ASU, Caltech, UCLA and USC Showcase Top University Startups and Venture-Ready Technologies at Head Start(up) 2011 in Palo Alto

Palo Alto, CA (PRWEB) May 10, 2011

Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE), the exclusive intellectual property management and technology transfer organization of Arizona State University, today joined with the tech transfer offices of Caltech, UCLA and USC to host Head Start(up) 2011, a half-day conference in Palo Alto giving Silicon Valley investors a look at some of the universities most promising startups and venture-ready technologies.

The commercialization of university research generates new jobs, new companies and even entire new industries, said Augie Cheng, AzTEs managing director. The startups and technologies that ASU, Caltech, UCLA and USC are presenting have that same potential, and were excited to be doing this in a forum loaded with top venture capital firms and angel investors.

Universities continue to conduct the majority of basic research in the United States. In the last two decades, more than 75 percent of all industrial patents issued in the United States have cited academic research as a key source of new knowledge. Studies have also shown companies spun out of research universities have a far greater success rate than other startups.

Investors are always on the lookout for the next great university startup, said Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. This event is a great way to see lots of technologies in a concentrated, efficient format. Im excited to see what the universities have to show us.

Approximately 60 invitation-only investors came from top Silicon Valley venture funds, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Redpoint Ventures, Scale Venture Partners, Sofinnova Ventures and many others.

A full list of presented technologies and startups can be found on the conference website: http://www.headstartup2011.com/technologies.

About Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE)

AzTE is a non-profit organization that operates as the exclusive intellectual property management and technology transfer organization for ASU and its research enterprise. Comprised of industry and university veterans, AzTE brings together ASUs researchers and industry partners to transform discoveries into marketable products and services, taking innovation out of the lab and into the commercial marketplace. AzTE currently offers for licensing more than 300 novel technologies in the life and physical sciences. For more information: http://www.azte.com/.

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Southern New Hampshire University Selected for Carnegie Foundation Community Engagement Classification

Manchester, NH (Vocus/PRWEB) January 13, 2011

Southern New Hampshire University was selected by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching for its 2010 Community Engagement Classification. Colleges and universities with an institutional focus on community engagement were invited to apply for the classification, first offered in 2006 as part of an extensive restructuring of The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.

SNHUs civic engagement includes service-learning with Manchester school children, raising unprecedented funds for United Way agencies, providing accounting and technical assistance to fledgling not-for-profits, and continuing to assist the Haitian community in the wake of that countrys disasters. University community members have volunteered for several years on Gulf Region rebuilding projects, working in orphanages, as well as bringing technology into township schools in South Africa.

Our learning has local and global impact when we recognize that the community is a living textbook with so much to teach us. Public scholarship and service make education significant, said SNHU Provost, Dr. Patricia Lynott. We are proud that our faculty has, to date, engaged more than 700 students in this kind of active learning. The Carnegie Classification makes us aspire to even greater accomplishments.

SNHUs efforts are led by the collaboration of the universitys Student and Academic Affairs divisions. Sarah Jacobs, representing Student Affairs, is founder and director of the Center for Service and Community Involvement where members of the SNHU community embrace civic engagement, volunteerism and service. University professor Eleanor Dunfey-Freiburger, representing Academic Affairs has, for decades, been a champion for community engagement and works with faculty to shape course work to meet community needs. By creating reciprocal partnerships with the Manchester and the global community we offer students, faculty and staff the opportunity for engaged learning that fosters active citizenship.

In order to be selected, institutions had to provide descriptions and examples of institutionalized practices of community engagement that showed alignment among mission, culture, leadership, resources and practices. SNHU was one of 115 colleges and universities selected.

Carnegie stated that SNHUs application documented excellent alignment among mission, culture, leadership, resources, and practices that support dynamic and noteworthy community engagement, and it was able to respond to the classification framework with both descriptions and examples of exemplary institutionalized practices of community engagement. SNHU also documented and coordinated evidence of community engagement in a coherent and compelling response to the frameworks inquiry.

About Southern New Hampshire University

The university has approximately 2,200 traditional, full-time undergraduate day students and a total annual enrollment in all divisions of 13,000. Programs are offered on campus, online and on location at our centers in New Hampshire and Maine. The university offers programs in business, community economic development, culinary arts, teacher education, hospitality management and liberal arts.

Contact: Gregg Mazzola

Ascent Scientific Licenses Novel Dynamin Toolkits from Childrens Medical Research Institute and University of Newcastle

Bristol, UK, Sydney and Newcastle, Australia (PRWEB) March 16, 2011

Ascent Scientific together with Childrens Medical Research Institute and The University of Newcastle today announced that they have entered into a license, supply and distribution agreement for a range of small molecule dynamin inhibitors for research these are novel tools for investigating cellular processes. The agreement was facilitated by Bio-Link Australia, a life sciences commercialisation company.

Dynamin is a key protein involved in the cellular process of endocytosis, a process that involves the uptake and recycling of extracellular material by mammalian cells. Endocytic pathways are also utilised by viruses and toxins to gain entry into cells. Dynamin also participates in cell cycle progression and has shown to have critical roles in centrosome cohesion and cytokinesis.

Dynamin inhibitors have applications for researchers investigating cell signalling pathways, the cell cycle and cellular division and a range of medical conditions including cancer, infectious diseases including HIV and botulism and neurological conditions such as epilepsy.

The laboratories of Professor Adam McCluskey (University of Newcastle) and Professor Phillip Robinson (Childrens Medical Research Institute) have developed the first set of rationally designed mechanism-based pharmacological inhibitors of dynamin. These inhibitors are a range of small molecule chemicals that stop endocytosis through inhibition of the GTPase dynamin, a key protein involved in the initiation and completion of endocytosis.

McCluskey and Robinson have developed a unique portfolio of multiple classes of these small molecule dynamin inhibitors. These molecular classes selectively target different domains of dynamin providing novel research tools for understanding endocytosis biology and its role in intracellular processes and disease.

Professor McCluskey said We are very pleased that these dynamin inhibitors, which we designed and developed with the intent that they be utilized to further explore the chemical biology of dynamin and endocytosis biology, will now be available to researchers worldwide through Ascent Scientific.

Professor Robinson remarked, This palette of inhibitors provides a new means to regulate dynamins activity by independent molecules and with more than one mechanism of action, allowing scientists to more definitively assign a particular biological function to dynamin. This strategy is more powerful than relying on the use of a sole inhibitor.

Steve Roome PhD, Commercial Director for Ascent Scientific, comments "These groundbreaking tools provide a means for scientists to inhibit dynamin activity, and modulate endocytosis. Potent cell-permeable in vitro and in cell based inhibitors, together with control molecules are available individually, and in kit form providing researchers with a variety of novel ways to explore dynamin-mediated cellular processes".

The dynamin inhibitors (and their respective inactive control compounds) available from Ascent Scientific include:

Iminodyn-22

Potent, broad spectrum dynamin inhibitor. IC50 values are 450 nM and 390 nM for inhibition of dynamin I and II GTPase respectively). Binds to the GTPase domain at an allosteric site and displays uncompetitive antagonism with respect to GTP. Inhibits receptor mediated endocytosis (RME) and synaptic vesicle endocytosis (SVE) ( IC50 values are 10.7 and 108