Archive: Company News

Tuesday, 2. February 2010

Company News: Indivumed to Study the Integrity of Biospecimen Sampling Procedures for the U.S. National Cancer Institute

Analysis of biopsy sampling procedures a prerequisite for the development of future individualized cancer therapies

Hamburg-based Indivumed GmbH has been awarded a subcontract by SAIC-Frederick, Inc., under its prime contract with the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) to assess the impact of sampling procedures on the integrity of cancer biospecimens and key data derived from them.

The NCI’s Office of Biorepositories and Biospecimen Research (OBBR) is sponsoring the study to better understand how the integrity of voluntarily donated medical biospecimens—such as blood and biopsy tissue—might be compromised by the way in which they are collected and handled. Surgical and tissue sampling procedures can affect cellular processes in these biospecimens, influencing the results of research on cancer targets and mechanisms. Despite widespread use of cancer biospecimens for research, there are currently no systematic data available assessing the influence of sampling procedures on the molecular processes and compositions of the collected tissue.

Indivumed and its clinical network partners have pioneered standards to enable full control of all steps in tissue collection and clinical data collection, and are thus prepared to study the impact of intra- and post-surgical tissue processing on molecular data. For further details, please see the full announcement.

Friday, 29. January 2010

Company News: 365 Energy Enables Networked Roaming for EV Users in Europe

365 Energy and the cities of Amsterdam and Bochum have started operations of a novel, cross-country billing and roaming system. The platform allows for electric vehicles (EVs) to be charged in various European cities by using a single customer ID card issued by the municipalities. Due to the networked billing and roaming, EV users will not only be able to access ChargePoint™ Networked Charging Stations in Europe with the same ID, they will also receive an integrated invoice at the end of each billing period. There will be no extra charge for roaming, since these cities open their ChargePoint Networked Charging Stations for each other. In the near future, this will enable EV drivers to buy the electricity from their preferred provider.

The city of Amsterdam and the city of Bochum‘s public utility company Stadtwerke Bochum GmbH have been the first to install ChargePoint charging stations in the Netherlands and Germany, respectively, and are again front-runners to offer EV users this unique service. Other European cities, such as London and Lisbon and Milan are expected to follow. More at 365 Energy´s website.