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Biotech March 5, 2020

Team effort pushing Allied Microbiata toward pay dirt

By GREGORY ZELLER // Raymond Sambrotto is knee-deep in toxic waste in Delaware, and pretty happy about it. It’s been nearly three years since Sambrotto and co-founder Frana James launched Allied Microbiata, a now-Stony Brook-based biotech with a taste for environmental remediation, and about four months since the startup engaged its most ambitious field test to date, setting its PCB-eating microorganisms upon thousands of pounds of contaminated soil and sediment at a site in Delaware….

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Biotech September 5, 2019

Down is up at Applied DNA, with the good stuff

By GREGORY ZELLER // An aggressive Long Island biotech is getting down, literally, with another global textiles supplier. Stony Brook-based supply-chain security specialist Applied DNA Sciences announced Thursday a new sales and marketing partnership with Navarpluma, a premier supplier of down and feathers to worldwide textiles manufacturers. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but this latest collaboration with an international partner will see Applied DNA’s SigNature DNA molecular-tracking system applied to Navarpluma’s products, which…

Biotech August 19, 2019

Mapping scattered pictures, in the corners of our mind

By GREGORY ZELLER // Straight from the hippocampus (and the horse’s mouth) comes a new research paper in the journal Science, highlighting landmark innovations in human brain mapping. Published Aug. 16 by the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “Hippocampal Sharp-Wave Ripples Linked to Visual Episodic Recollection in Humans” carries a heavy title but a simple synopsis: real-time mapping of specific brain neurons that fire when humans form visual…

Biotech July 30, 2019

Writing the book, literally, on bioelectronic medicine

By GREGORY ZELLER // The pioneering work of several key researchers has made Long Island a focal point in the emerging science of bioelectronic medicine – their combined knowledge and achievements could fill a book. And it has. Fresh off the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press comes “Bioelectronic Medicine: A Subject Collection From Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine,” which belies that awkward academic title with a sharp and exciting focus: groundbreaking progress in bioelectronics,…

Biotech July 25, 2019

With pilot run ending, top marks for LI Bioscience Hub

By GREGORY ZELLER // The Long Island Bioscience Hub is making the grade, according to a report card prepared by independent evaluators. Since launching in 2015, the LIBH – a National Institutes of Health effort uniting Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Northwell Health’s Feinstein Institute for Medical Research – has trained hundreds of innovators, helped fund dozens of technology-development projects and assisted the formation of numerous startup companies and…

Biotech July 9, 2019

For secure signatures, DNA is mightier than the sword

By GREGORY ZELLER // One of Long Island’s busiest biotechs has (literally) inked an exclusive security deal with a leading global penmaker. Stony Brook-based Applied DNA Sciences this week announced a five-year agreement with German manufacturer Montblanc-Simplo GMHB, master of not only “luxury writing instruments,” according to the Hamburg-based company’s website, but a wide range of watches, jewelry, eyewear, leather goods and other personal (and personalized) products. Pens, however, will be the focus of the…

Biotech June 17, 2019

With synthetic opioids lurking, DNA detector scores

By GREGORY ZELLER // With synthetic opioids increasingly implicated in the alarming number of drug-overdose deaths plaguing the nation, a stalwart Long Island biotech’s DNA-based tracking technology has received a major endorsement. The peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS ONE has published a paper by Stony Brook-based Applied DNA Sciences on the molecular tagging of pharmaceuticals – a next-gen supply-chain authenticator that Applied DNA considers unforgeable, inescapable and particularly useful in a world where counterfeit drugs are…