Orasi Medical, a University of Minnesota software startup that was marketing its technology to drug companies,has closed its doors.That is an astonishing collapse for a company that had inked licensing deals with the pharma giants like Novartis, been named by Red Herring magazine to its list of Top 100 private companies globally and raised at [...]

Orasi Medical Inc., a University of Minnesota-bred software startup that is developing software designed to help pharmaceuticals makers speed the development of drugs targeting neurological diseases, like Alzheimer’s, has raised $1.8 million from the sale of equity. Overall, the company hopes to raise $2.6 million by December.

Minnesota medical device and biotech companies won about $24 million in tax credits and grants from the Qualified Therapeutic Discovery program. The $1 billion initiative born from federal healthcare reform law seeks to boost companies working on therapies that save money.

The University of Minnesota said Thursday its scientists may have identified an area of the brain that indicates a patient suffers from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using a relatively new imaging technique called magnetoencephalography (MEG), researchers at the medical school and the Minneapolis Veteran Affairs Medical Center detected hyper electrical activity in the right side of the brain of PTSD patients who experienced involuntary flashbacks commonly associated with the disorder.

Orasi Medical Inc. continued its string of impressive partnerships, this time striking a licensing deal with Swiss pharma giant Novartis AG.

Alzheimer’s is what I like to call a black hole disease.We don’t know what cures it. We don’t know what causes it. We don’t even know for sure when we have it. The only thing we do know for certain is that you don’t want to get it.The pharmaceutical industry has spent billions of dollars [...]

Orasi Medical Inc. said Danish drugmaker H. Lundbeck A/S will use its software to test experimental drug compounds on the human brain.Spun out of the University of Minnesota, Orasi has developed technology that can help drug firms determine if their therapies are working by comparing novel brain scans of patients with neurological diseases to its [...]

University of Minnesota tech transfer officials have spoken about the “Big One,” a blockbuster technology that would create or upend an industry while earning the school a hefty return for its efforts.There’s Miromatrix Inc., which hopes to grow organs from stem cells, and VitalMedix Inc., a startup developing a drug to keep alive patients suffering [...]

Perhaps they should rename the school the University of MGI Pharma.Reggie Bowerman, a former MGI Pharma executive, recently joined the University of Minnesota’s Office for Technology Commercialization (OTC) as head of the newly formed Life Science Business Unit.He will oversee a group responsible for advising researchers on how to develop market viable diagnostics, biologics, drugs, [...]

Orasi Medical Inc., the University of Minnesota spin-off developing software to speed drug trials, is close to signing a deal to license its technology to one or more major pharmaceutical companies.CEO Shawn Lyndon told MedCity News he expects to announce a deal in a month or so. Though Lyndon declined to specifically name companies, he [...]