Cytiva Adds 140,000 Sq. Ft. to Logan Campus

Last week, the BioUtah team met with Cytiva leadership and toured their impressive manufacturing facilities in Logan, Utah.

Cytiva, a global leader in enabling and accelerating the development of biologic medicines, is completing a major expansion that will add 140,000 square feet to its Logan campus by 2026 — more than doubling its footprint. This includes advanced cell culture media production lines, a new 10,000-square-foot quality control lab, and expanded bottling and finished-goods staging capabilities. As part of Cytiva’s broader $1.6 billion global capacity investment, these upgrades will help strengthen critical supply chains and meet growing demand for biologics.

The expansion not only supports global biomanufacturing, but also reinforces Utah’s standing as a key life sciences innovation hub, creating high-value jobs and world-class manufacturing. Ultimately, these efforts help patients gain faster, more reliable access to life-changing therapies. The Logan site boasts quite a history, with Rex Spendlove, MD, first putting down roots there with the founding of Hyclone Laboratories. Dr. Spendlove in 2021 was honored with BioUtah's Lifetime Achievement Award.

We thank Cytiva for hosting us and for their continued investment in Utah’s thriving life sciences community.

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2025 Utah Life Sciences Summit Awards Nominations Now Open

Nominations are now open for the 2025 BioUtah Life Sciences Summit (ULSS) awards. Each year, as part of the annual ULSS, BioUtah presents its life sciences awards to individuals and/or companies that have made a significant impact in advancing the industry in Utah. The awards include the following:

• Lifetime Achievement
  (2024 Recipient: Dr. Dean Wallace of Liger Medical)
• Entrepreneur of the Year
  (2024 Recipient: Jay Muse of Slipstream Medical)
• Executive of the Year
  (2024 Recipient: Brad Brown, ATL Technology)
• Innovation Impact
  (2024 Recipient: Blackrock Neurotech)
• Friend of Industry
  (2024 Recipient: Vic Hockett of Talent Ready Utah)

Please click on the button below to submit a nomination. Nominations will be accepted through August 22, 2025. BioUtah's board members will then review each nomination and select the winners of each award to be announced prior to the ULSS scheduled for November 12, 2025 at the Hilton Hotel.

Nominate »

Report: U of U Ranks 2nd for Unicorn Companies, BYU Ranks 5th

The University of Utah ranks second in the nation in universities with the highest likelihood of producing unicorn companies. BYU ranks fifth.

The report by Stanford Venture Capital Initiative indicates that a graduate from the U is 3.3 times more likely to achieve unicorn status while BYU grads are 1.6 times more likely. Great news about entreprenuerism in Utah with 2 of our institutions making the top 5. Congrats to both!

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U.S. News & World Report Ranks U of U No. 8 for Undergrad Entrepreneurship

In new rankings from U.S. News & World Report, the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business undergraduate program for entrepreneurship ranked No. 8 overall and No. 5 among public schools for 2025.

The entrepreneurship program at the Eccles School is provided in partnership between the Department of Entrepreneurship & Strategy and the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute.

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University of Utah Founders Day Distinguished Alumni Awards

The University of Utah Office of Alumni Relations annually presents its Founders Day Distinguished Alumni Awards to alumni for their outstanding professional achievements, public service, and/or commitment to the U. Nominations are now being accepted. Click through for more information.

The award presentations will take place during the Founders Day celebration at the Cleone Peterson Eccles Alumni House in February 2026.

Nominations due by 11:59 PM MT, Sept. 12, 2025.

Submit a Nomination »

Utah Business: Nominations for Innovation Awards Open

The program recognizes the state’s vibrant community of innovators — from startups to established companies — and their breakthrough creations. The awards program aims to build the state’s economy by acknowledging and rewarding the creative minds fueling innovation within it.

Deadline for submissions is July 9.

Submit Nomination »

$31M Pledged to Establish the Sigma Chi Center for Advanced Therapeutics and Innovation at Huntsman Cancer Institute

Huntsman Cancer Foundation and Sigma Chi International Fraternity announced a $31M pledge to create the Sigma Chi Center for Advanced Therapeutics and Innovation at Huntsman Cancer Institute. Sigma Chi expects to meet their goal, the largest single pledge in the history of men’s fraternity, within five to seven years, more than doubling the funds raised by the organization throughout their 12-year partnership with Huntsman Cancer Institute.

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Fueling Discovery: New Endowed Chairs

Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah is proud to celebrate two colleagues, Dr. Brock O'Neil and Dr. Jens Lohr, Ph.D, who received new endowed chair appointments. An additional faculty member, Dr. Manish Kohli, has had his chair renewed. These endowed chairs, created through important philanthropic gifts, honor exceptional achievements of our faculty.

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Women Tech Council: 2025 Women Tech Award Finalists

The Women Tech Awards is the premier platform recognizing women making real contributions to tech, science, engineering, and math—and inspiring others along the way.

Congratulations to the 2025 Women Tech Award Finalists affiliated with BioUtah. Finalists include:

• Amy McDonnell, Neuroscientist, University of Utah
• Brittney Vierra, Formerly Director Data Science, Recursion Pharmaceuticals
• Evita Weagel, CEO & Co-Founder, Eris Biotech
• Janlynn Robertson, SVP Sr Business Relationship & Project Portfolio Manager, Zions Bancorporation
• Melanie Jordan, EVP & Director Enterprise Retail Insights and Strategic Initiatives, Zions Bancorporation
• Kathryn Armstrong, Chief Science Officer, USANA Health Sciences
• Michaela Hatch, Sr Scientist, Recursion Pharmaceuticals
• Mou Nandi, CEO & Co-Founder, Monere
• Lynn Reichert, Community & Innovation Manager, Utah STEM Action Center

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CivicaScript® Launches Low-Cost Multiple Sclerosis Treatment

CivicaScript® announced the availability of dimethyl fumarate delayed-release capsules. Dimethyl fumarate delayed-release capsules are indicated for the treatment of relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis in adults, to include clinically isolated syndrome, relapsing-remitting disease and active secondary progressive disease. This product will help increase availability and reduce cost of this important drug consistent with the mission of Civica.

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Canary Speech is the leading AI-powered voice biomarker company, using patented real-time vocal analysis to identify cognitive and behavioral changes earlier than clinical screenings or noticeable symptoms. Their technology works quietly in the background of natural conversations, seamlessly fitting into patient-clinician interactions. By analyzing subtle vocal patterns with AI machine learning, Canary Speech provides real-time insights into conditions like anxiety, depression, mild cognitive impairment, and alzheimer’s. Canary Speech is led by seasoned life science executives Henry O'Connell and Jeff Adams.

BioUtah welcomes Canary Speech as its newest member.

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Talent Ready Utah: OpenAI Academy

July 10, 2025
9:00 AM MT

Gardner Commons
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
Salt Lake City, UT

Join OpenAI Academy and Talent Ready Utah for a special event designed to help leaders across government, industry, and education understand and apply the latest advancements in AI. This event offers practical tools, live demos, and hands-on learning.

• Session 1: Getting Started with AI: 9:00 - 10:00 AM MT
• Session 2: Build with OpenAI: 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM MT

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Good Medicine Podcast - Vocal Biomarkers & Disease Detection | Henry O'Connell

This week on Good Medicine, Dr. David Bearss interviews Henry O’Connell, CEO of Canary Speech, a company using vocal biomarkers to revolutionize mental and neurological health diagnostics. With a career spanning leadership roles at NIH, HP, and MOXTEK, Henry brings decades of insight into how technology can transform healthcare. In this episode, he explains how Canary’s voice analysis tools are giving doctors a clearer picture of patient health, removing global bias from diagnostics, and helping parents better support their kids’ emotional well-being.

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BioUtah has teamed up with Stratus.hr to offer health insurance and other benefits to employees of small to mid-size biotech companies. Services include health/dental insurance programs, benefit services, payroll administration, human resources services, and more. Many BioUtah companies have benefited from contracting with Stratus.hr so they can focus on their companies' core missions.

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Rep. Kennedy Joins Recently Launched House Bipartisan BIOTech Caucus

BioUtah thanks Rep. Mike Kennedy (R-UT) for joining the recently launched House bipartisan BIOTech Caucus and supporting Utah’s fast-growing life sciences industry. We look forward to working with Congressman Kennedy and the caucus to drive U.S. leadership in medical innovation and further Utah’s contributions to new treatments and cures.

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One Big Beautiful Bill Passes Senate, Heads to the House

After 27 hours and 48 amendment votes, the Senate passed its "One Big Beautiful Bill" (OBBB) with Vice-President J.D. Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. The Senate bill includes provisions favorable to the life sciences industtry, such as restoring and making permanent the full and immediate expensing of R&D costs The bill also includes the ORPHAN Cures Act, which would expand and clarify the exemption for orphan drugs under the Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program, allowing manufacturers to retain the exemption for products with one or more orphan indications and delaying negotiation eligibility until the drug receives its first non-orphan indication. A ban on PBM spread pricing in Medicaid was dropped.

After lengthy discussions with leadership and the White House, Republican hold outs, who had opposed the rule governing House floor debate for the OBBB, changed their votes. The rule was then adopted on a 219-213 vote with just one Republican joining all Democrats in opposition. The result paves the way for final House passage of the bill likely today, ahead of the July 4 self-imposed deadline.

The House Freedom Caucus had earlier circulated a document sharply criticizing the Senate-passed OBBB.

Kimbell & Associates highlighted key healthcare provisions of the Senate OBBB that were modified during floor consideration.

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Onerous Reporting Requirements Crushing Small Biotechs, BIO Board Member Testifies

Even if they aren't making revenue, small biotechs can face onerous reporting requirements that cost $1M or more, impeding a company' ability to innovate. Frank Wantanabe, CEO of Articus, and BioUtah member explains these challenges in testimony before the House Financial Services Committee. Wantanabe, who is also a member of the Board of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) testified on June 25 about the need for legislative relief.

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PhRMA: How the $340B Hospital Markup Program and PBMs Drive up Costs for U.S. Patients

Government price setting policies like Most Favored Nation are a bad deal for American patients. The “Foreign First Pricing” scheme won’t lower out-of-pocket costs for American patients because it fails to address one of the real reasons patients in the U.S. are paying more. Why? Because in the U.S. entities that don’t make medicine, like PBMs and 340B hospitals, use medicine spending to subsidize other parts of their business at the expense of patients, taxpayers and employers.

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BioUtah Legislative Policy Call

BioUtah held its monthly policy call on June 26 reviewing activity of the Utah state legislature as well as policy developments at the federal level. 

To view the agenda from the June 26 call, click here.

To sign up for future calls in 2025, click here.

Legislative Hearing on Preserving Access to Timely and Affordable Care

Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA)), Chairman of the Health Subcommittee, announced a hearing titled Legislative Proposals to Maintain and Improve the Public Health Workforce, Rural Health, and Over-the-Counter Medicines.

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Trade Deal Announced with Vietnam

A trade deal with Vietnam that Trump announced on social media today includes a 20% US tariff on Vietnamese imports and a 40% levy on goods deemed to be transshipped through the country. Trump said Vietnam agreed to drop all levies on US imports.

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VITAL Funding Opportunities & Accelerator Program

VITAL is an accelerator hub in the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) Accelerator Network (BAN). The BAN fosters the growth of the global health security innovation ecosystem by supporting early-stage companies to overcome their business, marketing, and operational hurdles. VITAL supports the development of innovative therapeutics solutions in alignment with BARDA’s mission to promote health security, and is managed by Start2 Group, with partners Advise Connect Inspire (ACI) and BioLabs.

• Non-Dilutive Funding for DEV 6-Month Long Projects: $50K - $200K per award. Deadline is September 26, 2025.
• Accelerator Program 6-Month Long: Individualized mentoring from subject matter experts and access to the BARDA network
• Non-Dilutive Funding for PrEP 3-Year Long Projects: $4M - $7.SM per award. Deadline is September 26, 2025.

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Discuss Your SBIR/STTR Funding Needs with a Program Director

Are you seeking SBIR/STTR funding to help commercialize your cancer technology? Before you apply, we encourage you to schedule a one-on-one conversation with an NCI SBIR program director to:

• Get questions answered about SBIR/STTR funding and resources.
• Learn which opportunities can support your small business.
• Receive guidance on approaching the application process.

To get connected with a program director, email ncisbir@mail.nih.gov with an abstract, specific aims, or a quad chart describing your cancer technology.

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Non-dilutive Funding Monthly Grant Webinar

July 17, 2025
10:00 AM MT

G2G Consulting hosts a monthly webinar to review the latest federal non-dilutive funding opportunities for the life sciences industry. The webinar is free for BioUtah members.

Register »

Non-dilutive Funding Monthly Grant Report

The most recent GBG report has several non-dilutive government funding opportunities, notices of special interest, and other opportunities.

Access Report »

STEP Grants Available to Help Cover Costs of International Trade Shows and Trade Missions

Utah has received $500,000 to support export growth among small businesses as part of the SBA's State Trade Expansion Program (STEP). The grant aims to enhance global success for Utah companies and is administered by World Trade Center Utah in partnership with the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity.

Grants – World Trade Center Utah »