Catch up on news from Wisconsin’s innovation community with these recent headlines:
—The NFL’s Green Bay Packers said Craig Dickman has been named managing director of TitleTownTech, a joint venture between the team and Microsoft that’s aimed at spurring digital-age economic activity in northeastern Wisconsin. Dickman is the founder and former CEO of Breakthrough Fuel, a Green Bay-based company that assists its customers with energy and supply chain management.
Last October, the Packers and Microsoft (NASDAQ: [[ticker:MSFT]]) said they would each spend $5 million by 2022 to create a new venture capital fund and a series of innovation-focused programs as part of the TitleTownTech project. The team reiterated this week that it and Microsoft plan to create a venture fund. It will provide capital to startups in industries such as digital health, agriculture, manufacturing, and logistics, the Packers said.
TitleTownTech’s offices and programming spaces will take up 11,000 square feet in a building next to the Packers’ Lambeau Field that’s still under construction. The team said it expects to open the building early next year.
—What’s the coolest thing made in Wisconsin? Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC), a powerful lobby that serves businesses based in the Badger State, is seeking to answer that question through a series of one-on-one matchups between Wisconsin-made goods.
WMC said sixteen products have been picked as finalists, and they’ll face off in a March Madness-style bracket that will use public online voting to crown a champion. Finalist products that might be of interest to Xconomy readers include a radiology ultrasound system developed by GE Healthcare, and Accuray’s (NASDAQ: [[ticker:ARAY]]) CyberKnife radiation oncology machine.
—Bertelsmann, a German media and publishing conglomerate, purchased Brookfield-based OnCourse Learning for a reported $500 million. OnCourse Learning, which has built a catalog of online professional training programs, was previously owned by CIP Capital, a New York-based private equity firm.
—Cellectar Biosciences said the Food and Drug Administration has given its lead drug candidate Rare Pediatric Disease Designation for treating osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. The designation qualifies the drug, CLR 131, to receive priority review vouchers if the drug is approved. Madison-based Cellectar (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CLRB]]) has said CLR 131 has the potential to treat malignant tumors and certain forms of blood cancer, including multiple myeloma.
—Jamf, an enterprise software company headquartered in Minneapolis that has roots and operations in Eau Claire, acquired Orchard & Grove, an Austin, TX-based software developer. Both companies provide software and IT support to organizations with employees who use Apple (NASDAQ: [[ticker:AAPL]]) computers and mobile devices to do their jobs. Jamf did not say how much it paid to acquire Orchard & Grove in a press release announcing the deal.
—The National Institutes of Health said it’s using flu vaccines developed by Madison-based FluGen in a clinical trial to determine whether the vaccines can protect patients against multiple strains of the virus. That’s the goal of so-called “universal” flu vaccines that FluGen and other companies are seeking to commercialize. The trial, which has enrolled 50 subjects ages nine to 17, involves giving patients either FluGen’s RedeeFlu experimental vaccine or a placebo, and then giving all subjects this flu season’s recommended vaccine about three months later.
