Kaiser Permanente will put its longtime IT expertise to work in building a clinical data network aimed at improving patient outcomes in cancer, heart disease and obesity.
Funded with a $7 million grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the network is one of 29 projects approved for a total of $93.5 million to form PCORnet: the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, which seeks to improve the efficiency of health research.
Funding and Research Opportunities
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notices:
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
The National SBIR Conference and the 3rd annual National Innovation Summit and Showcase will be held in parallel with the 17th annual TechConnect World Conference, at the Gaylord Convention Center, June 15-19, 2014.
National SBIR Conference
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer programs are highly competitive, encouraging small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) work with potential for commercialization.
National Innovation Summit
In support of the White House and Congressional call for innovation commercialization initiatives, the National Innovation Summit and Showcase delivers the world’s largest showcase of industry-vetted emerging-technologies ready for commercialization. Don’t miss as TechConnect presents the Nation’s top innovations emerging from our federal technology funding programs. All showcasing innovations are vetted by our industry and investment review committees, and all will participate the TechConnect Corporate Acceleration and Matchmaking Programs with our participating Corporate and Investment Partners.
Last Sept. 22, the chief executive of a startup called CoFoundersLab Inc., Shahab Kaviani, sat up at the moment the clock chimed midnight, ready to tweet.
At that time, a ban on what’s known as “general solicitation” was officially lifted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which meant startups like his could tell the general public, and not just accredited investors, that they were raising money.
Intellectual property featured prominently in 2013’s public discourse. Gene patents, patent trolls, India’s anti-patent actions, and other developments around the world captured headlines. Here are Patently Biotech’s top blog posts written in 2013 by number of views.
Anne Arundel County Executive Laura Neuman has appointed a Brooklyn Park woman to a job she used to hold herself: director of the county’s tech incubator.
Neuman announced the hiring Thursday of Laura Willoughby to run the Chesapeake Innovation Center in Annapolis.
GlaxoSmithKline plc announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Mekinist (trametinib) for use in combination with Tafinlar (dabrafenib) for the treatment of patients with unresectable melanoma (melanoma that cannot be removed by surgery) or metastatic melanoma (melanoma which has spread to other parts of the body) with BRAF V600E or V600K mutations. These mutations must be detected by an FDA-approved test. Tafinlar is not indicated for treatment of patients with wild-type BRAF melanoma.
The approval of the combination is based on the demonstration of response rate and median duration of response in a Phase 1/2 study. Improvement in disease-related symptoms or overall survival has not been demonstrated for Mekinist in combination with Tafinlar. The combination was approved through the FDA’s Accelerated Approval program and reviewed under a Priority Review designation. This accelerated approval is contingent on the results of the ongoing Phase 3 trial (referred to as MEK115306 or Combi-D), which is designed to evaluate the clinical benefit of the combination in this patient population.
WellDoc®, developers of the first FDA cleared mobile prescription therapy, BlueStarTM, announced today that it received funding from its first institutional investors, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Windham Venture Partners, as part of a $20M round of financing that now broadens its capitalization beyond its initial group of angel investors. For a limited time, WellDoc and its investors will also explore the possibility of adding co-investors that bring strategic value to the company.
“Our new investors share WellDoc’s vision of fundamentally changing how people manage their chronic diseases to improve outcomes and reduce costs,” said Ryan Sysko, co-founder and CEO of WellDoc. “This investment will help WellDoc launch and commercialize BlueStar, the world’s first Mobile Prescription Therapy for type 2 diabetes, on a nationwide basis.”
Johnson & Johnson Innovation has announced that it is expanding its global incubator presence through a novel collaboration with the Office of the Chief Scientist in Israel and other industry partners to establish a new biotechnology incubator near Israel’s Weizmann Science Park.
This is the latest in a series of recently announced collaborations to fuel entrepreneurship in the world’s scientific hotspots. In addition, Johnson & Johnson Innovation announced several new collaborations with academia and biotech that focus on multiple disease areas and consumer healthcare challenges.
AstraZeneca today announced that Granta Park-based MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, has entered into a cancer research collaboration and licensing agreement with Immunocore, an Oxford biotech company.
The approach will be to use the power of the body’s own immune system to find and kill diseased cells, avoiding damage to healthy cells.
