Autumn Innovation
DHA 2020
UCSF Announces Winners of the
Digital Health Awards 2020
UC San Francisco’s Health Hub, and Innovation Ventures announces the winners in the UCSF Digital Health Awards 2020. This unique awards event celebrated the achievements of innovative companies dramatically improving healthcare with technology.
The winners were selected across 15 categories by an unmatched team of 250 expert judges from the healthcare and VC industry. The winners were chosen from more than 750 submissions based on a rigorous judging criteria. In the first round of judging, the priority was on market validation and traction; in the second, innovation and differentiation; in the third, overall patient impact. 

Find out more or watch the full recorded show by clicking below:
UCSF Award Winner
Adam Gazzaley StartUp Akili Wins "Best Technology with UCSF DNA"
Congratulations to inventor Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, Professor, Neurology, UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences, whose advanced research and work with the commercialization teams at UCSF resulted in the licensing of the Endeavor technology to Akili.

Akili’s products are designed to deliver sensory and motor stimuli to selectively target and activate specific cognitive neural systems in the brain. The proprietary technology is engineered to directly generate physiological changes in the brain to improve cognitive function. 

Congratulations.

Find out more about Akili's work, and watch Dr. Gazzaley's award show speech:
COVID 19
‘AeroNabs’ Promise Powerful, Inhalable Protection Against COVID-19
Led by professors Aashish Mangalik, PhD, and Peter Walter, PhD, of the UCSF School of Medicine, graduate student Michael Schoof – and his team of researchers – engineered a completely synthetic, production-ready molecule that straitjackets the crucial SARS-CoV-2 machinery that allows the virus to infect our cells. As reported in a new paper, now available on the preprint server bioRxiv, experiments using live virus show that the molecule is among the most potent SARS-CoV-2 antivirals yet discovered.
Research Opportunity
Funding Opportunity for Faculty
The Laboratory of Genomics Research (LGR) is still accepting submissions for its Call for Ideas! If you want to be considered for this funding opportunity, be sure to submit your 300-word summary here by October 13, 2020. 

Eligibility: Faculty, or equivalent status, with primary appointments at UC San Francisco or UC Berkeley are all eligible to apply.

Requirements: A 300-word summary of a biologically-driven idea that could benefit from the tools & technologies at the LGR. The scope can include basic, mechanistic, and/or applied biological questions or ideas for developing technological advances in the functional genomics space.

Application Deadline: October 13, 2020

Licensing
Printerprezz and UCSF Enter
Exclusive License Agreement
PrinterPrezz announced the exclusive, worldwide license of Spinal Interbody Device technology patent rights from the University of California, San Francisco. This agreement, negotiated by the licensing officers at UCSF Innovation Ventures, enables PrinterPrezz to apply leading research taking place at UCSF to the development and production of new medical devices with novel materials and structures for patients worldwide.
Business
Sanofi Acquires Principia Biopharma
in $3.6 Billion Deal
Shares of Principia Biopharma were up more than 9% in premarket trading after Sanofi announced it was acquiring the company and its BTK inhibitors in a deal valued at about $3.68 billion as the French company continues to transform its R&D division to more heavily emphasize oncology and other lucrative programs. Principia Biopharma's medical technology is based on UCSF researcher Jack Taunton's work in protein kinase inhibitors, one of the technologies managed by UCSF Innovation Ventures
Gilead Sciences Acquires 49.9%
of UCSF Startup Pionyr
UCSF Innovation Ventures is please to announce that Gilead Sciences secured the acquisition of a 49.9% equity interest in Pionyr Immunotherapeutics, a healthcare startup founded by researcher Max Krummel, of the Robert E. Smith Endowed Chair in Experimental Pathology at UCSF. This agreement ensures more UCSF technologies become available to the broader public.
UCSF Innovation Ventures congratulates Sonja Schrepfer's
Sana Biotechnology, with the announcement in June of the initial financing of $700 million was complete. The commitment of long-term investors enables us to concentrate on making discoveries in gene and cell therapies that improve the lives of a broad swath of patients.
We are excited that UCSF Pharmaceutical Chemist Matt Jacobson has filed Relay Therapeutics for a $200 Million IPO on June 25. The startup is one of the companies we’ve partnered with and becoming a publicly traded company will allow them to actively pursue therapies based on UCSF innovations.
List of Recently Issued Patents
Lead Inventor
Technology
U.S. Patent No.
Apparatus, Systems and Methods for Intraoperative Imaging
10,772,504
Methods And Compositions For Rna-Directed Target Dna Modification And For Rna-Directed Modulation Of Transcription
10,774,344
Methods Of Patterning Cells On A Surface Of A Substrate And Programmed Assembly Of Three-Dimensional Living Tissues
In vitro production of medial ganglionic eminence precursor cells
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