"The University of Massachusetts Medical School, one of the fastest growing medical schools in the country, has built a reputation as a world-class research institution, consistently producing noteworthy advances in clinical and basic researchÂ…. UMMS attracts more than $143 million in research funding annually, enabling researchers to explore human disease from the molecular level to large-scale clinical trials. Basic and clinical research leads to new approaches for diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease."
Sirna Therapeutics, Inc. |
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Since the creation of CVIP in 1995, the University of Massachusetts has experienced a dramatic increase in licensing revenues and in the number of technologies licensed (see graphs). CVIP has successfully created collaborations with more than 100 companies engaged in commercializing products and services, invented at our five campuses, in agriculture, biotechnology, medical devices, polymers and plastics, software, educational products, communications, energy, marine sciences, and other fields.
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Corporate Partners
Some of the corporate partners with whom UMass has entered into successful collaborations are Biogen, Anvil, Signal/Celltech, Advanced Cell Technology, Novellus, Thomson Learning, Intervet, MedImmune, Konarka, Smith and Nephew, and Sepracor.
Through CVIP participation, UMass technologies have lead to the formation of a number of leading-edge companies:
Advanced Cell Technologies is a leader in the development of novel therapies for treating diseases. The work is based on research at UMass Amherst.
Encapsion is a nanotechnology company developing delivery systems in the life sciences, based on technology developed at UMass Lowell.
Konarka is a pioneer in creating new renewable energy sources based on research at UMass Lowell.
Polnox is developing polymeric antioxidants for lubricants, paints, elastomers, food, and other fields.
SunEthanol is a biotechnology company focused on development of an innovative process from renewable biomass, based on technology from UMass Amherst.
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 Bal Ram Singh, director of the joint UMass Dartmouth/UMass Lowell doctoral program in chemistry, was awarded $1.1 million by the United States Army Medical Research and Material Command for a study of receptors of Botulinum neurotoxins. He will focus on designing antidotes that target a particular receptor in the body. Once a receptor is identified, Singh predicts that fast-acting antidotes can be chemically synthesized to be given in tablet form. Dr. Singh will examine clostridium Botulinum, which produces Botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT), the most toxic protein known to humankind.
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 Craig Mello, a professor of molecular medicine at UMass Worcester, a Nobel Prize winner, and an assistant investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, uses the nematode worm C. elegans as a model organism to investigate how embryonic cells differentiate and communicate during development. In addition, he is investigating the mechanism of RNA interference, a form of sequence-specific gene silencing triggered by double-stranded RNA.
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 Cynthia Baldwin, at UMass Amherst, is a professor in the Department of Veterinary and Animal Sciences' Program for Molecular and Cellular Biology and an adjunct in the Department of Microbiology. Her research concerns the development of vaccines against microbial organisms that infect humans and agricultural species of animals. She has focused on bovine health, including the fundamentals of the bovine cellular immune system and its role in immunity to infectious disease agents, particularly bacteria and protozoa. Dr. Baldwin was named the 2002 Distinguished Veterinary Immunologist.
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 Stephen McCarthy is a faculty member of the Plastics Engineering Department at UMass Lowell and the director of the University's Mold Analysis Research Consortium. He is experimenting with biodegradable materials and methods for the construction of nanospheres. The submicroscopic spheres, which can be as minute as 20 nanometers in diameter, are small enough to pass through the skin, carrying a drug quickly and directly to its target.
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