Developing Collaborative Platforms to Advance Neurotechnology and Its Translation

Neurotechnological devices are failing to deliver on their therapeutic promise because of the time it takes to translate them from bench to clinic. In this Perspective, we reflect on lessons learned from medical device successes and failures and consider how such lessons might shape a strategic vision for translating neurotechnologies in the future. We articulate how the intentional design and deployment of "scientific platforms," from the technology stack of hardware and software through the supporting ecosystem, could catalyze a new wave of innovation, discovery, and therapy. We also identify specific actions that could promote future neurotechnology roadmaps and industrial-academic-government collaborative activities. We believe that community-supported neurotechnology platforms will prove to be transformational in accelerating ideas from bench to bedside, maximizing scientific discovery and improving patient care.

Challenges and Opportunities for the Biotechnology Research Community during the Coronavirus Pandemic

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has presented some significant challenges to the scientific community. However, this has also offered opportunities for the pursuit of new scientific activities, and in particular for the field of biotechnology.

Role of Business Models in Funding the Biotech Industry: Global Trends and Challenges for Cuban Biotechnology

Forty-three years after it was founded, with billions of dollars invested, the global biotech industry is still not positioned as a mature low-risk sector for the international investor com-munity. Despite the clear commercial success of a number of leading companies and overall growth of the industry's rev-enues, most biotech companies are not profi table and many fail to overcome the formidable barrier constituted by the high cost of the sector's research and development. However, over the last four years, visible signs of change have appeared, which could be harbingers of an approaching turning point in this trend.This article analyzes the historic background of the biotech in-dustry's business models and corporate structures, as well as their impact on the industry's fi nancial framework. It examines recent changes implemented by the sector's main actors-in-cluding young startups, venture capital funds and big pharma companies-to mitigate fi nancial risk associated with develop-ment of new biotechnology products.Finally, it discusses the challenges and opportunities that these tendencies entail for Cuban biotechnology development and proposes adoption of business policies more tolerant of the fi nancial risk inherent in this sector, as a condition for at-tracting venture capital. KEYWORDS Biotechnology, fund raising, risk management, entrepreneurship, Cuba.

Entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and scientific mobility: The Spanish case

Scientific mobility can stimulate entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, acting as a catalyst for reducing imbalances between local and global science and the resulting socio-economic damage. This study evaluates both whether scientific mobility effectively promotes these concepts and the fundamental reasons to articulate effective policies for scientific mobility. Toward this end, a survey has been prepared following the methodology of Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) and current scientific literature. A total of 364 researchers involved in Spanish scientific mobility took part in the study: Spanish scientists abroad (135) and scientists returned to Spain (52), as mobile groups, and young researchers in Spain (177), as a group of scientists who could go abroad, but that have not yet begun to leave. The results demonstrate that scientific mobility does promote entrepreneurship and, especially intrapreneurship. Moreover, since permanent positions are scarce for these groups and their mobility decisions largely depend on job opportunities, the involved Spanish authorities and agents can improve scientific mobility by means suitable policies that make the most of this potential to the benefit of economic growth and job creation.

Biophotonics: the big picture

The 5th International Conference on Biophotonics (ICOB) held April 30 to May 1, 2017, in Fremantle, Western Australia, brought together opinion leaders to discuss future directions for the field and opportunities to consider. The first session of the conference, "How to Set a Big Picture Biophotonics Agenda," was focused on setting the stage for developing a vision and strategies for translation and impact on society of biophotonic technologies. The invited speakers, panelists, and attendees engaged in discussions that focused on opportunities and promising applications for biophotonic techniques, challenges when working at the confluence of the physical and biological sciences, driving factors for advances of biophotonic technologies, and educational opportunities. We share a summary of the presentations and discussions. Three main themes from the conference are presented in this position paper that capture the current status, opportunities, challenges, and future directions of biophotonics research and key areas of applications: (1) biophotonics at the nano- to microscale level; (2) biophotonics at meso- to macroscale level; and (3) biophotonics and the clinical translation conundrum.

Careers at Biotech Start-Ups and in Entrepreneurship

The world of biotechnology "start-ups" and entrepreneurship offers exciting new avenues for driving state-of-the-art research using an arsenal of multidisciplinary skills, whether your role is as part of a team or as a leader. Although traditionally these positions may not be as secure as those offered by some of the larger companies, the small start-up culture provides opportunities for contributing at many levels to a wide range of responsibilities: from scientific discovery to delivery of proof of concept and intellectual property; from analysis of market opportunities and competitive intelligence to creation of time lines and business plans for a first product. Often, if you get in on the ground level, you get to validate your own concept, pitch to potential investors, argue value, build a team, engage advisors, and then, with funding in hand, launch an entirely new research and development (R&D) enterprise. Many of the skills and much of the experience gained while pursuing a graduate degree can be put to good use in these arenas as well. This path, however, is not for the faint of heart; it requires not only a strong scientific background and organizational skills, but also the ability to work well on a team, excellent communication skills, and persistence when faced with delays or disappointment. With increasing responsibilities in the small company come the requirements for aptitudes for leadership, strategic and financial planning, networking, negotiating, and managing both projects and personnel.

The U.S. Culture Collection Network Responding to the Requirements of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing

The U.S. Culture Collection Network held a meeting to share information about how culture collections are responding to the requirements of the recently enacted Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The meeting included representatives of many culture collections and other biological collections, the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Secretariat of the CBD, interested scientific societies, and collection groups, including Scientific Collections International and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network. The participants learned about the policies of the United States and other countries regarding access to genetic resources, the definition of genetic resources, and the status of historical materials and genetic sequence information. Key topics included what constitutes access and how the CBD Access and Benefit-Sharing Clearing-House can help guide researchers through the process of obtaining Prior Informed Consent on Mutually Agreed Terms. U.S. scientists and their international collaborators are required to follow the regulations of other countries when working with microbes originally isolated outside the United States, and the local regulations required by the Nagoya Protocol vary by the country of origin of the genetic resource. Managers of diverse living collections in the United States described their holdings and their efforts to provide access to genetic resources. This meeting laid the foundation for cooperation in establishing a set of standard operating procedures for U.S. and international culture collections in response to the Nagoya Protocol.

The current state of bioeconomy in Poland

Conversion of scientific achievements to market a product is a key issue and the best description of significance of science for society. In the case of experts in the natural sciences in Poland, we observe a high intellectual potential of researchers and several scientific discoveries. However, Polish inventions are very rarely available on the market and the number of national and international patent applications done by Polish scientists is very limited. For the development of bioeconomy, the progress in biotechnology is critical.

Knowledge management in a waste based biorefinery in the QbD paradigm

Shifting resource base from fossil feedstock to renewable raw materials for production of chemical products has opened up an area of novel applications of industrial biotechnology-based process tools. This review aims to provide a concise and focused discussion on recent advances in knowledge management to facilitate efficient and optimal operation of a biorefinery. Application of quality by design (QbD) and process analytical technology (PAT) as tools for knowledge creation and management at different levels has been highlighted. Role of process integration, government policies, knowledge exchange through collaboration, and use of databases and computational tools have also been touched upon.

Beyond and between academia and business: How Austrian biotechnology researchers describe high-tech startup companies as spaces of knowledge production

Research and innovation policy has invested considerable effort in creating new institutional spaces at the interface of academia and business. High-tech startups founded by academic entrepreneurs have been central to these policy imaginaries. These companies offer researchers new possibilities beyond and between academia and larger industry. However, the field of science and technology studies has thus far shown only limited interest in understanding these companies as spaces of knowledge production. This article analyses how researchers working in small and medium-sized biotechnology companies in Vienna, Austria, describe the cultural characteristics of knowledge production in this particular institutional space. It traces how they relate these characteristics to other institutional spaces they have experienced in their research biographies, such as in academia or larger corporations. It shows that the reasons why researchers decide to work in biotechnology companies and how they organize their work are deeply influenced by their perception of deficiencies in the conditions for epistemic work in contemporary academia and, to a lesser degree, in industry.

Illumina Spin-off to Develop Early-Detection Test

DNA-sequencing giant Illumina has formed a new company, called Grail, to develop liquid biopsies capable of spotting cancer before symptoms arise. The start-up is working on a low-cost "pan-cancer" test that can detect multiple cancer types early, which it hopes to introduce by 2019.

Research and development for algae-based technologies in Korea: a review of algae biofuel production

This review covers recent research and development (R&D) activities in the field of algae-based biofuels in Korea. As South Korea's energy policy paradigm has focused on the development of green energies, the government has funded several algae biofuel R&D consortia and pilot projects. Three major programs have been launched since 2009, and significant efforts are now being made to ensure a sustainable supply of algae-based biofuels. If these R&D projects are executed as planned for the next 10 years, they will enable us to overcome many technical barriers in algae biofuel technologies and help Korea to become one of the leading countries in green energy by 2020.

H2020 EU Research & Innovation Program Boost the Transfer of Technological Breakthroughs, Enable New Solutions for Personalised Health and Impact the Industry and Healthcare Systems

Our Healthcare systems worldwide are facing grand challenges that can be addressed by intelligent, miniaturized and interconnected devices. Many of today's pharmaceutical drugs create bigger problems than solutions, as drugs help only 40% of the patients and kill, in the USA alone, over 100,000 people per year. The widespread use of antibiotics has led to new strands of bacteria that defy all known antibiotics and kill well over 100,000 people yearly in the world. Outbreaks of infections by new viruses and anti-resistant bacteria are expected with even more grave consequences. The quality of food around the world is steadily deteriorating, as the soils are becoming depleted of essential nutrients and contain increasing amounts of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides. Our environment is burdened with 2.5 billion tonnes of chemicals per year that accumulate in the soil, groundwater, rivers and seas, and eventually end up in our food and our drinking water. As a consequence, there is a strong increase in the incidence of diseases hardly known fifty years ago. In parallel, an increasing number of people are taking the responsibility for their health and well-being in their own hands and are looking for mobile and in-obtrusive ways to objectively monitor their health status. The development of intelligent, miniaturized systems, by the heterogeneous integration of technologies such as micro- and nano-electronics, photonics, biotechnology, materials and information & communication, addresses these issues and has received intensive public support in the EU over the past two decades in the FP6 and FP7 programs. Proven concepts and functional prototypes exist with the potential to create new opportunities to improve our healthcare systems, in particular personalized or precision medicine. These device concepts offer unique abilities to sense, detect, analyze, communicate, respond, and monitor phenomena from the macro (e.g. body, tissues) to the nano scale (e.g. molecules, genes) on the spot, with short response times. For the majority of the projects, the planning for the next phase of prototype validation, through product design, supply chain setup, user targeting, clinical validation and commercial roll-out is now taking full attention. However, significant hurdles exist in the successful translation of the new technology to new products. As these technologies are new-to-the-world the resulting products carry a high risk, often necessitating the creation of new companies. Therefore the EU has developed the Horizon 2020 program as a framework for technology development and new business creation. Horizon 2020 is focusing on support for technology transfer, and on building ecosystems and value chains to ensure shorter times-to-market, thus enabling a higher impact of knowledge-based technologies. This paper will argue the necessity of developing these new class of devices, discuss its state-of-the-art, and the challenges for the implementation of Horizon 2020 and the new opportunities in intelligent miniaturized systems for pHealth.

[Development of Human Health Discoveries. 10 years results of Young Innovative Company incubation]

Medicine is evolving every day in its operating procedures and the services offered to patients, emphasizing personalized medicine, safety and medical benefits. The individual patient is more than ever the hub of healthcare organization. Medical innovation is thus a public health priority. However it requires an accurate assessment of medical utility and risk-benefit ratios, and in-depth analysis of economic and organizational impacts. Ten years of experience in the Paris Biotech Santé company incubator has identified key actions for effective support of research projects and the success of innovative companies. Strong expertise is needed to prepare development plans, ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and obtain research funding. During its first decade, this incubator has created 87 innovative companies employing 1500 people, raised more than 90 million euros of funding, and reached a cumulative company value of 1200 million euros. Key factors of success have been identified, but an analysis of the causes of failure shows that operational adjustments are mandatory, particularly a strong commitment from medical experts, in order to promote access to new and useful products for patients while at the same time assessing their social impact.

From 'trust us' to participatory governance: Deliberative publics and science policy

The last 20 years have seen a shift from the view that publics need to be educated so that they trust science and its governance to the recognition that publics possess important local knowledge and the capacity to understand technical information sufficiently to participate in policy decisions. There are now a variety of approaches to increasing the role of publics and advocacy groups in the policy and governance of science and biotechnology. This article considers recent experiences that demonstrate that it is possible to bring together those with policy making responsibility and diverse publics to co-produce policy and standards of practice that are technically informed, incorporate wide social perspectives and explicitly involve publics in key decisions. Further, the process of deliberation involving publics is capable of being incorporated into governance structures to enhance the capacity to respond to emerging issues with levels of public engagement that are proportionate to the issues.

Governance strategies for living technologies: bridging the gap between stimulating and regulating technoscience

The life sciences present a politically and ethically sensitive area of technology development. NBIC convergence-the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and information and cognitive technology-presents an increased interaction between the biological and physical sciences. As a result the bio-debate is no longer dominated by biotechnology, but driven by NBIC convergence. NBIC convergence enables two bioengineering megatrends: "biology becoming technology" and "technology becoming biology." The notion of living technologies captures the latter megatrend. Accordingly, living technology presents a politically and ethically sensitive area. This implies that governments sooner or later are faced with the challenge of both promoting and regulating the development of living technology. This article describes four current political models to deal with innovation promotion and risk regulation. Based on two specific developments in the field of living technologies-(psycho)physiological computing and synthetic biology-we reflect on appropriate governance strategies for living technologies. We conclude that recent pleas for anticipatory and deliberative governance tend to neglect the need for anticipatory regulation as a key factor in guiding the development of the life sciences from a societal perspective. In particular, when it is expected that a certain living technology will radically challenge current regulatory systems, one should opt for just such a more active biopolitical approach.

Showcasing bioscience in Rhode Island

There are a number of well-recognized bioscience companies located in the greater Providence area. They represent a significant and growing source of jobs and future revenue, which promises to play a role in the revitalization and expansion of Rhode Island's economy. In an effort to support these companies and to showcase their research, the Rhode Island Medical Journal is highlighting five of these innovative enterprises in this issue. The companies selected are members of the Rhode Island BioScience Leaders organization, and their research spans a wide range of science, from biologics and informatics to innovative coatings for medical devices. They include ProThera Biologics, EpiVax, Tivorsan Pharmaceuticals, BioIntraface, and VeroScience.

Translational medicine meets new technologies for enabling personalized care

For improving quality, safety and efficiency of care processes, health care systems perform two paradigm changes: the organizational transformation of the health care system from organization-centric to person-centric structures and the methodological transformation from the traditional phenomenological approach to individualized health care based on translational medicine. Both paradigm changes are interrelated and require advanced interoperability between different organizations and multiple disciplines. The paper presents a system-theoretical, architecture-centric approach to analyze, design and develop the systems of health care and medicine for enabling personalized health services. According to the translational medicine paradigm, the considered model must be able to describe the subject of care at all levels of granularity from elements to population including the technologies applied at those levels to perform diagnosis and therapy. The system components reflected through different domains, their concepts and interrelations must be consistently described based on the domain ontologies representing those system perspectives. The medical and technological instances of the personalized health system are exemplified, thereby especially focusing on nano and micro levels and discussing biological and technical sensors and actuators, but also addressing profiling, bridging between genotyping and phenotyping and thereby combining molecular and epidemiological studies.

An intellectual property sharing initiative in agricultural biotechnology: development of broadly accessible technologies for plant transformation

The Public Intellectual Property Resource for Agriculture (PIPRA) was founded in 2004 by the Rockefeller Foundation in response to concerns that public investments in agricultural biotechnology benefiting developing countries were facing delays, high transaction costs and lack of access to important technologies due to intellectual property right (IPR) issues. From its inception, PIPRA has worked broadly to support a wide range of research in the public sector, in specialty and minor acreage crops as well as crops important to food security in developing countries. In this paper, we review PIPRA's work, discussing the failures, successes, and lessons learned during its years of operation. To address public sector's limited freedom-to-operate, or legal access to third-party rights, in the area of plant transformation, we describe PIPRA's patent 'pool' approach to develop open-access technologies for plant transformation which consolidate patent and tangible property rights in marker-free vector systems. The plant transformation system has been licensed and deployed for both commercial and humanitarian applications in the United States (US) and Africa, respectively.

R&D in micro-nano-bio systems and contribution to pHealth

The capacity to research, develop and manufacture systems that employ components based on nano- and microstructures with biological functionality, and are capable to share, ubiquitously, information is at the forefront of worldwide competition. A new generation of advanced materials, processes and emerging technologies is building up enabling highly integrated, miniaturized and smart micro-nano-bio-systems to be engineered. These fast technology developments are also stimulating the explosive growth in life sciences, which is leading to an ever increasing understanding of life at the sub-cellular and molecular level. By bringing these parallel developments to biomedicine and health, ultrafast and sensitive systems can be developed to prevent illness, to support lifestyle, to make early diagnosis or treat diseases with high accuracy and less invasiveness, and to support body functions or to replace lost functionality. Such systems will enable the delivery of individualized health services with better access and outcomes at lower costs than previously deemed possible, making a substantial contribution to bringing healthcare expenditures under control and increase its productivity. The MNBS (Micro-Nano-Bio Systems) group of EU funded projects aims at speeding up the convergence of micro- and nanotechnology with the life sciences and accelerating the development of highly integrated diagnostic, monitoring and therapeutics devices. This paper presents R&D activities supported through the MNBS group that are relevant to pHealth and discusses directions to be taken in order to overcome the current problems. Finally, it addresses future challenges to build highly integrated and reliable systems including innovation and usability issues.

Imagination and technoscientific innovations: governance of transgenic cows in New Zealand

This paper examines a controversial research programme aimed at the production of transgenic cows in New Zealand. It emphasizes the contested representation of the research, in its promotion, in its governance, and in the opposition sparked amongst environmentallanti-genetic modification groups and within the Māori community. The paper contends that the case of New Zealand's genetically modified cows certainly reveals some unique features of the prevailing economic, geographical and cultural context, but nonetheless has salience for the broader understanding of the promotion, public reception and governance of genetic modification.

Technology transfer at the University of Nebraska Medical Center

The course of developing a new product from an idea is a complicated process. This paper will discuss that process, in detail, from conception to product. We approach this by first discussing what the inventor must do begin the process of developing his or her idea, and then two pathways that occur simultaneously: the Technology Transfer process of patenting, marketing, and licensing the invention; and the engineering process of developing, modifying, and manufacturing the invention. Although the process is lengthy and most ideas never become a marketed product, there are those few ideas that do become realized into marketed products.

Financing development stage biotechnology companies: RMs vs. IPOs

We examine reverse mergers (RMs) in the biotechnology industry and find that, when compared to initial public offerings (IPOs), RMs are smaller, have significantly lower market valuations relative to size, and generally invest less. We also find that RMs exhibit positive abnormal returns on the announcement date and throughout the first year after the RM event. In looking at liquidity measures, we find that RMs tend to be less liquid than IPOs and that illiquidity is greater during the six-month lock-up period following the RM event. Thus, RMs may be an appropriate alternative financing vehicle in capital intensive, high-risk biotechnology companies which require accessing deeper and larger pools of investors in public capital markets across multiple milestone periods in a "pay for progress" environment.

Japan Biotech Forum: London 2010

The Japan Biotech Forum, held in London, included topics covering new licensing developments in the Japanese pharma and biotech industries. This conference report highlights selected presentations on licensing opportunities from several Japanese companies, including CanBas, LivTech, REGiMMUNE, D Western Therapeutics Institute and Chiome Bioscience. Investigational drugs discussed include CBP-501 (CanBas), LIV-2008 (LivTech), RGI-2001 (REGiMMUNE), IVX-214 (D Western Therapeutics Institute/ Nippon Shinyaku) and anti-Sema 3A (Chiome Bioscience).

Cost (non)-recovery by platform technology facilities in the Bio21 Cluster

Platform technologies (PT) are techniques or tools that enable a range of scientific investigations and are critical to today's advanced technology research environment. Once installed, they require specialized staff for their operations, who in turn, provide expertise to researchers in designing appropriate experiments. Through this pipeline, research outputs are raised to the benefit of the researcher and the host institution. Platform facilities provide access to instrumentation and expertise for a wide range of users beyond the host institution, including other academic and industry users. To maximize the return on these substantial public investments, this wider access needs to be supported. The question of support and the mechanisms through which this occurs need to be established based on a greater understanding of how PT facilities operate. This investigation was aimed at understanding if and how platform facilities across the Bio21 Cluster meet operating costs. Our investigation found: 74% of platforms surveyed do not recover 100% of direct operating costs and are heavily subsidized by their home institution, which has a vested interest in maintaining the technology platform; platform managers play a major role in establishing the costs and pricing of the facility, normally in a collaborative process with a management committee or institutional accountant; and most facilities have a three-tier pricing structure recognizing internal academic, external academic, and commercial clients.