Foley & Lardner LLP
The law firm of Foley & Lardner, Milwaukee, has been named to the 2009 InformationWeek 500, an annual listing of the nation’s most innovative users of business technology. Foley is the only law firm in the United States to have received this recognition for the fourth consecutive year. InformationWeek recognized Foley for its internal development of a program designed to automate the business intelligence process that supports attorneys in its intellectual property litigation practice. Earlier this year, Foley’s IT department created a data-mining application known as IP LIT Case Match. The IP LIT Case Match daily reports compare and rank matches among new intellectual property litigation cases filed in federal courts against the firm’s client base. The service enables reviewers to select and forward high priority matches to appropriate attorneys for action via an automated e-mail, including links to the complaint and exhibits. As a result, attorneys provide clients with a preliminary assessment of possible defenses and strategy that aids in early and cost-effective resolution. InformationWeek identifies and honors the nation’s most innovative users of information technology with its annual 500 listing, now in its 21st year, and also tracks the technology, strategies, investments and administrative practices of America’s best-known companies.
U.S. Bank
U.S. Bancorp Fund Services’ transfer agent set an industry benchmark by being the first third-party transfer agent in the industry to become ISO 9001:2008 certified. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) established a set of management requirements recognized around the globe that encourage the standardization of goods and services. ISO is a global network that identifies what international standards are required by business, government, and society, develops them in partnership with the sectors that will put them to use, adopts them by transparent procedures based on national input, and delivers them to be implemented worldwide. Since 1969, U.S. Bancorp Fund Services has supported investment managers, banks, and broker-dealer firms sponsoring mutual funds with assets ranging from the level of start-up to $88 billion. Established exclusively to serve the unique needs of registered and unregistered products, U.S. Bancorp Fund Services provides comprehensive fund services to 273 fund complexes with 1,635 portfolios and aggregate assets of $528 billion.
The Medical College of Wisconsin
The Medical College of Wisconsin, Wauwatosa, received a five-year, $1.5 million competitive grant renewal from the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute to research a new treatment for the childhood cancer neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma forms in nerve tissue, usually in the adrenal glands. It often spreads to the lymph nodes, bones, bone marrow, liver and skin, and is typically diagnosed in early childhood. Although low and intermediate-risk neuroblastoma patients have an excellent chance of survival, current survival rates for patients with high-risk disease are typically less than 50 percent, calling for more aggressive treatment strategies. Building on past research supported by the MACC Fund (Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer, Inc.), researchers in the lab of the grant’s leading investigator Bryon D. Johnson, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics in hematology/oncology, are attempting to optimize a new, multi-faceted treatment approach that activates the immune system to effectively eliminate the cancer. This approach involves stem cell transplantation using a patient’s own blood, while manipulating the transplanted white blood cells. It also incorporates tumor vaccination, accomplished by reprogramming the cancer cells to stimulate the body’s immune system to attack the tumor. The goal of this research is to develop an effective immune therapy for high-risk neuroblastoma patients, thereby increasing their chance of survival
