Arizona Bioscience News: Health-tech startup Life365 receives patent; UA-focused venture fund makes first investments; NAU creates new engineering college

June 21, 2018

By Matt Ellsworth

About the RoadmapUA-focused venture fund makes its first investments / Arizona Daily Star

UA Venture Capital Fund LLC, a new, early-stage venture capital firm aimed at supporting University of Arizona technology spinoffs, has made its first three investments including in Regulonix, which is commercializing a new kind of non-opioid painkiller.

TGen researchers in Phoenix discover gene linked to ‘SuperAgers’ / azfamily.com

Researchers at Translational Genomics Research Institute discovered a gene associated with “SuperAgers” that it hopes to target with new drugs to reduce age-related memory loss and perhaps help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.

Arizona received $189M in NIH research support in 2017 / AZ Big Media

Asthma, Alzheimer’s, cancer, the aging immune system, diabetes, precision medicine and Valley fever are among the health issues being tackled by University of Arizona Health Sciences researchers with funding from the National Institutes of Health.

NAU reorganizing engineering school to respond to growing demand / Phoenix Business Journal

Northern Arizona University has received the green light to establish a College of Engineering, Informatics and Applied Sciences to accommodate growing interest in the science, technology, engineering and math fields.

Tempe health-tech startup signs major partner, receives patent / Phoenix Business Journal

Life365, which brings together available, connected technology through its health software platform to allow remote patient monitoring, was granted a patent this month for any medical device intended for home use that talks to wearables.

Tech firms, employment rising in Arizona / Arizona Daily Star

Arizona’s more than 8,000 tech firms supported over 168,000 jobs and paid $15.7 billion in wages in 2016, according to a new study, and the state ranked second among six Southwest states for tech employment growth from 2015 to 2016.

UA researcher unveils novel treatment for pancreatic cancer / AZ Big Media

A physician-scientist at the University of Arizona Cancer Center investigated a novel treatment for pancreatic cancer patients whose tumors exhibited a harmful genetic mutation. Read more: Doctors focus on novel approach to treating pancreatic cancer