VentureBeat » grant

Juvaris Bio wins $9M grant for flu-vaccine adjuvants

David P. Hamilton — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 22:32:23 +0000

Pleasanton, Calif.-based Juvaris BioTherapeutics, a four-year-old biotech developing vaccines and drugs against infectious disease, won a $9 million, five-year grant from the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease. The money will fund collaborative research with Stanford and UC Davis to study adjuvants, which are substances that boost the body’s natural immune response. Adjuvants are often used to enhance the effectiveness of vaccines or to stretch existing supplies, since an adjuvant can reduce the amount of vaccine required to innoculate an individual.

Juvaris, founded in 2003, has to date raised roughly $22 million from private investors and government funds, the San Jose Mercury News reports. The company was built around its adjuvant technology — a “complex” of DNA and fatty molecules known as lipids that the company claims is 50 times more potent than existing adjuvants — and aims to develop vaccines, antibiotics and other anti-infective agents.

Profectus Bio wins $200K grant for HIV therapies

David P. Hamilton — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 17:42:29 +0000

Baltimore, Md.-based Profectus BioSciences, a biotech developing new strategies to attack HIV, received a $200,000 small-business innovation grant from the National Institutes of Health to improve the effectiveness of anti-HIV antibodies. Last month, the company received a similar $300,000 grant (PDF link), just a few days after the company raised $3 million in a private placement.

Profectus, which was spun out of the Institute for Human Virology in 2005, has so far rased a total of at least $6.5 million.

Snowdon wins $500K grant for parasitic disease

David P. Hamilton — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:50:11 +0000

Snowdon, a New Brunswick, N.J., drug developer, received a $500,000 grant from the New Jersey Commission on Science & Technology. The grant matches $500,000 the company raised in March from the Foundation Venture Capital Group.

Snowdon is developing new treatments against cancer, pain and infectious parasitic diseases.