“We are poised to dominate this field:” Sen. Toomey on biotech; PA, MN Congressmen want new medical device tax repealed [VIDEO]

Sen. Toomey talks to Rep. Paulsen after the press conference. Rep. Meehan in the background.

As if the Obama Administration’s healthcare bill —The Affordable Care Act — wasn’t under enough fire this week with the start of Supreme Court hearings yesterday, medical technology trade organization AdvaMed held a press conference with congressmen from Pennsylvania and Minnesota to call for the repeal of the medical device tax instated by the bill and herald the release of a new report that benchmarks the competitiveness of the medical technology industry in the United States.

U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (PA), U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach (6th-PA), U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan (7th-PA), Co-chair of the Congressional Med Tech Caucus U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen (3rd-MN), and U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent (15th-PA) joined the University City Science Center’s Stephen Tang, David Nexon of AdvaMed and other leaders of the Pennsylvania bio tech industry at Quorum to discuss the negative impact the new 2.3 percent tax would have on U.S. competitiveness in the global biotech market.

The tax, which is scheduled to take effect in 2013, could apply to a range of medical devices from retail products like hearing aids to advanced medical technology, like MRIs, according to an AdvaMed press release. AdvaMed estimates the tax could result in the loss of up to 43,ooo jobs across the United States and views the tax as a threat to America’s competitiveness in the global medical technology market.

“Now our tax system is so uncompetitive for high-tech manufacturing industries like ours that the taxes our government applies to activities conducted in the U.S. are two and a half times higher than taxes foreign government levy on those same activities abroad,” said Nexon.

Read more

Osage Ventures to partner with research universities like Penn to bolster IP profit

The New York Times profiles the new Osage University Partners fund, which partners venture capitalists and universities to benefit both in high yield research-fed, intellectual property-driven startup businesses:

Investing in start-ups is the business of venture capitalists, some of whom have come up with a new formula for profits. It goes roughly like this: Give a few V.C.’s access to the technology deals. Let them raise some capital and invest it shrewdly. The V.C.’s become rich. And if the deals are done correctly, the schools share handsomely in the riches. As an incidental but significant benefit, it’s at least possible that venture capitalists, working with universities, could help create manufacturing jobs in the United States.

Deb Crawford, Drexel Vice Provost for Research on evaluating cells a thousand times smaller than a human hair and more: Q&A

Debbie Crawford isn’t from around here.

The native of Glasgow, Scotland moved from Alexandria, VA to take the Vice Provost for Research gig at Drexel University in September and is awash in a continued University City renaissance that most Philadelphians from even five years ago wouldn’t recognize.

The engineer-by-training spent 20 years at the venerable National Science Foundation and is here to push forward Drexel’s reputation as a serious research institution.

“The tipping point for that is going from the individual cottage industry notion of research with deep expertise to a place where we are bringing the researcher across a variety of other fields to create a sum greater than the parts that can attack bigger challenges,” Crawford tells Technically Philly , her accent aglow. “So it’s taking new technologies and bringing together the creative arts and engineering or whoever else and pull them in that sandbox to have the largest impact possible.”

Now living in Center City, Crawford says she brings from NSF “an understanding of the topic barriers in these large projects.”

Below, Crawford talks about why Drexel was the right choice, the coolest research happening at the university right now and more.

Read more

Penn researchers say they now can detect Alzheimer’s at earliest stage

Fighting Alzheimer’s may get easier because of research from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine.

Researchers there have announced that they have validated a test capable of confirming the incurable, degenerative disease at its earliest stages, increasing the opportunity to find methods to slow or eventually stop the effects, according to a university press release.

The test measures cerebrospinal fluid concentrations of  amyloid beta42 peptide and tau protein, two of the disease’s trademarks.

Read more