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The Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC) at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute supports the development of innovative biomedical products to address unmet medical needs in the heart, lung, blood and sleep fields.  OTAC is home to the NHLBI's small business programs (SBIR and STTR) and the NIH Centers for Accelerated Innovations.

The NHLBI's SBIR and STTR programs comprise one of the largest sources of early-stage capital for U.S. small business, acting as engines of innovation for developing and commercializing novel technologies and products that aid in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart, lung, blood, and sleep diseases and disorders. The NHLBI provides grant and contract funding opportunities and resources to support small businesses performing research and development on technologies related to the mission of NHLBI. With an annual budget of $85M, the NHLBI funds about 200 companies each year through the Institute's small business programs.

The NIH Centers for Accelerated Innovations accelerate translation of scientific discovery into commercial products that improve health for patients. This unique public-private partnership is changing the way discoveries with scientific and commercial potential are identified and developed.

O2h has a track record of investing in emerging biotech, small molecule and frontier life science starts-ups

A passion for entrepreneurship and life sciences motivates o2h to participate in syndicated seed stage investments. O2h are ready to support the investments with active or passive support to further the objectives of the company.

Pfizer Venture Investments (PVI) is the corporate venture capital arm of Pfizer and was founded in 2004. PVI has an annual investments budget of $50 million and invests up to $10M per investing round. The firm focuses mainly on U.S. startups but has global reach. PVI attempts to allocate 80% of its funding to U.S. based companies and utilizes the remaining 20% for international ventures. PVI provides equity funding for private companies in need of seed, growth, or venture financing. Remaining opportunistic, PVI focuses entirely on high growth prospects in all sectors and all phases of development. The ideal candidate has a potential for high growth and returns. Additionally, PVI will seek to in-license products and buyout companies if the opportunity arises.

PlantForm Corporation is a Canadian company formed in 2008 to commercialize a low-cost, plant-based manufacturing platform for monoclonal antibodies, protein drugs and vaccines for cancer and other critical illnesses.

The company’s technology platform provides several advantages over mammalian cell culture and other fermentation systems used to produce most biologic drugs on the market today: it’s fast, efficient, highly versatile (for new product development) and easily scalable. Best of all, it’s capable of reducing manufacturing costs for life-saving drugs by up to 90 per cent.

PlantForm licenses its technology from the University of Guelph, where it was developed by Dr. J. Christopher Hall, a PlantForm founder and the company’s Chief Scientific Officer. Dr. Hall held the Canada Research Chair in Recombinant Antibody Technology from 2002 to 2014 and is a leading authority in the field. All relevant intellectual property is protected by patent filings.

PlantForm’s pipeline features both innovator and biosimilar products, including:

• biosimilar trastuzumab, a plant-produced version of the $6-billion breast cancer drug Herceptin® (animal studies successfully completed, human clinical trials scheduled for 2014, market entry anticipated 2017)

• biosimilar versions of two additional oncology drugs with combined annual global sales of $11.4 billion (2010)

• innovator antibodies for HIV/AIDS, funded by the Government of Canada and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

• recombinant butyrylcholinesterase (rBuChE), an enzyme used as preventative medicine for people vulnerable to attack by nerve agents, organophosphates or other stimulants ($1.8-million contract with the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and $800,00 contract with Defence Canada)

Prize4Life is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 in Cambridge, MA focused on accelerating therapy development for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's disease). Prize4Life uses incentive prizes to attract new minds and drive innovation in ALS drug development. The organization is running the $1M Avi Kremer ALS Treatment Prize4Life challenge for preclinical validation of a novel ALS therapeutic in an ALS mouse model, and submissions to this prize will be accepted until June 6th 2015. In addition to prizes, Prize4Life also runs infrastructure programs to support the ALS research community, such as the ALS FORUM, an online portal of cutting edge research and drug development news in ALS (www.researchals.org).

Promosome is a synthetic biology company founded to commercialize the discoveries of the late Nobel Laureate, Dr. Gerald M. Edelman, and colleague Dr. Vincent P. Mauro of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) in La Jolla, CA. Leveraging Dr. Edelman’s and Mauro's unparalleled expertise in the area of mRNA translation and the resulting technologies they pioneered, Promosome offers technology licensing opportunities to biotherapeutic and bioindustrial companies seeking to dramatically improve efficiencies in expression, secretion, and potentially biotherapeutic safety and dose tolerance.

In March 2014, GEHC and Promosome executed an agreement to license a subset of Promosome’s initial technology suite in support of their mammalian cell line development ambitions.

Promosome operates a developmental center in the Torrey Pines section of San Diego which focuses on expanding its mRNA translation-based toolset as well as identifying and developing a pipeline of proprietary proteins which can be differentiated by their unique manufacturing attributes (higher yields, greater homogeneity, etc.) and quite possibly by their safety profile in clinical use.