But at an innovation summit organized by the Department of Energy’s high-risk, high-reward research branch, ARPA-E (modeled after Darpa), it’s not just power generation that’s getting a makeover. The companies hawking their ideas there, which all received grant money from ARPA-E or were finalists, are trying to reinvent the entire energy system. Everything is getting a technological re-evaluation from the actual wires that power is transmitted on to the waste heat produced in industrial processes.

And of course there are also new ways of making electricity beyond just burning some rocks or oil to create steam to drive a turbine.

Here are 10 companies that caught our attention. Any one technology is unlikely to solve the looming climate change and peak oil problems, but working together within the larger system, they could tilt the globe away from catastrophe and towards a sustainable future.

Above:
Agrivida

Now, ethanol is made with corn cobs, which are just a small amount of the corn plant’s total biomass. For years, people have been trying to come up with ways to use all the rest of the plant to make fuel. They call that stuff “cellulosic ethanol,” because it doesn’t just use the sugars in the cobs, but the cellulose in the rest of the plant. It turns out, though, that it’s not so easy to do the chemistry that transforms a corn stalk into a liquid fuel that works.

Agrivida is working on plants that release enzymes to degrade the cellulose in their own cell walls — on command. They throw a molecular switch, and the plants start turning themselves into sugar, saving fuel processors a key and energy-intensive step.

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/03/energycogallery/#ixzz0h7txJDfD

AgaMatrix’s WaveSense BGM’s are available in nearly 20 countries throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. In the United States, the products are available at popular retail outlets such as Walmart®, Kroger®, and will soon be available at Target®, as well as through mail order services such as Liberty Medical® and Diabetes Care Club®.

AgaMatrix has 8 FDA-cleared products: the WaveSense KeyNote™, KeyNote Pro™, Presto™, Presto Pro™, Amp™, WaveSense Jazz™, and WaveSense Jazz Wireless™ meters, and Zero-Click™ software, for data download to a computer. In addition, AgaMatrix was the first BGM maker to launch an App that runs on the iPhone® and iPod touch®. The App is called the WaveSense Diabetes Manager™ and is available on the iTunes App Store® for free.

AgaMatrix’s BGM products uniquely use WaveSense technology. This technology personalizes each test to provide world class accuracy. It detects and corrects for errors caused by different environmental conditions and blood samples.

“We’re excited that patients and health care professionals have adopted our products so quickly, especially in the last few years when the entire community has become more focused on the importance of accuracy. This tells us we’re focused on the right things - high accuracy and affordable testing,” said Dave Conn, Chief Commercial Officer. “We are looking ahead to selling our 2,000,000th meter soon.”

About AgaMatrix:

WaveSense blood glucose meters, strips, and software are designed to improve the quality of diabetes care by using a new technology that personalizes each test to provide world class accuracy. The technology detects and corrects for many errors caused by differences in blood samples and environmental conditions. Current AgaMatrix products include the WaveSense KeyNote, Presto, WaveSense Jazz, and the WaveSense Diabetes Manager iPhone App. WaveSense meters and strips are covered by insurance and available by mail order and at popular retail outlets such as Walmart and Kroger. For more information, go to: http://www.wavesense.info.

© 2002-2010 AgaMatrix, Inc. WaveSense, KeyNote, KeyNote Pro, Presto, Presto Pro, Amp, WaveSense Jazz, and WaveSense Jazz Wireless, Zero-Click, WaveSense Diabetes Manager are trademarks of AgaMatrix, Inc. Walmart, Kroger, Target, Liberty Medical, Diabetes Care Club, iPhone, iPod touch, and iTunes App Store are registered trademarks of their respective owners.

(1) IDF Diabetes Atlas, Fourth Edition (2009).

SOURCE AgaMatrix, Inc.
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RELATED LINKS
http://www.wavesense.info

By: David Bauman

Surrounded by corn growing in a greenhouse alongside UConn’s BioScience Complex, Michael Raab stands amidst what may be the fuel of the future.

Over the next few decades the world will need to wean itself from dependence on fossil fuels to help reduce global warming. One way could be with “green crude,” a new generation of transportation fuel made from nonfood crops.

The corn around Raab has been engineered so that the whole plant, including leaves, stalks, and husks – the so-called “stover” that is commonly discarded after the corn is harvested – can be converted into high-value biofuel.

“We’re on the right path,” says Raab, president of Agrivida, a startup company he co-founded that is using biomolecular technology to develop an alternative fuel in the state-of-the-art greenhouses and labs of UConn’s Technology Incubation Program. “There’s no question our energy future is going to be more diverse than it is now.”

Scientists around the globe are racing to discover ways to turn biomass – such as lumber, garbage, algae, and crop wastes – into competitively priced fuels. Agrivida is part of the rush, seeking an economically sound and renewable, biologically based fuel to replace gasoline.

Ethanol, a clean alternative fuel produced from sugars in crops such as corn and sugar cane, has been supported by federal blending incentives and has come under scrutiny for potentially affecting the price of corn and other basic foodstuffs. The Obama administration is betting that nonfood crops can eliminate these issues and provide a new generation of sustainable biofuels.

A 2008 federal law requires companies that blend gasoline to add increasing amounts of renewable fuels into the gas they sell over the next decade. Raab believes Agrivida’s patented process for creating biofuels from agricultural biomass, which combines horsepower and green power, will appeal to those companies.

“Our development of nonfood energy crops will significantly increase ethanol production,” he says. “I think it’s reasonable to be shooting for providing half of the nation’s liquid transportation fuel with sustainable biofuels.”

Almost everything that grows on earth has cellulose that can be fermented into ethanol. Yet the main economic barrier to increased cellulosic ethanol production is the high cost of processing plant biomass into biofuel. The challenge lies in breaking down cellulose – the main component of plant cell walls – and converting it into useable sugars for biofuels production.

Agrivida is developing a variety of energy crops – including switch grass, sugarcane, sorghum, and corn – to make ethanol production from cellulose commercially viable. The corn plants in UConn greenhouses have been engineered to make them capable of breaking down cellulose to provide rapid access to the sugars used to produce biofuels.

Company researchers have bioengineered enzymes that are incorporated into the corn plants’ cell walls. Agrivida’s novel technology is a molecular switch that enables those enzymes to remain inactive while the corn plants grow.

At harvest, these enzymes are activated to degrade the entire mass of plant cellulose material into small sugars that can readily be converted into ethanol, thereby reducing processing costs for this raw material. By enabling the production of cheap sugars from cellulosic biomass, Raab estimates Agrivida can reduce processing costs by more than 30 percent, making the process commercially competitive with gasoline.

Corn-based ethanol was established in the U.S. on an industrial scale because most of the elements to commercialize were in place: vast cornfields and an infrastructure for moving corn to processors, Raab explains. The search for better ethanol – or “cellulosic ethanol” – just takes the experience of corn ethanol a step further.

“There’s a lot of sugar in cellulose, so there’s a lot of energy in it,” he says. “Cellulosic ethanol is still more expensive to produce [than corn ethanol]. Yet the development of Agrivida’s optimized enzymes to enhance cellulose degradation will help advance the commercialization of technologies that will dramatically increase cellulosic ethanol production.”

After completing graduate school in 2005, Raab started the company with money from grants and investment partners. In 2007, he located the company’s plant engineering group in Storrs, after learning about UConn’s technology incubator and greenhouses.

Aimed at nurturing the successful startup of high-tech companies, the Technology Incubation Program offers fledgling entrepreneurs lab and office space with ready access to UConn researchers, facilities, and equipment, and to a variety of business and university services to help ensure their success.

Agrivida now has 35 employees – including four UConn alumni and several current students – and has plans to expand its workforce in the coming years, when the company hopes to be able to sell its modified corn seed to ethanol production plants.

“By partnering with Lycera, a leader in the discovery of novel therapeutics for immune disorders, we can demonstrate the unique capabilities of SMMs, in particular, to screen challenging targets to identify unique starting points for novel drug discovery,” Dr. Patrick Kleyn, Chief Executive Officer of Ligon Discovery explained.

“Ligon’s Small Molecule Microarray technology allows us to rapidly screen any protein target irrespective of its biological function, against Ligon’s and our compound collection,” said Dr. Gary Glick, Lycera’s founder and Chief Scientific Officer.

About Small Molecule Microarrays

SMMs are manufactured by spotting unmodified compound collections at high density onto glass slides using a proprietary chemical attachment. Hundreds of thousands of compounds on SMMs can be rapidly screened in parallel against hundreds of protein targets. Ligon’s SMM surface chemistry was specifically developed to allow the attachment of chemical collections whether synthetic, natural, bioactive, or diversity-oriented. No special moiety is required for attachment, so Ligon’s SMMs are compatible with almost any existing chemical collection. The unprecedented throughput of SMMs offers a fundamentally different paradigm for drug discovery based upon complete screening of all potential targets in a molecular pathway or protein family, and upfront assessment of drug selectivity among related proteins, versus the conventional paradigm of single target screening and after-the-fact selectivity optimization.

About Ligon Discovery

Ligon Discovery is a Harvard University spinout that leverages a patented platform technology to identify pre-clinical drug candidates. The company’s high-throughput microarray “chip” transforms the speed of the drug discovery process and expands the scope of new drug prospecting to include previously intractable targets. With funding from incTANK Ventures, the team has deployed the SMM technology, originally invented at Harvard University and further developed at the Broad Institute (founded by MIT and Harvard University) in Cambridge, and has established one of the largest small molecule screening capabilities in the industry. Using this facility, Ligon has successfully completed screens in the fields of coagulation and cancer, and is actively pursuing drug discovery in other areas of high unmet medical need. For more information, visit www.ligondiscovery.com.

About Lycera

Lycera Corp. is focused on the discovery and development of small-molecule immunomodulators for the treatment of patients with autoimmune diseases including psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus erythematosis, inflammatory bowel disease and transplant rejection. Lycera is developing drug candidates that target two novel therapeutic pathways and have the potential for first-in-class oral efficacy without the adverse effects of current standard-of-care antiproliferative and immunosuppressive agents. Visit www.lycera.com for more information.

SOURCE Ligon Discovery

RELATED LINKS
http://www.ligondiscovery.com

The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, part of the Energy Department, was conceived during the George W. Bush administration but only got its first funding in the stimulus bill — to the tune of $400 million.

Agency director Arun Majumdar says that the nation lags in energy security and that his agency is key to helping the country address the problem aggressively. He aims to invest early in ventures that he says could deliver huge gains if they pan out.

He calls it investing in “American pioneers.”

“Invest in high-risk, high-payoff R&D to get innovations from the lab into the market,” Majumdar said.

So far, ARPA-E has committed to 37 projects worth $151 million after receiving more than 3,000 applications in the areas of renewable power, new technologies and efficiency. The average investment is about $4 million.

Among the programs:

• Researching how to help make plants and their waste easily transformable into biofuels and to reduce the costs of doing so

• Developing a new type of high-efficiency wind turbine that could deliver more energy and reduce noise and safety concerns

• Creating an all-liquid metal battery that would dramatically increase electrical energy storage

Other projects include one that would split water into hydrogen and oxygen for solar fuel; research into a technology that would use silicon wafers to dramatically cut the cost of installing solar power; and installing magnetic materials that would decrease the weight and increase the efficiency of motors for hybrid and electric vehicles.

After getting more than 500 applications for its second round of $100 million in grants, program directors are deciding which ones will make the cut.

While agency officials hope all of the initiatives they fund will become commercially profitable, they acknowledge the chances of that are very remote.

“Let’s say a few of them are successful. They will be game-changing. They’ll change the landscape of the energy field — not just in our country, but globally,” said Majumdar, a former associate director at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a former professor at the University of California-Berkeley.

He also believes these investments will help spur innovation and market success that will create a large number of jobs down the road — ones that, with the Department of Energy’s help, will stay in the U.S.

Companies receiving funds say government money is essential for this risky research.

“I think this is just the kind of research the government should be getting behind because it is higher-risk, it has the potential for very high payoffs,” said Michael Raab, president of Agrivida, the company doing the biofuels plant project.

“But, particularly in this kind of an economic climate, it is hard to find investors that are willing to invest in high-risk opportunities. And so the government can fund this research and get it to a point where others will invest in it and really push it forward into the marketplace.”

Tom Schulz, co-founder of BioCee, which does research in solar fuels, said the program will produce the next “Energy Google.”

“We don’t know which company of the funded projects it will be, and we don’t know when it will ‘tip.’ However, most of the projects will create only a few (but very qualified) jobs over the next two years,” Schulz said. “The real question is how many jobs will be created and saved in 5 to 10 years.”

Some critics say, however, that the government should not be investing in particular projects with the aim of getting them to the marketplace.

“Government is terrible at picking winners and losers,” said Kevin Book, an energy consultant and former Wall Street analyst.

Book supports government-sponsored scientific research but not having the government trying to help determine which projects should get a financial boost toward the marketplace.

“Turning science projects that nobody wants into products that no one can afford to buy is a terrible idea,” he said.

To help make the best decisions possible, ARPA-E has recruited staff from the private sector, including some with hedge fund experience, and also consults with experts in particular scientific fields.

ARPA-E is based on the concept of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which was created in 1958 to push technological research and development after the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite before the U.S. could get off the ground. Among DARPA’s accomplishments is helping to spur the creation of the Internet.

CNN’s Francesca Johnson and Bob Crowley contributed to this report.

The award is the Medford startup’s second in as many months from the federal government. It was one of five Massachusetts companies to receive an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) award from the U.S. Department of Energy last month. Combined, the awards total $6.5 million.

Agrivida’s plan is to develop new traits in crops that eliminate the need to pretreat and add external enzymes. The USDA award will be used to genetically engineer switchgrass with cell-wall degrading enzymes that are turned on when the crop undergoes processing.

The award is under a $24 million joint USDA/DOE program to advance research in bio-based energy products. USDA funding comes through its National Institute of Food and Agriculture and requires a 20 percent funding match.

Also receiving funding under the program is Hampton Falls, N.H-based Itaconix LLC, which received $2 million to produce polyitaconic acid from Northeast hardwoods. The acid is a polymer that could be used to replace oil-based dispersants, detergents and super-absorbents.

http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2009/11/16/daily59-Agrivida-nets-2M-USDA-grant-for-biofuels-research.html

Harvard University Spinout is Pursuing Drugs for Intractable Disease Targets

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ — Ligon Discovery, Inc., which uses proprietary small molecule microarray technology to find drugs against high-value targets, today announced that it has raised $1M in seed financing led by incTANK Ventures. The company will use the capital to complete its initial discovery campaign that will screen over 100 high-value disease protein targets. With this investment, incTANK Ventures General Partner Christian Bailey joins the board.

Patrick Kleyn PhD, Angela Koehler PhD and Benjamin Ebert MD PhD founded Ligon Discovery with an exclusive license to technology invented at Harvard University and already successfully used to find novel drug compounds at the Broad Institute.

Christian Bailey, General Partner at incTANK Ventures, commented, “Ligon represents a rare combination: although it is an early-stage company, its patented technology has already chalked up some significant drug discovery successes which big pharma companies are now pursuing.”

“Ligon’s technology has already been used to discover drug compounds against high value targets including protein kinases, histone deacetylases, extracellular growth factors, and transcription factors,” said Patrick Kleyn, Ligon’s CEO and co-founder. He added, “These compounds were subsequently validated by follow-up assays and results have been published in journals such as Nature, Nature Chemical Biology, and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.”

“Ligon is a terrific example of how research at one of Massachusetts’ leading academic institutions can be commercialized, leading to new jobs and new therapies that help patients,” said Dr. Susan Windham-Bannister, President & CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, the agency charged with implementing the state’s ten-year, $1 billion Life Sciences Initiative. “Translating research from our world-class colleges and universities into early stage companies and life-saving products is what makes Massachusetts the hub for innovation in the life sciences.”

About Ligon Discovery

Ligon Discovery is a Harvard spinout that leverages a patented platform technology to identify pre-clinical drug candidates. The company’s high-throughput microarray “chip” transforms the speed of the drug discovery process and expands the scope of new drug prospecting to include previously intractable targets. The team has deployed the SMM technology, originally invented at Harvard University and further developed at the Broad Institute (founded by MIT and Harvard University) in Cambridge, and has established one of the largest small molecule screening capabilities in the industry. Using this facility, Ligon has successfully completed screens in the fields of coagulation and cancer, and is actively pursuing drug discovery in other areas of high unmet medical need. For more information, visit www.ligondiscovery.com.

About incTANK Ventures

incTANK Ventures invests in Boston area technology ventures with strong intellectual property and compelling market opportunities emerging from premier universities and research institutions. Funded innovations are often inter-disciplinary and span the applied sciences including biotechnology, life sciences, materials science, and computational science. Existing portfolio companies include Agrivida, which applies genomic technology to sugar/biofuel production, and AgaMatrix, which applies audio signal processing technologies to blood glucose monitoring. For more information, visit www.inctank.com.

About the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center

The Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) is a quasi-public agency of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts tasked with implementing the Massachusetts Life Sciences Act, a ten-year, $1 billion initiative that was signed into law in June of 2008. The Center’s mission is to create jobs in the life sciences and support vital scientific research that will improve the human condition. This work includes making financial investments in public and private institutions that are advancing life sciences research, development and commercialization as well as building ties between sectors of the Massachusetts life sciences community. For more information, visit www.masslifesciences.com.

SOURCE Ligon Discovery, Inc.
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cambridge-based-ligon-discovery-raises-1m-in-seed-funding-70528242.html

US Representative Edward Markey, chair of twin energy and environment panels in the House of Representatives, announced that Medford agricultural biotechnology company Agrivida will receive $4,565,800 from the Department of Energy.

“We have long known that Massachusetts is the Hub of the clean energy universe and this critical funding will help keep it that way,” said Markey. “These Recovery Act funds will help ensure that the next generation of clean energy technologies—and the jobs that come with them—will remain here in Massachusetts.

“I congratulate Agrivida Inc. for securing these prestigious awards to support ambitious energy research projects,” said Rep. Markey.

According to information released by the Energy Department, Agrivida will use its funding for the following:

“Agrivida, Inc. will develop an innovative technology to produce ‘masked’ cell wall degrading enzymes within the plant itself that can be activated after harvest, dramatically reducing the cost of cellulosic biofuels and biochemicals. The technology will help establish a sustainable market for non-food biomass resources to bolster the development of biorefinery jobs and commerce and create carbon neutral transportation fuels.”

On its website, Agrivida says its products are intended to boost energy independence, reduce greenhouse gases, and enhance the rural economy.

Rep. Markey said the funding is being awarded through the Energy Department’s recently-formed Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). All told, Massachusetts will receive over $33 million for clean energy research projects, more than 20 percent of all funds distributed nationally.

- InsideMedford.com
http://insidemedford.com/2009/10/29/medford-company-receives-45-mil-federal-grant/

Mark Woolf, Director of Pharmacy for Kroger, said, “We are excited to announce the launch of our own Kroger brand blood glucose product that features great quality and high accuracy. We plan to continue to expand our diabetes testing category to provide our diabetic patients the quality products that they want and need. After evaluating all of our options in the marketplace, we felt that the WaveSense line of blood glucose meters and strips was the best choice for Kroger.”

The Kroger(R) BGM is a no code, fast test time, and low blood volume system that has WaveSense technology for high accuracy results. While most test strips are sold only in 50 and 100 ct, the Kroger(R) BGM offers a 25 ct, especially designed for people with diabetes who pay cash for their testing supplies. Test strips are less than 50% the cost of major brands.

“By providing a best-in-category blood glucose monitoring system at a value price, along with support from one of the most trusted pharmacy names, Kroger’s unique approach will benefit people with diabetes,” said Dave Conn, Chief Commercial Officer at AgaMatrix. “This enables even more patients to have access to WaveSense products for better control of their diabetes.”

About WaveSense Products:

WaveSense(TM) is a line of blood glucose meters, strips, and software designed to improve the quality of diabetes care by using a new technology that personalizes each test to provide world class accuracy. It detects and corrects for many errors caused by differences in blood samples and environmental conditions. Current AgaMatrix products include the WaveSense KeyNote(TM), Presto(TM), Jazz(TM), and the WaveSense Diabetes Manager iPhone App. WaveSense meters and strips are covered by insurance and found at many national and regional chains, as well as independent pharmacies. For more information, go to: www.wavesense.info.

(C) 2002-2009 AgaMatrix, Inc. WaveSense, KeyNote, Presto, Jazz, WaveSense Diabetes Manager are trademarks of AgaMatrix, Inc. iPhone, Kroger are registered trademarks of their respective owners.

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-03-2009/0005087879&EDATE=

SOURCE AgaMatrix, Inc.

The WaveSense App is the first of its kind to be developed by a blood glucose meter manufacturer that is now available on the iTunes(R) App Store (www.itunes.com) by Apple, Inc. The app is available for download at no charge. The company says their app, in development and testing for over a year, lays the foundation for a series of products to come that will take advantage of the iPhone and other mobile technology platforms to assist people with diabetes in the management of their disease.

The WaveSense App combines the latest in user interface design, diabetes data management, and mobile technology to enable people with diabetes to better manage their disease. The app provides users with a number of cutting edge features including:

    --  Easy-to-use data entry
    --  Dynamic graphing of glucose data
    --  Automatic mealtime tagging of results
    --  Integrated food intake, activity, and medication data management
    --  Insulin dosage management
    --  Statistical analysis of glucose results
    --  Integrated emailing of results
    --  On-screen help menus

    --  User-personalizable settings

More information on the WaveSense App is available here: www.wavesense.info/iphone

“Leveraging mobile technology to deliver better patient care is a major trend in the making and has the potential to transform the management of chronic diseases, such as diabetes,” says Dr. Irl Hirsch, an internationally recognized diabetes specialist and Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington. “With the launch of the WaveSense Diabetes Manager, WaveSense is setting the bar in the new disease management paradigm with a combination of an extensive feature set and very intuitive user interface. I’m eagerly awaiting their pipeline of products which will no doubt be cutting-edge and first-in-category.”

“I’ve been involved with the development of several apps for the App Store, and am impressed with this medical app’s outstanding utility and thoughtful design. I’m personally excited by the app because it affects me on a more personal level since my grandfather suffers from diabetes,” says Benjamin Satterfield, CEO of 23 Divide and creator of Gigotron (www.gigotron.com), most recently known for garnering the Best Mobile App Award at the South by Southwest Interactive Web Awards.

WaveSense blood glucose monitoring products are covered by insurance and available by mail order and at popular retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Kroger. For more information on WaveSense products, go to: www.wavesense.info.

About WaveSense products:

WaveSense(TM) is a line of blood glucose meters and strips designed to improve the quality of diabetes care by using a new technology that personalizes each test to provide world class accuracy. It detects and corrects for many errors caused by differences in blood samples and environmental conditions. Current products include the WaveSense KeyNote(TM), WaveSense KeyNote Pro(TM), WaveSense Presto(TM), WaveSense Jazz(TM), Zero-Click(TM), a diabetes data management system designed to simplify data download, and WaveSense Diabetes Manager, a mobile diabetes data management system.

WaveSense; Presto; Pro; KeyNote; WaveSense Jazz; and Zero-Click are trademarks of AgaMatrix, Inc. iPhone, iPod Touch, iTunes, Apple, Wal-Mart and Kroger are registered trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE AgaMatrix, Inc.