June 2, 2017 by Grove Potter Artem Evdokimov, the CEO and chief science officer at HarkerBIO. Credit: Douglas Levere HarkerBIO is a "shining star" in the growing biotech ecosystem taking shape on the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The small structural biology company determines 3-D structures of proteins for drug and biotech companies. That may sound straightforward even simple but the process is something right out of Star Trek. HarkerBIO uses sophisticated biochemical techniques, supercomputing power and laboratory expertise to decipher the giant, complex structures of proteins. The company then uses that information to help pharmaceutical companies sleuth out sites where drug-like molecules may bind, eventually creating molecules for new medicines. Biotech companies, meanwhile, use the structural data to improve enzyme catalysts that hasten difficult chemical transformations. HarkerBIO was formed in 2015 by Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, which is home to the Department of Structural Biology at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, to commercialize Hauptman-Woodward's expertise in X-ray crystallography. It now has 14 employees, participates in the START-UP NY economic development program and has a partnership with Albany Molecular Research Inc., a contract research and manufacturing organization with a lab on the medical campus. Drug discovery … Continue reading →

The first wave of publicly traded engineered biology companies hasn't exactly served as a shining example for the field. Unrealistic expectations, unrivaled mismanagement, poor investments, awful technology and business strategies, and worse have pushed several companies to the brink of insolvency. If industrial biotech companies such as Gevo, Amyris, and TerraVia haven't considered bankruptcy or selling off assets, then they're simply operating in denial. Each has reduced the hard-earned money of investors to pennies on the dollar. Meanwhile, the one public company that has avoided these missteps has problems of its own. The very public face-plants and lack of meaningful execution have had broader consequences for the field. Even the most promising private companies have no firm plans to go public anytime soon. Meanwhile, many deep-pocketed companies in the industries that could potentially benefit from engineered biology have been burned too many times to take the technologies seriously, which has threatened large sources of much-needed funding for platforms looking to make a commercial splash. That said, there may be a relatively low-risk strategy for patient investors that want to make money from engineered biology. Image source: Getty Images. Would Tesla exist today if it launched out of the gate attempting … Continue reading →

.......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... .......... Trappers responded with outrageous claims, charging that the initiative was backed by out-of-state animal rights extremists who were uninformed about wildlife. Opponents of trapping, they claimed, were trying to destroy our way of life. And this was just the beginning: Once they stop trapping, they will come after hunting, and fishing, and ranching, and logging. Many of my fellow hunters also defended trapping, repeating the same arguments. When it comes to predators like wolves or bears, its all black-and-white to some people. Youre either one of us or one of them and there is little room for rational discussion; if you dont agree with them, they attack with fervor. During the trapping debate, hunting organizations dusted off the ballot-box biology defense, saying that such decisions should be made by wildlife professionals whose opinions are based on science, not by citizens who are acting out of emotion. We hunters love to claim that our approach to wildlife management is based on science. And, of course, it should be, but too often its not. The Idaho Fish and Game Department conducts aerial shooting of … Continue reading →