Aduhelm approval sparks HHS watchdog review of FDA’s accelerated approval pathway

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of the Inspector General will review the FDA's accelerated approval pathway, the office announced Wednesday. This sweeping review comes just two months after the controversial approval of Biogen's Alzheimer's drug Aduhelm. The rev

Swarm debuts $499 Evaluation Kit for consumers and tinkerers

Satellite connectivity company Swarm’s new product will give anyone the ability to create a messaging or Internet of Things (IoT) device, whether that be a hiker looking to stay connected off the grid or a hobbyist wanting to track the weather. The Swarm Evaluation Kit is an all-in-one produc

Field Intelligence targets 11 African cities to expand its pharmacy inventory-management service

Pharmacies in Africa struggle with access to finance, but inventory management is really what bogs them down. How do pharmaceutical retailers know how much stock they need? How do they know which products to stock at a given time? How do they know what products aren’t selling? At the moment,

DeepMind puts the entire human proteome online, as folded by AlphaFold

DeepMind and several research partners have released a database containing the 3D structures of nearly every protein in the human body, as computationally determined by the breakthrough protein folding system demonstrated last year, AlphaFold. The freely available database represents an enormous ad

Fi's smart collar adds sleep tracking for dogs

Conventional wisdom holds that one ought let sleeping does lie. But no one says you’re barred from tracking them while they do. New York-based smart collar maker Fi announced today that it's adding sleep to the list of the device's tracking. The added feature uses the collar's on-

Fitness app HealthifyMe to expand worldwide after raising $75M Series C from LeapFrog and Khosla Ventures

People shopping around for a fitness app already have a plethora of choices from which to pick: MyFitnessPal, Noom and Lifesum, to name a few. Founded in India, HealthifyMe is betting that users around the world will prefer its range of customizable health programs. The Bangalore-based company anno

Researchers match DeepMind’s AlphaFold2 protein folding power with faster, freely available model

DeepMind stunned the biology world late last year when its AlphaFold2 AI model predicted the structure of proteins (a common and very difficult problem) so accurately that many declared the decades-old problem “solved.” Now researchers claim to have leapfrogged DeepMind the way DeepMind

SF's Off the Grid food truck festival refocuses on emergency response and services

Off the Grid is a mainstay of the San Francisco culinary scene. The event company, founded by Matt Cohen in 2010, created neighborhood pop-up festivals centered around entrepreneurial food trucks. It was part of the vanguard in the food truck movement, designed to open a path to restaurants for a n

Aidoc raises over $66M for AI radiology analysis technology

Aidoc, an artificial intelligence company that develops triage and analysis software, is about to double its funding. On Tuesday, the company announced a round of $66 million. Before that the company had raised about $67 million in its five-year lifetime.  Aidoc develops “decision support” sof

NewView Capital leads $22.3M Series B in Australian telehealth platform Eucalyptus

Telehealth platform Eucalyptus raised a $22.3 million Series B round of funding to build a digital health portfolio for primary care in Australia. NewView Capital led the round with participation from existing investors Blackbird Ventures and W23, and new investor AirTree Ventures. As part of the i

Panda Express is piloting Beyond Meat orange chicken in select locations

Just under a week after Beyond Meat announced that it will be releasing a reworked version of its plant-based Chicken Tenders at restaurants in the U.S., the faux meat company has returned with a potentially sizable restaurant partnership. Starting July 26, select Panda Express restaurants in South

Stumble-proof robot adapts to challenging terrain in real time

Robots have a hard time improvising, and encountering an unusual surface or obstacle usually means an abrupt stop or hard fall. But researchers have created a new model for robotic locomotion that adapts in real time to any terrain it encounters, changing its gait on the fly to keep trucking when i

Beyond Meat launches plant-based chicken tenders at US restaurants

Beyond Meat today announced the arrival of its new plant-based Chicken Tenders at upward of 400 U.S. based restaurants. The news follows continued growth for the California-based faux meat giant, which includes expansion to Walmart stores, Taco Bell restaurants and a big push into China over the pa

Amazon is now selling its own COVID-19 test kits for $39.99 in the U.S.

Amazon announced this morning it would begin to sell its own brand of COVID-19 at-home tests to Amazon shoppers in the U.S. The test retails for $39.99 on the Amazon.com website and is available to any U.S. customer without a prescription. The COVID-19 PCR collection kit is shipped to the customer&