Biotech SF: Modern Meadow

Peter Thiel.

A startup using tissue engineering to develop an edible cured meat, and another company whose technology could more easily track stem cells as they make their way through the body, won grants from a foundation started by entrepreneur Peter Thiel. The grants to the two Peninsula companies and a company from Huntsville, Ala., whose nano technology could help diagnose diseases from a single sample, compose the second round of funding from the San Francisco-based Thiel Foundation’s Breakout Labs. The awards of up to $350,000 each are aimed at helping startups get to a proof of concept that enables them to woo venture capital and other sources of capital.

Some of my favorite stories.

• "The fight of his life" (2007)

Last year Mike Homer helped raise the money for 2,000 medical research computers. Now researchers are using that equipment in an attempt to save his life.

• "For reporter, CJD is more than a story" (2007)

Seven years ago -- nearly to the day -- my mother died of Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease.

• "A son's YouTube plea for Avastin" (2010)

Josh Turnage is your typical teenager, trying to discover what he wants to do in college and with his life. But a 7-minute, 41-second YouTube video he produced about his mother's fight with breast cancer may thrust him into a debate between drug makers and the agency that regulates them.

• "New device could knock out old dialysis technology" (2011)

Shuvo Roy has all the makings for the world's first implantable artificial kidney, thanks to nanotechnology and a web of nationwide collaborations.

All he needs now is $20 million.

Biotech SF

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs funds artificial meat, cell-tracking companies in latest round