Happy New Year!
Thank you for your support of OBI & OTRADI over the past year.
We wish you an abundance of health, happiness, and success in 2022.
2021 OBI Client Company Recap
- OBI & OTRADI alumnus Absci was listed at #8 by the Portland Business Journal ofthe largest bioscience and health tech companies in Oregon and SW Washington.
- Announced completion of $125 million crossover financing to advance AI-powered synthetic biology drug creation platform. Read press release.
- Absci made its debut on the NASDAQ (ticker symbol ABSI) on Thursday, July 22, and founder Sean McClain and his team rang the closing bell.
- Announced new and expanded collaboration with Merck, with payments and fees of up to $610 million.
- OBI & OTRADI alumnus Aronora was listed #31 by the Portland Business Journal on their list of the top 37 largest bioscience and health technology companies in Oregon and SW Washington.
- In March upon graduation from the OBI, Aronora relocated their lab and office from OTRADI’s incubator in the Willamette Wharf building, to a brand-new high rise downtown where they have double the office space, a private wet lab, and conference room.
- Aronora reports positive topline data from their phase 2 clinical trial of recombinant antibody therapeutic AB023 in hemodialysis patients. This data was presented at the XXIX Congress of the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasias in July. See Aronora’s press release here.
- Buchanan Science joined the OBI as a client company in 2021.
- Buchanan Science is now in the process of testing approximately 100 blinded serum samples from persons who received vaccination against COVID-19. The sera were previously tested with a CLIA-approved instrumented assay from ProMega that quantitatively measured the antibody levels to SARS-CoV-2 spike.
- The Buchanan Science BeSure Double Check Rapid test is designed to enable home users to check their antibody levels to RBD, the portion of the viral spike that attaches to human ace2 receptors as an initial step in infection. Persons with high antibody levels to RBD are able to avoid infection due to SARS-CoV-2, or if infected have only minimal symptoms and avoid hospitalization or death.
- Preliminary indications are that the rapid test is correlating well with protective antibody levels to RBD, and they are currently seeking increased numbers of sera from non-vaccinated individuals who have also not had COVID-19 infections to quantitate test specificity.
- Caregiven participated in Australian CareFactor Pitch Day 2021 on March 22, part of the Information Technology Across Care virtual summit.
- First public release launched in app stores April 15th.
- Closed pre-seed with a total of $700K raised from Rogue Venture Partners.
- Was a 2021 Oregon Technology Awards finalist.
- Semi-finalist for Aging 2.0’s Global Innovation Search.
- Candice Smith was interviewed by the HITLab for their Women’s Health Tech Wednesday forum.
- Highlighted in an article titled “Looking to the Future of Insurance.”
- Presented “Shark Tank” style to attendees at the ISCPA conference.
- Finalist in Aging 2.0’s Global Innovation Search.
- Finalist in the ACORD InsurTech Innovation Challenge.
- Selected to participate in the American Heart Association of OR/SW Washington’s EmPOWERED to Serve program.
- Awarded the TAO Start-Up of the Year award in the pre-revenue category.
- Candice Smith was a guest on the Aging in Portland podcast.
- Chief Revenue Officer, Anthony Mitchell and Candice had the opportunity to present at the ACORD InsurTech Innovation Challenge NY.
- Anthony also co-hosted a webinar on The Future of Value Adds in Insurance with an insurance luminary, Jason Gross.
- Presented at CareTech presented by the Louisville Healthcare CEO’s Council and Aging 2.0, a global search for innovations that improve the patient or member experience.
- Awarded the second place grant from the American Heart Association’s EmPOWERED to Serve program ($30K), sponsored by the American Heart Association of Oregon & SW Washington.
- Kicked off the first phase of their first pilot with a national palliative care provider. They will be using Caregiven to expedite the health outcomes their nurses already accomplish, and are including Caregiven as a differentiator for their company in proposals to major health systems nationally.
- Had over a dozen calls with insurance carriers about Q1 pilots and are under NDA and working on LOIs with several.
- Attended InsureTech Connect in Las Vegas, sponsored by the Global Insurance Accelerator, and had many wonderful calls with customers and investors alike. Notable conversations occurred with Unum, Northwestern Mutual, MS&AD, Ethos Life, Assurity, and more.
- Networking at the event resulted in Candice Smith being asked to speak at the Society of Actuaries ElderTech Summit in December and to be interviewed for an upcoming book focused on the future of insurance. Additionally, 2 podcasts featuring Caregiven were recently released: Woman to Woman Podcast and The Heart of Hospice.
- Successfully completed Session #1 of the Creative Destruction Lab – an invite only program with the goal of helping start-ups “build something massive.” Of the 20 initial companies, Caregiven was 1 of 14 asked to return for Session #2 in December. Again were successful in Round #2 of the Creative Destruction Lab and have been invited to participate again in February. Their lead mentor this round comes from Healthy Minds Innovations. Candice said is amazing to be selected to collaborate with a team that has a direct connection with the Dalai Lama and is committed to using digital tools and modern neuroscience to improve the human experience.
- Successfully launched their first co-branded experience with Spivey Insurance.
- Circumvent Pharmaceuticals are co-Principle Investigators on a NIH SBIR grant for the study of “Development of N-tert-(Butyl)hydroxylamine (NtBuHA) as a therapeutic agent for treating infantile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (INCL).” INCL is a form of Batten Disease.
- CytoImage founder Tania Vu presented at the international Innovation Stage at BIO Digital 2021.
- Pitched at an Oregon Venture Fund pitch event at the OBI in October.
- Gamma Therapeutics is now Gamma Diagnostics, Inc.
- David Eastman retired as CEO, they hired Ajay Nair from Perth, Australia as their new CEO, and he hired Chris Venter, also from Perth, as their Chief Finance Officer.
- Discovered that their GammaCoeur diagnostic blood test for cardiovascular disease is extremely elevated in COVID-19 patients and predicts the need for hospitalized patients to need extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in order not to suffocate, and it predicts death from COVID-19. They now have a provisional patent on this I.P. that also protects the use of the test as a companion diagnostic for the administration of dexamethasone in COVID-19 patients.
- Accepted into California’s Expert Dojo accelerator cohort. For companies accepted into the program, Expert Dojo invests $100,000, provides an 8-week training program that trains the members of the company in all aspects of business, and introduces them to investors and mentors.
- The Department of Defense’s Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program has a Technology/Therapeutic Development Award, and invited Gamma Diagnostics to submit a full proposal to develop GammaCoeur as a companion diagnostic to track COVID-19 disease severity. They submitted the grant on Sept. 2.
- One of 8 semi-finalists for the Bend Venture Conference in the Impact category.
- What is Gamma Prime Fibrinogen (GFP)? Dr. David Farrell, Professor of Surgery at OHSU and founder and CSO at Gamma Diagnostics, shared his poster and abstract at the American Heart Association meeting. The results show that their ELISA for GFP shows significantly higher levels in COVID-19 patients who died or required extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), which has several important clinical implications relative to administration of anticoagulants and steroids. Read more here in the American Heart Association Circulation.
- Hemex Health’s Gazelle device was highlighted in a 360Dx article.
- Hemex reports: “On Saturday, Feb 27, Ruaraka Neema hospital in Nairobi held a public screening event for families to bring their kids in for sickle cell screening using Gazelle. The team was able to run most of the samples they collected on one day, the rest on the following Monday morning. Running almost 50 samples in one day is what Gazelle was designed to do, and we’re so proud to see this helping the kids who need it most now.”
- The Portland Business Journal listed the largest bioscience and health tech companies in Oregon and SW Washington. Hemex Health was listed at #19.
- In a recent clinical study conducted in Brazil and published in the Malaria Journal, Gazelle was shown to outperform current RDTs (Rapid Diagnostic Tests) in detection of P. vivax malaria. P. vivax, the most widely dispersed species of malaria, tends to be more difficult to detect with RDTs due to typically low levels of parasitemia. They are excited to share the results of the study with you in their press release.
- Won a Phase I grant to add multispectral imaging to its Hb Variant test to lower the limit of detection and allow the test to screen newborns for sickle cell and other hemoglobin variants.
- Excited to announce a new partnership with Cureleads for distribution of Gazelle in the Middle East, Turkey and North Africa.
- CEO Patti White, was a keynote speaker in the OHSU Invent-a-thon Post-Hack.
- Released our newborn screening capacity for sickle cell anemia in May.
- Selected as a 2021 TiE50 winner as part of the TiECon program for their Gazelle reader diagnostic device. Press release here.
- Officially launched their newborn release! Gazelle is now able to diagnose newborns for sickle cell disease before they even leave the hospital. Check out the press release.
- With their product design and engineering partner Tata Elxsi, the Gazelle Reader won the Social Impact Solution of the Year award at the 2021 NASSCOM Engineering & Innovation Excellence Awards in India!
- In a recent P. vivax clinical study, Gazelle demonstrated higher sensitivity than the only FDA-approved malaria rapid diagnostic test. Press release here.
- Featured in the Oregon Lottery spotlight.
- Patti White was on the speaker panel of the Oregon Pediatric Innovation Event, Powered by CTIP, on September 1.
- Featured in the September issue of the Elevate Capital newsletter.
- Gazelle was featured in an NIH article: Future of medicine: Lab-on-a-chip devices starting to make an impact.
- Pitched at an Oregon Venture Fund pitch event at the OBI in October.
- A clinical study featuring Gazelle’s sickle cell disease test was featured in Frontiers in Medicine. The researchers found that Gazelle’s speed, accuracy and ease-of-use made it ideal for use in low-resource settings with a high prevalence of the disease.
- In November, Hemex introduced an enhancement to its Hb Variant test that enables testing for beta thalassemia in addition to sickle cell disease. Gazelle is now the only point-of-care test for beta thalassemia on the market. Additionally, they were able to update our installed base automatically over the Cloud. Here is the link to the press release that explains more.
- Hemex Health has been invited to pitch to Inflect Health in January, 2022.
- HTI has announced that Dr. Jeff King has joined their team as Senior Advisor.
- Dr. Craig Yoshioka joined HTI as Senior Advisor for cryo-EM. Read their press release for background information on Dr. Yoshioka and HTI’s innovative cryo-EM technology.
- HTI’s CryoDiscovery™: A Machine Learning Platform for Automated Cryo-EM Class Selection poster was selected by One World Cryo-EM conference on March 10-11.
- CryoDiscovery™: A Machine Learning Platform for Automated Cryo-EM Class Selection for Single Particle Analysis in Structural Biology paper has been accepted by the Microscopy and Microanalysis 2021 conference (M&M), to be presented in August 2021.
- HTI has also been accepted as a Premier Member into the NVIDIA Inception Program for AI and data science startups.
- CryoDiscovery (TM): A Machine Learning Platform for Automated Cryo-electron Microscopy 2D Class Selection paper was presented at the ACA (American Crystallographic Association) conference in Aug 2021.
- Became a member of the Nvidia Inception and Intel AI Builder program.
- Pfizer is beta testing HTI’s CryoDiscovery ™ – A Cryo-EM Automation & Intelligence Platform for Drug Discovery.
- Nimbus Wadget, Inc signed another service agreement to start a cryo-EM 3-D structure determination project.
- Signed MSAs (master service agreement) with Agios, Flare Therapeutics, Atavistik, and IDEAYA Biosciences for cryo-EM services.
- CryoDiscovery ™ was presented at the 4th Annual CryoNET Symposium, October 18-19th 2021.
- Pitched at an Oregon Venture Fund pitch event at the OBI in October.
- Inherent Targeting was awarded a fast-track SBIR grant from the NCI at the NIH worth a total of $2.25M to complete lead selection and preclinical testing for investigational new drug approval of their nerve-specific fluorescence guided surgery contrast agents.
- Awarded a SBIR matching grant from Business Oregon worth $82k to cover IP and business development expenses.
- Presented at the Angel Capital Association Summit Innovation Showcase, sponsored by the Oregon Bioscience Association.
- CEO Connor Barth was awarded OHSU’s Early Career Innovator Award. The Early Career Innovator Award is presented to an OHSU employee such as a student, post-doctoral fellow, medical resident or someone else early in their professional career who possesses a passion for innovation and developing technologies to solve real-world problems. They work closely with the innovation ecosystems within and outside of OHSU to prepare their innovations for commercial success.
- Connor Barth presented at BIO Digital 2021 Innovation Stage.
- Recently awarded an SBIR Phase 1 grant from the NSF.
- Represented OHSU startups and present at the Pacific Northwest Startup Showcase on Oct 12.
- Izon has recently released two new consumables products to the market. These kits will further establish Izon as an industry leader in extracellular vesicle analysis. Please see product pages: qEV RNA Extraction Kit, qEV Concentration Kit
- Henry Scheffer joined as our new Research Associate, Brennan Van Deren joined as a part time Quality Assurance Intern, and Anthony McNeil came onboard as Applications Scientist.
- Izon Science is excited to announce the release of its Gen 2 qEV SEC columns as well as its new column size, the qEV1. Izon is confident these columns will perform better in nearly all performance metrics important to the extracellular vesicle community including higher total EV yields, lower levels of contaminating proteins, and higher EV purity as measured by # of EVs/ug of protein when compared to their legacy columns.
- OmnEcoil Instruments‘s Dr. Fergus Coakley, inventor of the OmnEcoil instrument, was an author of a November 2021 research article in the American Journal of Roentgenology, entitled, “ In-Bore Versus Fusion MRI-Targeted Biopsy of PI-RADS Category 4 and 5 Lesions: A Retrospective Comparative Analysis Using Propensity Score Weighting.“
- OBI & OTRADI alumnus Oncol Drug Discovery Service made substantial progress in developing optimized SOP for generating CART against targeted cancer. Generated two targeted CART lines of high potency and purity (93-96% purity).
- ProMedix, Inc. had abstracts from their clinical trials selected from a national pool of applications for presentation at both the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine and Pediatric Academic Society national meetings in spring 2021.
- Awarded a $30K grant from OHSU Technology Transfer.
- ProMedix has a new publication on “Point-of-Care Capillary Refill Technology Improves Accuracy of Peripheral Perfusion Assessment,” in Frontiers in Medicine.
- Competitively selected for the mHUB MedTech Incubator in Chicago. Read mHub’s press release.
- ProMedix is developing HydraSense to provide a rapid, accurate, and noninvasive assessment at the clinical bedside or remote care setting to help diagnose sepsis and monitor patient decline and response to treatment.
- Qtonics joined the OBI as a client company in 2021.
- Will be moving into a private office within the OBI in February, 2022.
- Learn about mass photometry as a revolutionary new way to analyze molecules in a series of videos on Refeyn’s YouTube channel.
- Rewire Neuro‘s Pipsqueak AI version 5.5.0 has been released. It features new detection models, smoother model customization, and better co-localization analysis.
- Won a Cougar Cage grant from WSU (it is their version of Shark Tank).
- Won Angel Oregon Tech 2021 and received a $125,000 equity investment from AOTech investors. Out of 90 companies who went through the program, nine were selected to pitch at the final AOTech at TechFestNW event on May 21, and Rewire Neuro was the judges’ top pick.
- Received funding from Elevate Capital’s Oregon Gap Fund.
- Pitched at an Oregon Venture Fund pitch event at the OBI in October.
- Awarded a Phase II SBIR from the NIH. This two-year grant will help them develop additional cell detection capabilities and integrate their AI platform into partnering diagnostics devices and applications.
- Rewire Neuro is a finalist in the upcoming Pitch Oregon by TiE Oregon, in the Life Science category. Pitch Oregon will take place February 11, 2022.
- RxHomeTest has been invited to pitch to Inflect Health in January, 2022.
- Senju Pharmaceutical has announced marketing approval for the ophthalmic VEGF inhibitor “Ranibizumab BS Intravitreal Injection Kit 10 mg/mL.
- In December 2021, announced the launch of a new treatment for Ranibizumab. See press release.
- Sirona Dx launched a rapid saliva-based PCR COVID-19 testing service utilizing advanced microfluidics.
- Dr. Nasry Yassa, CEO, and Andrew Brown, Chief Commercial Officer, presented at Fluidigm Virtual Mass Cytometry Investor Day. Listen to the webcast here.
- OBI & OTRADI alumnus Sparrow Pharmaceuticals‘ novel approach to the treatment of Cushing’s syndrome was featured by the Endocrine Society in their membership newsletter Endocrine News.
- Sparrow received a May Proceed letter from FDA for a Phase 2 clinical trial in patients with ACTH-dependent Cushing’s syndrome, which will open to patients in January. Press release here.
- StoneStable, Inc. had patents issued in Canada and India.
- Successfully demonstrated that silica-treated adenovirus is significantly more resistant to freeze-thaw cycles, which can be a big improvement over current vaccines.
- Currently looking to raise its seed round.
- SUTUREGARD shipped the most HEMIGARD ever before in Q1 2021.
- Teamed with one of the leading foot and ankle surgeons in the world, Dr Mark Myerson. He has now enrolled 8 colleagues across the country and is initiating a clinical trial of HEMIGARD in ankle replacement/fusion surgery.
- Attended the Chicago Lower Extremity Surgery Symposium in April as invited speakers, and we had the HEMIGARD successfully demo’d on live video by the Symposium Chairman, Dr. Edgardo Rodriguez-Collazo.
- Named a Top 10 Innovation by Podiatry Today, a leading trade journal. This is unsolicited, unlike some trade publication lists which are paid for. SUTUREGARD is featured at the end of the article; they saved the best for last!
- The Veteran’s Administration is now ordering HEMIGARD. The U.S. Veteran population has a high incidence of wound problems and they will be making a big impact in reducing wound complications and improving limb salvage efforts. The HEMIGARD is a great tool to not only speed the surgical closure, reduce the need for additional deep sutures, but also to support the healing through the difficult postoperative period when the foot may swell and the wound may open (dehisce).
- Continuing to gain traction with Q2 2021 sales highest ever, and 50% growth in revenue from Q2 to Q3, with a record month to start Q4.
- SUTUREGARD and HEMIGARD products were placed on the MEDLINE catalog and have now been ordered by multiple hospitals through that pathway.
- CEO Dr. Dan Ladizinsky gave two plenary session talks at the American Podiatric Medical Association meeting in Boston in October, highlighting that HEMIGARD closure of diabetic foot amputations has reduced wound dehiscence and subsequent need for above or below knee amputation by over 80%. This improvement in outcomes is especially important since diabetic foot amputations have gone up in frequency post COVID due to poor access to necessary preventative care and to vascular complications of COVID increasing the risk of wound complications.
- Synergic Medical Technologies is enrolling in clinical trials for Parkinson’s Disease through Oregon Neurology in Springfield, Oregon. The trial is for a non-invasive vibrotactile stimulator whose purpose is to address some of the motor issues associated with Parkinson’s disease.
- Thaena, Inc. joined the OBI as a client company in 2021.
- Joined the OBI mentoring cohort in Summer-Fall 2021 and renewed for the Winter-Spring 2022 cohort.
- Held a microbiome symposium in December, 2021 about microbial ecosystems, metabolites, and their impact on human health.
- Veana Therapeutics was awarded a Phase I SBIR grant from the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute to conduct proof-of concept studies of its lead product, VIMO in combination with the monoclonal antibody trastuzumab (an equivalent of Herceptin).
- Closed a seed round with a total of $1.25M raised.
- Veana is pleased to report that the first patient in the Phase Ib clinical trial of the company’s oral drug, VIMO in combination with Herceptin has been dosed!
- Vir Biotechnology and partner GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) announced a joint collaboration to produce an investigational monoclonal antibody for the treatment of COVID-19. The treatment, called sotrovimab, is an FDA EUA-authorized monoclonal antibody which is administered by infusion in the early stages of a COVID-19 infection in eligible patients.
- Vir and GSK recently announced a $1 billion U.S. government contract to purchase sotrovimab, delivered mid-December. Vir Bio and GSK also have other governmental purchase agreements through the European Commission.
- Preclinical studies indicate that sotrovimab retains activity against the full combination of spike proteins on the recently discovered Omicron variant. Read press release here.
Congratulations to our amazing OBI Client Companies!
OBI Welcomed New Startups in 2021
Click here to learn more about our new companies
New OBI Mentoring Cohort Begins
We are pleased to announce that January 3, 2021 was the start date for OBI’s newest Mentoring Program cohort. Seventeen mentees and fourteen mentors will work together in pairs and threes for 6 months.
MENTORS
Lynn Sheehan, Guillaume Lenormand, Daren Connor, Mel Ellis, Katie Rubino, Sheila Ramerman, Michael Phillips, Anoop Pal, Shannon Heizenrader, Shelly Sweeney, Scott Filer, Keith Daellenbach, Josh Ellison, and Mark Bloom.
MENTEES
Priscilla Cheng, Alan Kadish, Alexander Honkala, Sandhiprakash Bhide, Christine Tataru, Mohammad Hissourou III, Alex Tataru, Cory Szybala, Vickie Driver, Manreet Brar, Marco Barcella, Andrea Sommer, Daniel Forbes, Jessy Imdieke, Alison Carrigg, Sydney Quinton-Cox Forbes, and Gus Lawrence.
Best of luck to the Winter-Spring OBI Mentoring Program cohort! Learn more about the OBI Mentoring Program.
Johnson & Johnson QuickFire Challenges
Johnson & Johnson Innovations/JLABS has some exciting opportunities coming up soon:
- Immunology Innovations QuickFire Challenge: Precision Medicine in Immune-Mediated Disease
- Nurses Innovate QuickFire Challenge: Healthcare Transformation through Nurse-Led Tech
- Food Allergy Prevention QuickFire Challenge
- Improving Detection of Neurotoxicity in Immunotherapies
Learn more about these QuickFire Challenges here.
New Year, New Job?
Or perhaps a new employee for your Oregon company or organization. If you are hiring or looking for a new role, check out the current listings, and post your open position or resume to the OBI Job Board. It’s easy and free to use.
New Year, New Ideas…
We’d Love to Hear from You in ’22!
Do you have an idea for an OBI Lunch & Learn topic, Happy Hour theme, or Workshop suggestion? Or maybe you know of an awesome speaker (maybe even yourself!). We have a new button at the top of our Events Calendar for you to submit your program ideas and speaker suggestions. And as always, if you have an event you would like us to promote on our calendar, there’s a button for that, too. We’d love to hear from you in ’22!
Missed a Lunch & Learn?
No worries! We have video recordings of most of our Lunch & Learns available in two places: on our website and on our OBI YouTube channel. Now you have 24/7 access to the OBI programs you may have missed. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for notification of new videos uploaded (about once per month).
OHSU Innovation and Commercialization Internship Program
Applications for this real-world educational experience learning technology transfer, business development, or patent law are being accepted until January 16, 2022. Learn more and apply now!
Upcoming Events
OBI Events
Accelerate Biotech + Digital Health
Virtual Happy Hour
January 13, 2022
5:00-6:30 PM
Register here
OBI Virtual Lunch & Learn:
OHSU Center for Experimental Therapeutics
January 19, 2022
12:00-1:00 PM
Register here
Community Events
TAO 2022 Legislative Session Preview
January 18, 2022
9:00-10:30 AM
Register here
TiE Oregon Presents: Pitch Oregon 2021
February 11, 2022
12:30-4:00 PM
Register here