Category: Industry
Benhabbour Spin Off Earns UNC KickStart Award
July 13, 2017A company founded by Rahima Benhabbour, Ph.D., a faculty member at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, has received a KickStart award from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to help create the first 3-D printed intravaginal ring designed to treat a women’s health condition. Benhabbour created AnelleO along with graduate student Rima Janusziewicz from the UNC Department of Chemistry. The company’s work is centered on 3D printed intravaginal rings that can be used as a platform for treating a wide range of women’s health conditions. “3D printing allows us to introduce geometric complexity to the rings that … Read more
Sleath Receives $1.6 Million AHRQ Grant to Help African-Americans with Glaucoma
July 11, 2017Betsy Sleath, Ph.D., has received a grant worth nearly $1.6 million over four years from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality to help reduce vision problems in African-Americans caused by glaucoma. Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness for African-Americans; they are five times more likely to get glaucoma than white Americans and six times more likely to go blind from it. Glaucoma is a condition that can damage the optic nerve leading to loss of vision. It is caused by abnormally high pressure inside the eye. “We want to empower glaucoma patients to be more actively involved … Read more
Wagoner Joins Eshelman Institute to Encourage Commercialization
July 10, 2017Former health-care executive Kay Wagoner, Ph.D., has joined the Eshelman Institute for Innovation as associate director for innovation and entrepreneurship. Wagoner is also life science executive in residence in the UNC-Chapel Hill Office of Commercialization and Economic Development, an EIR for the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network and an adjunct associate professor in the UNC Medical School’s Department of Cell Biology and Physiology. Working with the leadership team of the EII, Wagoner will assist in developing strategies for evaluating, funding and supporting cutting edge innovations, which may lead to processes and technologies that substantially benefit health care for patients around the world. … Read more
PAINS Killer: Popular Drug Screening Tool Has Serious Problems
May 25, 2017PAINS alerts, a widely used screening tool deployed in the early phases of drug discovery to weed out undesirable compounds, are wrong so often they can’t be trusted on its own, according to scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. PAINS — or pan-assay interference compounds —are a prominent source of false positives in the drug-discovery process. PAINS are biologically active compounds that masquerade as potential drug candidates during the initial high volume screening used to search for possible new drugs. PAINS work by disrupting the assay technology used in the screening to report biological activity, but … Read more
Whitepaper: Enhanced Pharmacy Services Offer Quality and Cost Improvement for Medicaid
May 23, 2017Policy recommendations issued by the Center for Medication Optimization through Practice and Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill call for Medicaid reforms to optimize the benefits of medication and include community pharmacists as an important part of the health-care team. Building on existing efforts in North Carolina, the recommendations include the following: Using models developed from the growing Community Pharmacy Enhanced Services Network to allow health plans to develop community pharmacy pay-for-performance models focused on overall cost of care and quality. Testing the community pharmacy enhanced services care management model within health plans and comparing plan … Read more
Second Carolina Nanoformulation Workshop Shares Discoveries in Nanomedicine
April 18, 2017From March 13 to 17, scientists from industry and academia came together at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy to learn about and to get hands-on experience with the latest advances in nanomedicine at the second annual Carolina Nanoformulation Workshop. The workshop is a unique blend of classroom and hands-on training that stresses application and participation. It featured 18 speakers and two days of seminars for more than 30 participants followed by three days of practical experience in the laboratories of the School’s Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery. The goal of the CNW is to provide safe and effective … Read more
UNC Scientists Devise More Accurate System for Predicting Risks of New Chemical Products
November 10, 2016The approach used by regulators to initially screen new chemical products for toxic effects is wrong almost half the time, according to scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They have proposed an improvement that could increase accuracy to as much as 85 percent, saving millions of dollars and years of development time for new drugs and other products while improving safety. Regulatory agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, that are charged with evaluating new drugs and other chemical products rely on an initial screening of the product’s molecular structure. … Read more
Mucommune Is Newest Resident of UNC Eshelman Institute MicroIncubator
May 2, 2016Mucommune, LLC, is the fourth company spun out of the research enterprise at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy to take up residence in the Eshelman Institute for Innovation MicroIncubator located at the School. Mucommune was born in 2015 from the work of Assistant Professor Sam Lai, Ph.D. Its core focus is the engineering of antibodies and biologics that have precisely tuned affinity to mucins, enabling them to work in tandem with protective mucus to facilitate the elimination of microbes at all mucosal surfaces, including those in the lung airways, GI tract, female reproductive tract and the eye. “Catalyzing the … Read more
Inaugural Carolina Nanoformulation Workshop Shares Discoveries in Nanomedicine
March 24, 2016From March 14 to 18, scientists from industry and academia converged on the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy to learn about and to get hands-on experience with the latest advances in nanomedicine at the inaugural Carolina Nanoformulation Workshop. The workshop is a unique blend of classroom and hands-on training that stresses application and participation. It featured nearly two dozen speakers and two days of seminars for 17 participants followed by three days of practical experience in the laboratories of the School’s Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery. The goal of the CNW is to provide safe and effective solutions for … Read more
Smart Cells Teach Neurons Damaged by Parkinson’s to Heal Themselves
September 8, 2015As a potential treatment for Parkinson’s disease, scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have created smarter immune cells that produce and deliver a neuron-healing protein to the brain while also teaching nerve cells to begin making the protein for themselves. Associate Professor Elena Batrakova, Ph.D., and her team at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy’s Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery genetically modified white blood cells called macrophages to produce glial cell–derived neurotrophic factor, or GDNF, and deliver it to the brain. Glial cells provide support and protection for nerve cells throughout the brain and body, … Read more