Jack D. Atchason, Executive Director of The Hershey Center for Applied Research (HCAR), responds to the question, “How has HCAR repeatedly been able to convince emerging foreign companies that HCAR is the place for them to launch their US business? In particular, how did companies like Pacific Edge Diagnostics, from New Zealand, and vivoPharm and IDE, both from Australia, decide on Central PA over the West Coast or other more established tech communities?”

“It’s all about the tenacious execution of the value proposition that HCAR and our Region possesses that has made the difference with Pacific Edge and the other Australian companies, says Jack Atchason, Executive Director at HCAR.

Facing the proposition of launching a business in the US there is much to consider. Having a credible presence on the ground to assist with the planning and evaluation process makes a big difference. The HCAR staff fills that need. From the earliest engagement and continuously throughout the process the company must feel your desire to understand their needs, concerns, challenges, opportunities, and be able to design solutions directly or bring resources to the table to help in this regard. Understanding the resources available and how to generate new resources if unavailable, that helps the prospect company overcome a challenge or fill a need is critical. Also, making direct business connections for early business opportunities are also critical. The HCAR staff worked diligently to assist Pacific Edge in critical elements of their work.

This took coordination and teamwork of public and private elements in the economic development community of our region. The Commonwealth of PA and specifically The Department of Community and Economic Development and The Office of International Business Development helped considerably. CREDC, the LSGPA, Unilife, Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and College of Medicine, all played a part.  If we can continue to work together in a coordinated fashion we will be successful in continuing this momentum. Our region has so much going for it as a strategic location for emerging technology companies; we just have to continue to collaborate.

Pacific Edge Diagnostics, Ltd. is a leading developer of cancer diagnostic and prognostic tests. Its first product offering Cxbladder® has diagnostic and prognostic capabilities to Bladder Cancer, one of the most costly types of cancer to diagnose and treat.

Click here to view the video:  http://www.wgal.com/video/30338072/detail.html

February 13, 2012

By a GenomeWeb staff reporter

NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Saladax Biomedical announced today a collaborative study of metastatic colorectal cancer patients treated with 5-fluorouracil, or 5-FU, and whose doses will be optimized based on actual 5-FU blood levels.

As part of the collaboration with the Central European Society for Anticancer Drug Research, or CESAR, Saladax’s My5-FU immunoassay technology will be used to measure 5-FU levels.

CESAR is sponsoring the single-arm study, which is designed “to determine whether target blood levels of 5-FU can be maintained during the course of treatment by optimizing the dose administered to individual patients at each infusion,” the Bethlehem, Penn.-based company said in a statement. The two partners aim to achieve a stable target blood level of the chemotherapeutic and investigate whether this dose optimization can reduce 5-FU-related toxicities.

Financial and other terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The study, which involves four centers and will enroll 80 patients with metastatic colorectal cancer, is expected to last one year. Patients will remain in the study until a total of six doses of 5-FU treatment has been administered and the end-of-treatment visit has been conducted, Saladax said.

State College, PA, [February 8, 2012] – QuantumBio Inc., a leader in providing next generation of Structure Based Drug Discovery and Fragment Based Drug Discovery solutions based upon linear scaling, quantum mechanics methods – including the patented QMScore method – has released version 5.1.1 of the DivCon Discovery Suite. In addition to adding support for the newest version of the Molecular Operating Environment (MOE) platform from Chemical Computing Group, Inc. (CCG), the following significant improvements have been made.

For download information, please contact moc.c1329943961nioib1329943961mutna1329943961uq@se1329943961las1329943961

New Features (since v5.0):

• MOE/DivCon: For pairwise energy decomposition heatmap, sequence alignment within the MOE/DivCon interface has been completely overhauled in order to use CCG’s sequence alignment tool.
• MOE/DivCon: Multitasking within the MOE/DivCon graphical user interface runs freely while DivCon is running in the background. Improved QM convergence reporting to MOE’s svl window.
• File Processing: Included HDFView and QBReporter applications for opening and processing *.h5 output files, and translating them to Excel or OpenOffice spreadsheet files. Reported results include QMScores, partial charges, gradients, and significant events. QBReporter requires that OpenOffice 3.3.0 or greater from OpenOffice.org has been installed and that the resulting soffice executable is available within the command line $PATH.
• Core: Support for Sun Grid Engine (SGE) in addition to the Portable Batch System (PBS). Note: SGE requires that its parallel environment (PE) be activated in order to run multiprocessing jobs.
• Core: Shipment of both 32bit and 64bit native versions of all Linux binaries in order to account for larger memory, disk, etc (and therefore larger target/ligand structures).
• Core: Separation of QuantumBio-specific software from 3rd party binaries (such as mpirun) in order to allow for parallel installations of the same.
• MOE/DivCon: Inclusion of ${QBHOME}/bin/qbmoe and ${QBHOME}/bin/qbmoebatch to run system-installed MOE and MOE/batch with QuantumBio-required options.
• MOE/DivCon: Addition of support for MS Windows7 (64bit) both for preparation and analysis. Prepared structures can then be characterized with qbmoebatch on Linux or Mac OS X.
• Documentation: Completely updated on-line documentation for MOE/DivCon.
• MOE/DivCon: Entirely redesigned and streamlined dialogs, and improved integration with standard MOE structure preparation and analysis tools.
• MOE/DivCon: Patented QMScore integrated as an available score function for MOE tools including Dock, Scaffold Replacement, BREED, etc.
• DivCon: Support for additional input file formats including cif, sdf, and h5.
• DivCon: Command line –help switch improved to provide default settings, simplified switches, and clarified help.

Bug Fixes (since v5.0):

• Space in working directory name caused crash. MOE interfaces now access files located under folders with spaces in names.
• Unknown errors or errors and exceptions were not being reported to user. Exception handling upgraded and now working properly for release mode builds. Improved feedback to user provided.
• In MOE/DivCon PWD heatmap, unknown residues were reported even when known. Associated incorrect alignment. The new MOE-based sequence alignment method eliminates this situation from arising. As long as MOE understands the sequence and correctly aligns the structure, the heatmap will be correct.
• “NANs,” memory explosions and stoppage of runs occurred on certain runs. In previous releases, residues were then sent in duplicate to DivCon and with identical coordinates. This problem has been fixed.
• Unable to select ligand for treatment. User can now designate the ligand using MOE “Choose Ligand” button.
• Unable to run system-installed mpirun instead of QuantumBio provided mpirun for non-QuantumBio software. These 3^rd party binaries are now “buried” within the install and they are only loaded into the ${PATH} at runtime when the user chooses to run a QuantumBio software.
• Unable to execute multiple QMScore jobs serially or single jobs on a single processor. Fixed.
• During QMScore some ligands did not converge as prior versions had. Fixed.
• PDB, MOL2 and SDF parsing errors from input from other programs. Fixed.
• Intermediate h5 files were large. Data stored in intermediate files has been abbreviated and compressed.
• Remove some/all of the hard coded paths within MOE/DivCon mdb’s. These paths corrected so one user can send an mdb to another user to be used without editing these paths and updating the mdb.
• Failure on single protein in mdb/h5 files. Fixed.
• Failure when ligand was missing from the receptor in MOE/DivCon. Fixed.
• Renaming MDB file and then clicking update failed in MOE/DivCon. Fixed.

QuantumBio’s DivCon Discovery Suite provides pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, contract research organizations, and academic groups with the ability to significantly improve accuracy during the virtual screening and lead optimization stages of the drug discovery process. The method is routinely applied to protein/ligand complexes, and recently it has even been applied to larger protein/protein systems. Please visit http://www.quantumbioinc.com for more information on this integration and on cited literature involving QuantumBio’s other technologies.

About QuantumBio Inc.
QuantumBio is a leader in Computer Assisted Drug Design (CADD) and Computer Assisted Molecular Modeling (CAMM), providing a new generation of quantum mechanics solutions to Pharmaceutical, Biotech, Materials and Nanotechnology companies. QuantumBio works with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as government and academic research organizations to solve problems.

For additional information:

QuantumBio Inc.
Lance M. Westerhoff, PhD
moc.c1329943961nioib1329943961mutna1329943961uq@ec1329943961nal1329943961
www.QuantumBioInc.com

Before a student can decide to pursue a career in biotechnology, something has to light a spark of excitement about this growing field.

MedCity – Philadelphia reports Apeliotus Vision Science gets FDA approval for device to detect macular degeneration. Read the full story here.

http://www.medcitynews.com/2012/01/fda-approved-device-to-detect-macular-degeneration-raising-2-million/?edition=phi

- Kevin M. Harter, former Saladax Executive Chairman, Named Interim CEO-

 Bethlehem, PA, January 27, 2012 – Saladax Biomedical, Inc., a privately-held company developing and commercializing novel diagnostic assays to achieve the promise of personalized medicine for new and existing therapeutics, announced today that Edward L. Erickson, its President and Chief Executive Officer, has resigned due to personal family reasons. His resignation will be effective as an executive officer of Saladax on February 12, 2012, but he will remain a member of the company’s board of directors.

Kevin M. Harter, who is a co-founder and Senior Vice President of the Life Science Greenhouse, a public-private partnership, has been named interim CEO. From 2007 to 2011, Mr. Harter also served as Executive Chairman of Saladax Biomedical, a Life Science Greenhouse portfolio company, where he led successful funding rounds and strategic alliances for the company.

Gregory Critchfield, M.D., Chairman of the Board at Saladax, commented, “The board of directors wishes to express its sincere thanks for Ed’s work, his energy and his commitment in growing Saladax. We are pleased that Ed will remain on the board of directors, as an advisor to the company, with nearly three decades of relevant experience in diagnostics, therapeutics and life science research.The board of directors also extends its gratitude to Kevin for his willingness to assist the company in this interim role. His skill, knowledge and leadership will be invaluable to Saladax.”

Dr. Critchfield continued, “The board of directors is initiating a search to find a permanent CEO. This search will encompass looking within and outside the company, to find the best candidate to continue to execute the company’s strategy and to achieve its promise to become a major provider of personalized medicine products to the medical community for the betterment of patient care.”

About Saladax Biomedical, Inc.

Saladax Biomedical develops and commercializes novel diagnostic assays to achieve the promise of personalized medicine through dose management and companion diagnostic products for existing and new therapeutics. The Company’s dose management technology enables physicians to optimize drug dosing to meet individual patient needs, leading to improved response and quality of life. The Company’s 15 MyCare™ dose management assays are comprised of proprietary, automated and cost-effective in vitro diagnostic tests, with a principal focus in oncology. The first MyCare assay available is for one of the most common anticancer drugs, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU). This assay is sold by Saladax in Europe as a CE-marked product and will be distributed in Japan by FALCO biosystems. In the United States and Canada, Myriad Genetic Laboratories, Inc. provides testing for 5-FU dose optimization under the trademark OnDose^® through a license to Saladax proprietary technology. In addition the company is finalizing development of its next two oncology drug assays for paclitaxel and docetaxel. Saladax also works with pharmaceutical companies to develop companion diagnostics to provide important clinical information to assist in developing and administering new and existing compounds. For more information, visit www.saladax.com, or follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Saladax.

Media Contact:

Tiberend Strategic Advisors, Inc.

212-827-0020

Andrew Mielach

moc.d1329943961nereb1329943961it@hc1329943961aleim1329943961a1329943961

or

Jason Rando

moc.d1329943961nereb1329943961it@od1329943961narj1329943961