Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

BERKELEY, Calif. & CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--( BUSINESS WIRE )--Activate and The Engine, Built by MIT, today announced a strategic alliance that ensures more hard tech breakthroughs achieve commercialization. Now, Activate and The Engine will offer more programming and support along the entire pathway for early technical founders – from ideation and lab R&D, to customer pilots and commercialization. Deep tech entrepreneurs will be able to tap into more joint curriculum, training, and expert support for every stage of the founder journey. Both Activate and The Engine serve founders and teams who are developing breakthrough solutions that solve critical global issues. These entrepreneurs are building leading-edge technologies that address humanity's most pressing challenges including climate solutions, advanced manufacturing and robotics, new uses of chemistry and materials, reimagined food and agriculture, space innovations, and more. The Engine and Activate have similar philosophies around "just in time" learning, providing deep tech founders with the precise tools they need along the founder journey while they’re building a company. In coming together, the organizations will identify gaps in the founder pathway for scientists and can offer new programs to fill those gaps for up-and-coming science entrepreneurs. The alliance will draw on their complementary offerings that are already successful such as The Engine’s Whiteboard and Blueprint, which invite research professors and scientists to explore forming companies around their discoveries; these same teams may subsequently take advantage of Activate’s Fellowship, a two-year program for emerging science and engineering entrepreneurs where they receive the entrepreneurial training they need to establish a successful hard-tech business while they continue to build their technical idea in the lab. Emily Knight, President and CEO of The Engine, said, "Our organizations share a fundamental belief in the power of technologist entrepreneurs to drive meaningful change. By combining our expertise and resources, we will create a more robust, supportive pathway for Tough Tech founders that ultimately reduces the time between breakthrough research and meaningful societal impact. This means more Tough Tech solutions reaching the markets and communities that need them most.” “If we’re going to move with more speed and see the next generation of amazing ideas go live in the market, then we need like-minded organizations like Activate and The Engine to link arms and move progress forward,” said Cyrus Wadia, CEO of Activate. “Our collective founder communities are working on some of the hardest problems in the world, and they’re using the most novel approaches in science. If we can help their ideas reach the market and achieve scale, all of humanity will benefit. These are bold promises—but they’re possible.” About Activate Founded in 2015, Activate empowers scientists to reinvent the world by launching startups to address climate change and other global challenges. Working between government, philanthropy, universities, and the private sector, Activate transforms scientists into high-impact entrepreneurs through the Activate Fellowship, a two-year immersive experience that equips science entrepreneurs with the skills, networks, infrastructure, and funding they need to quickly and effectively bring their groundbreaking research to market. Activate is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and does not charge any fee nor equity for fellows to participate. Activate’s entrepreneurial fellowship model originated at Cyclotron Road, founding Activate partner and the first U.S. Department of Energy's Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program (LEEP) started at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Activate supports fellows in communities across the United States: Activate Berkeley, Activate Boston, Activate New York, Activate Houston, and Activate Anywhere. Learn more at Activate.org . About The Engine The Engine was built by MIT to support and accelerate any and all Tough Tech companies solving the world’s most challenging problems, as they move from research breakthroughs to commercial impact. The Engine provides the critical infrastructure, programs and ecosystem early-stage Tough Tech companies need to thrive. Learn more at www.engine.xyz or contact press@engine.xyz .

BERKELEY, Calif., Oct. 28, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- HOPO Therapeutics, Inc. announced today that it has been awarded a contract valued at up to $226 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The funds will be used to advance development of the drug candidate HOPO-101 through registrational studies as a medical countermeasure against radiological threats, including planned submission of a New Drug Application (NDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The initial award of approximately $9.4 million will fund toxicology and pharmacology studies, manufacturing activities, and nonclinical research in other types of heavy metal poisoning, with approximately $216 million in additional funding available for later-stage development upon agreement between BARDA and HOPO. The ongoing Phase 1 clinical study of HOPO-101 (NCT05628961), as well as earlier nonclinical work, has been funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. There are no approved oral therapies to treat individuals exposed to radioactive heavy metals like plutonium, americium, and curium. In the event of a radiological or nuclear disaster, treatment with a decorporation agent – a drug designed to bind and accelerate the clearance of heavy metals from the body – is the only practical means to mitigate the risk of radiation poisoning. HOPO Therapeutics is developing decorporation agents that can be taken orally, with the aim of providing rapid access to treatment for an exposed population. This BARDA funding will also be used to study HOPO-101 as a possible treatment for lead poisoning. As recently highlighted by several leading global health organizations including the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), lead poisoning kills an estimated 1.5 million people each year, more than malaria and HIV combined. Most of these deaths, and the over 800 million children currently suffering from lead poisoning, are in low- and middle-income communities. “We are thrilled to partner with BARDA on the development of a new oral decorporation agent for radiological threat preparedness,” said Dr. Julian Rees, HOPO’s Chief Executive Officer and co-founder. “We believe that HOPO-101 can fill an important gap in the world’s ability to respond to a nuclear or radiological disaster, a scenario made ever more likely by ongoing conflicts around the world, and that it could also help to address one of the most significant unmet needs in global health. Nonclinical studies indicate that HOPO-101 would be a substantial improvement over the existing standard of care, and we are delighted to have BARDA’s support in exploring its dual-use capability as both a medical countermeasure and a potential treatment for lead poisoning in adults and children.” Funding for this award was received under contract through BARDA’s Broad Agency Announcement. This project has been supported in whole or in part with federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services; Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), under contract number 75A50124C00062. About HOPO Therapeutics HOPO Therapeutics is a privately-held, clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing treatments for heavy metal poisoning and pioneering novel methods for directed radioisotope delivery. Leveraging world-class expertise in the chemistry and biochemistry of heavy metals and technology licensed from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, HOPO’s mission is to safeguard all people throughout the world from the harmful effects of heavy metal contamination while utilizing the power of metals in medicine to cure disease and improve lives. For more information, please visit www.hopotx.com.

New project explores methane mitigation and nitrogen fixation abilities of methanotrophs in riceST. LOUIS, Sept. 10, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NewLeaf Symbiotics, the global leader in Pink Pigmented Facultative Methylotrophs (PPFMs), is set to quantify atmospheric gas mitigation properties of multiple rice plant growth promotion technologies via methanotrophs, a class of microbes closely related to PPFMs. This is due to a new partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Lab’s Biosciences Area. The work, which will focus on methane mitigation as well as nitrogen fixation, will be a joint collaboration between Berkeley Lab’s Chiniquy (PI), Jardine and Northen labs, utilizing the industry-leading fabricated ecosystems (EcoFABs). “This partnership is the next step in showcasing the potential of methanotrophs when it comes to methane mitigation and nitrogen fixation,” says Dr. Natalie Breakfield, VP of Research + Discovery for NewLeaf and the principal collaborator on the research. “We’ve specifically selected these strains for work in rice, and this partnership will provide the third-party verification to complement what our own greenhouse work demonstrates. We’re excited to have Berkeley Lab’s expertise at work on our technologies.” Berkeley Lab will be examining methanotrophs’ impact on atmospheric gases in multiple ways through their latest EcoFABs and metabolomic analysis. The Lab will measure how plants treated with NewLeaf’s technology utilize nitrogen from the atmosphere, while also determining how rice plants inoculated with different methanotroph strains alter methane emissions. “The combination of expertise in collecting and quantifying highly volatile compounds and the ability to study plant-microbe interactions in our EcoFABs builds understanding of the molecular basis of methane mitigation,” says Grace Sprehn, who leads JGI Policy & Agreements. “This partnership will enable us to deliver quantifiable insights for these strains, which could make a major impact in rice production in the future,” adds Dawn Chiniquy, the project’s principal investigator and a research scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biosciences Area. In addition to quantifying the atmospheric gases, the Berkeley Lab team will explore additional attributes of the interactions between methanotrophs and rice. They will profile rice plants inoculated with methanotrophs to determine colonization of the plant, verifying how many microbes are present on the plant, and the preferred locations. They will also investigate the metabolomic exchanges between rice plants and methanotrophs to identify how or if methanotrophs impact plant exudates. “NewLeaf is science-led and data-backed – it’s at our company’s core,” says Brent Smith, CEO and President at NewLeaf. “Our team has spent considerable time studying the potential of methanotrophs and rice. The next step is third party verification and we could not think of a better partner than Berkeley Lab. We look forward to the results.” In addition to the methanotroph strains being used in rice, NewLeaf has a library of more than 12,000 PPFM strains with known attributes and benefits to a variety of crops. About NewLeaf Symbiotics NewLeaf Symbiotics is an agricultural biotech leader that is focused on the discovery, development, production and commercialization of products containing a genus of beneficial microbes that are ubiquitous and naturally symbiotic with plants. The pioneer and global leader of pink-pigmented facultative methylotrophs (PPFMs) and methanotrophs, a closely related class of microbes, NewLeaf’s technology outcomes include increased yield potential and sustainability indicators. Headquartered in the Ag Innovation capital of St. Louis, NewLeaf has filed more than 200 patents and patent applications and introduced its first biostimulant products in the United States for corn and soy. For more information, visit www.newleafsym.com. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/63d5f98d-6101-43c1-a7ef-d6ccbaa0e06b