used by patients afflicted with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, announced a partnership with U.K. pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline. Madison-based Propeller will develop a custom sensor for GSK’s Ellipta inhaler, which GSK will use in clinical studies of patients with those conditions. If the partnership proves to be enduring, GSK has the option to negotiate exclusive commercialization rights for the sensor for use with its marketed portfolio of respiratory medicines delivered via the inhaler.
—Last week, Madison-based Exact Sciences (NASDAQ: [[ticker:EXAS]]) said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services raised the reimbursement rate for the company’s at-home test for colorectal cancer to $501.26, a 1.7 percent increase from the previously announced rate. Then on Wednesday, Exact said the federal agency had lowered the rate, which is listed on its 2016 Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule, to $493.21, which is within a dollar of the original rate. Shares in the company shot up briefly Wednesday but its stock price has mostly declined since; it’s currently trading at $8.40, down nearly 8 percent from Tuesday’s close.
—Looking Glass Investments, a Milwaukee-based startup that uses peer-to-peer lending sites to vet loan applications, lend money, and collect payments, announced it sold a minority stake to Main Street Capital Corporation, a Houston-based investment firm. Main Street (NYSE: [[ticker:MAIN]]) is an investor in the $6.7 million round Looking Glass recently raised for a new fund. LGI now has about $16 million under management, up from $3.1 million at end of 2013.
—Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said they’ve generated primitive human leukemia cells in their lab, which could aid in identifying new therapies. None of the drugs currently approved for treating chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), a group of cancers that harm blood and bone marrow, impact the primitive cells responsible for creating the cancer initially. UW-Madison pathology and laboratory medicine professor Igor Slukvin and his colleagues managed to create the cells, which are also known as leukemia stem cells, by reprogramming bone marrow cells taken from CML patients.
—BomBoard, a Whitewater-based startup that’s developing a smaller, cheaper, and modular version of the traditional jet ski, launched a crowdfunding campaign on the website Indiegogo. The campaign will put to test the company’s assertion that urban young professionals and water sports enthusiasts will want to buy jet skis that cost significantly less than typical models, but still require an investment in the thousands of dollars. Another thing that sets BomBoard’s jet ski apart is that it can be easily dismantled, allowing an owner to transport it in the trunk of an average-sized car.
