Today’s Top Stories
Cutting Into Amazon’s Robot Lead: Some upstarts are trying, but the company’s Kiva grab guarantees it dominance for now.
Read MoreTag: Health
Chasing The Grail: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Illumina, and Google Ventures Are Betting This Company…
A conversation with Jeff Huber, CEO of Grail
Jeff Huber lost his wife Laura to cancer last fall, a loss made even more devastating by the knowledge he had gained through a mid-career shift into life sciences at Google, and board work with the gene sequencing pioneer Illumina. Just as his wife’s cancer was metastasizing beyond the reach of science, Huber was working with the Illumina board to spin out a company that promised to detect and ultimately provide the tools to beat cancer before it could spread throughout a person’s body.
After his wife’s death, Huber became CEO of the newly spun-out company. Dubbed Grail, it is backed by more than $100 million from Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Google, and others. Grail’s unofficial debut came via a moving commencement speech, “Find A Better Way,” that Huber gave at his alma mater in May.
Read MoreThe World’s Biggest Industry Just Got Served
The FDA’s new food labels catch up to reality — and will drive the biggest shift the industry has seen in recent history
It could save the US economy tens of billions of dollars a year, and its proponents claim it will save or extend millions of lives. The Wall Street Journal called it “radical.” Major industry giants lobbied against its implementation and warned of mass consumer confusion and uncertain scientific validity. It took years to crawl through one of the largest bureaucracies in the US government, and represents the largest update to that department’s public policy in more than two decades.
The subject at hand? A new version of the familiar Nutrition Facts label, which sits on every packaged food product sold in the US. Late last week the FDA finally announced a new food labeling regime, and it takes aim squarely at a new public enemy #1: Sugar.
Video Spotlight: Embrace Has Helped 200,000 Babies Stay Warm — and Stay Alive
Preterm and underweight babies who survive their first month can still suffer severe long-term health problems — diabetes, heart disease, developmental delay. Keeping them warm can help prevent those problems. Founded in 2008 and based in San Francisco, Embrace Innovations has done just that for more than 200,000 babies across 14 countries with its simple, cost-effective infant warmers. It hopes to help even more babies in the developing world with an assist from its first commercial products.
Jane Chen, Embrace Innovations’ CEO and co-founder, tells NewCo that over the next few years the company wants to help one million babies. It’s created a consumer-facing product — Little Lotus. For every Little Lotus product purchased in the U.S., $25 goes toward the purchase of an Embrace infant warmer for use in the developing world. In the U.S., traditional incubators cost about $20,000; Embrace’s infant warmer costs just one percent of that.