is The Man. Under his watch, CSHL has been ranked the nation’s No. 1 institution for molecular biology and genetics research; it’s also grown into an essential role…

Education September 8, 2015

The Debrief: Alexander Gann, Watson School of Biological Sciences

In terms of size, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s graduate school is a bit short of Ivy League. With seven new Fall 2015 admissions bumping the student body to 41, the Watson School of Biological Sciences has a ways to go to catch the likes of MIT’s 11,000 students or Harvard’s 6,700. But when your namesake is credited with cracking DNA, your work had better be A-grade, and the Watson School’s focus on biological sciences is…

Health September 4, 2015

Cold Spring, SUNY Old Westbury land prostate cancer funding

Two awards for Long Island-based research organizations are part of a new prostate cancer research funding initiative announced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo. All told, 20 research institutions will share a total of $3 million in funding to explore innovative concepts in prostate cancer detection, diagnosis and treatment. Among them are Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, which is slated to receive $300,000 over the next two years, and the Research Foundation for SUNY Old Westbury, set to…

Biotech August 18, 2015

Discovering a world beyond contract research

By GREGORY ZELLER // Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory spinoff Certerra Inc. is finally getting ready to spin off. Founded in 2011 by CSHL associate professor Pavel Osten and venture capitalist Steve Winick, Certerra screens drugs to test their effectiveness on a broad spectrum of brain-based disorders. Until now, the company has focused on mouse brain scans for pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients, helping them improve predictability before their experimental compounds move on to human clinical trials….

Biotech, Startups July 16, 2015

Helping Big Pharma master Big Data

By GREGORY ZELLER // Medicine is making giant strides in the research of ribonucleic acid – RNA for short – a molecule that plays vital roles in the coding, decoding and regulation of genes. The stumbling block is the resulting data, which has been piling up from next-generation sequencing technology and will soon represent the largest collection of electronic bytes in the world, topping even the astronomical amounts of data collected on space. And even…

Biotech, Startups June 25, 2015

Bioscience Hub readies $8.4M funding effort

By GREGORY ZELLER // The Long Island Bioscience Hub has announced plans to award $8.4 million in grants to local startups bringing bio-medical breakthroughs to market. The hub is a coalition led by the state’s Center for Biotechnology at Stony Brook University and includes SBU, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Brookhaven National Lab. It was launched in April with a $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. Since then, the group has added…

Biotech June 8, 2015

DEBRIEF: Leo Guthart, Topspin Partners

A Harvard man through and through (BA physics 1958, MBA 1960, doctorate in business administration 1966), Leo Guthart held leading positions at several national corporations before launching private equity fund Topspin Partners in 2000 – just in time for 9/11. With its trademark think-before-you-leap mantra, Topspin survived the Great Recession to become a key player in Long Island’s burgeoning innovation economy, including several joint investments with regional booster Accelerate Long Island through the Long Island…