– Printing roll cleansing agent line enpurex® and surfiMAX cleaning sponges to be distributed with new printers by Gallus Group –
bubbles & beyond, a technology company focusing on customized intelligent fluids®, today announced that the company was chosen as the preferred provider for printing roll cleansing solutions by Gallus Group, St. Gallen, Switzerland. Gallus Group will recommend and distribute selected products of bubbles & beyond´s printing roll cleansing line. Samples of the enpurex® cleansers ONLINE and PRO as well as the surfiMAX cleaning sponges M-ON and M-OFF will be delivered with every printer sold by Gallus Group worldwide and are recommended as the cleansing products of choice.
enpurex® cleansers are designed to meet the criteria of sustainable green printing, while offering significant process cost savings, excellent compatibility of materials, optimum efficacy and operating safety. The cleansers are water-based, non-flammable, free from aggressive chemicals, biodegradable, and also superior to existing products in terms of efficacy. Based on bubbles & beyond´s novel, proprietary intelligent fluids® approach, the products remove all sorts of inks and lacquers used in the printing industry, including 2k lacquer, UV curing ink and calcium glazing, by a unique and fast easy-wipe effect. Thereby, down-time is reduced significantly and printing rolls can be used more versatile across different colors, reducing the need to stockpile print rolls. The enpurex® product line is completed by the surfiMAX cleaning sponges range, which are designed for use in combination with the cleansing agents to achieve optimum results.
– Series A financing round expanded to €34.1 million –
Curetis AG, an innovative molecular diagnostics company focusing on the development and commercialization of in-vitro diagnostic products for infectious diseases, today announced the expansion of its Series A financing round by € 9.6 million. The additional funds increase the round to a total of € 34.1 million and the total capital raised to date to € 36.6 million. The financing was led by Forbion Capital Partners together with Roche Venture Fund. CD-Venture and Curetis ́ management also participated in the round. Holger Reithinger, Partner at Forbion Capital Partners, has joined Curetis’ Board of Directors. Roche will get an observer seat on the Board of Directors.
Since its inception in 2007, Curetis AG has developed the versatile Unyvero™ instrument platform which handles disease-specific disposable cartridges for the analysis of various marker panels, covering both pathogens and antibiotic resistance genes. The Unyvero™ platform combines a unique, fully automated sample preparation working with a comprehensive range of native clinical sample types, with isolation, amplification and highly multiplexed detection of DNA. The simplified, automated and uniform work flow enables testing at the point of need, eliminates operator-induced variations and ensures high-quality results in a short time frame. The first application, a solution for comprehensive pneumonia testing, has successfully completed extensive pre-clinical testing, is about to enter into pivotal clinical trials towards regulatory clearance and is scheduled to enter the European market as a CE-marked device in 2012.
Curetis AG, an innovative molecular diagnostics company focusing on the development and commercialization of in-vitro diagnostic products for infectious diseases, today announced the opening of its state-of-the-art production facility for disposable Unyvero™ cartridges in Bodelshausen (near Tuebingen, Germany).
The fully automated manufacturing line in a clean room environment is designed to be fully cGMP compliant and offers scalability and flexibility to meet the growing demands of clinical trials and commercialization with the scheduled 2012 EU launch of the Unyvero P50™ pneumonia cartridge.
Initial production capacity is 100,000 p.a. which may be easily expanded to an annual production capacity of 1 mio. cartridges. First product is the Unyvero™ P50 pneumonia cartridge for the identification of 17 pneumonia pathogens and 22 of their clinically most relevant antibiotic resistance markers.
Dieter Durand and Susanne Kutter in Wirtschaftswoche feature a disputation between Alzheimer-researcher Konrad Beyreuther and author Cornelia Stolze, who has written a book claiming Alzheimer’s disease does not exist as an exactly defined disease.
While Beyreuther maintains the disease is real and can be clinically separated from other forms of dementia, he concedes that current medications are useless and that diagnosis often is inadequate. Stolze in her book “Vergiss Alzheimer” (“Forget About Alzheimer’s”) states that patients with signs of dementia often are labeled as Alzheimer’s disease patients although they are not, that they receive useless medications, that the real causes of their respective dementias, such as diabetes, depression, stroke, or dehydration, are overlooked and not treated, and that medical doctors make money with unreliable early diagnostic tests. A review of the book is to follow soon – please regularly check the akampioneer.
Joachim Müller-Jung in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) comments on a proposal by several US stem cell researchers in the “Cell Stem Cell” journal. The manifesto calls for establishing a market for human donor egg cells so that scientists can use these cells for cloning experiments. While the purpose is not cloning humans but generating pluripotent human stem cells, Müller-Jung warns that the push will once again put the “cloning humans” debate on the table – a discussion he thinks is needed like a hole in the head. He states there are plenty of experiments already demonstrating that sooner or later it will be possible to generate pluripotent human stem cells for regenerative medicine by reprogramming human body cells.
Martina Lenzen-Schulte, also in FAZ, features the first attempts to use the mirror neuron concept for clinical purposes, e.g. for the rehabilitation of stroke patients to support regain of movement control.
Hildegard Kaulen in FAZ reminds her readers that a substantial part of the research crowned by nobel prizes never received third-party funds. She expresses sympathy with the proposal put forward in “Nature” by Stanford University’s John Ioannidis to either allocate research grants by lottery, by dividing up the money so that each applicant receives the same amount, or simply by handing out money to outstanding scientists with the only specification to use it for research. He criticizes that it has never been investigated which method to allocate research grants is the best and that the current practice consumes too much valuable time that should be spent more creatively on research.
Die Welt reports in a feature by dpa on material scientists of the Technical University Dresden who use wood for pipes that are as strong and resilient as pipes made from concrete. Wood is cut to rectangular blocks, which are heated to 140°C and compressed. Subsequently, all air – which amounts to up to two third of the wood’s volume – is removed. The resulting panels are then bonded and formed by applying steam. The team led by Peer Haller of the university’s Institute for Steel and Wood Construction calculates that a post carrying 50 tons of weight needs 155 kg of steel but only 28 kg of wood treated with the new procedure.
Katrin Blawat in Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) reports that Umckaloabo, an alcoholic extract of Pelargonium sidoides roots, is under investigation by Germany’s Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM). The medication, which is sold as OTC in Germany for the treatment of acute bronchitis (with annual sales of about € 40 million), is suspected to cause inflammation of the liver, with six cases reported in 2011.
The New York Times (NYT) this week deals in-depth with the recommendation of the United States Preventive Services Task Force that men no longer should have an annual prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test. Gardiner Harris interviewed the experts involved in reviewing PSA testing, citing Dr. Roger Chou, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Oregon, as saying “the idea that knowing you have a cancer isn’t always a good thing is a very difficult concept for many people.” Chou states that the vast majority of men who have prostate cancer will never be bothered by it. Urologists however view the issue differently, stating the task force chose to focus on the wrong studies and it was wrong to throw PSA testing away.
Last not least, in preparation of the coming common cold season, Ulrike Gebhard in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) explains that men suffer from the common cold more often than women. Reason is – according to researchers from Belgian Gent University – that women often carry extra portions of genes from the toll-like receptor (TLR) gene family. As a result, they produce more of the so-called miRNA molecules that support the body in fending off viral infections. The downside of women’s more powerful immune system is increased susceptibility to autoimmune diseases and a more violent reaction to certain vaccines.
