By Dr. Ethel Rubin, Entrepreneur in Residence, National Institutes of Health.  (NIH is an ACA Annual Partner)

You don’t need to read these sobering stats to know that Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is decimating the aging population, quite literally. One in 10 people age 65 and older has Alzheimer’s, and nearly two-thirds are women. Today, there are 5.5 million people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias (ADRA) in the US alone and the numbers are only rising. The burden to healthcare and care providers is likewise huge: $200 billion USD. At NIH, we are doing our part by using both the SBIR and other grant funding mechanisms to tackle the problem. It’s not just a focus area whose time has come, it’s mandated by law (Public Law 111-375 The National Alzheimer's Project Act of 2011). 

By: Ethel Rubin, PhD, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, NIH Office of the Director Office of Extramural Research

Thank you for welcoming me, my National Institutes of Health colleagues, and our four sponsored companies to your Annual Summit in Boston last month! It was a pleasure to speak with many of you in person, to learn more about angel investing and your respective sweet spots. We hope you learned more about NIH’s seed investment fund. National Institutes of Health invests over $1B funding available to life science companies annually in the form of grants and contracts.

But, the Institutes and Centers that comprise NIH have services that go beyond funding. Companies have used these types of additional resources and services for further development of their technologies towards commercialization. The product development enabling programs highlighted below allow small businesses to apply for free services – why shouldn’t your company utilize them?

By: Ethel Rubin, PhD, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, NIH Office of the Director Office of Extramural Research

Looking for a deal in your backyard? The NIH is the world's largest investor in early stage life sciences companies. Over 1000 companies annually tap into NIH’s SBIR and STTR program for nondilutive funding to the tune of $980M in FY17. Did you know the NIH maintains RePORTER, an online database, of all funded companies and projects? This link will take you to what's been funded this fiscal year, but you can query the database yourself to look for companies specific to your interests. There are over 25 different ways to search and visualize the data with built in analytics (click on the Data & Visualize to create graphs and more you can export directly to PowerPoint and Excel).