If you’re an entrepreneur enjoying success with your first business, you’ve probably thought about launching a second business.
About 30 percent of entrepreneurs are serial entrepreneurs–and tend to wear the title as a badge of honor in bios and social media profiles. But does it do more than fluff our egos? Is serial entrepreneurship the ultimate type of entrepreneurship and social proof denoting success?
GAITHERSBURG, MD, September 30, 2021 – Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, Inc. (APT), a clinical-stage biotechnology company dedicated to providing therapies to treat infectious diseases, today announced that the Department of Defense (DoD) has awarded the company an additional $8 million for the continued development of bacteriophage therapies (PhageBankTM) for the treatment of infectious diseases. The new funding brings the total contract awarded to APT to $31.2 million.
“We are thrilled to have the ongoing support of the DoD in the advanced development of our PhageBank™ platform to treat drug-resistant infections across multiple indications,” said Greg Merril, CEO and co-founder of Adaptive Phage Therapeutics. “We are thankful for the opportunity to collaborate with the U.S. military to create potentially lifesaving therapies for our nation’s service members.”
Montréal-based healthtech and artificial intelligence (AI) startup Aifred Health today won second place at the final round of the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition and will take home a $1 million USD prize for its digital health software.
Aifred Health offers clinical solutions for mental health treatments using AI. The startup’s second-place win comes five years after it entered the XPRIZE competition along with 150 other applicants. Aifred Health was the only Canadian startup to make it to the finals of this global competition.
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Today, EDA announced that 50 organizations — including nonprofits, institutions of higher education, state government agencies, and other entrepreneurship-focused organizations — from 26 states will receive grants totaling $36.5 million to support programs that fuel innovation and tech-based economic development. (Read full press release)
The grants are part of the “Build to Scale” program, which is administered annually by EDA. The program aims to accelerate technology entrepreneurship by increasing inclusive access to business support and startup capital.
Barbara Schilberg retiring as Managing Director and CEO;
Shahram Hejazi, Ph.D., appointed as Managing Director and CEO
Philadelphia, PA, September 29, 2021 – BioAdvance, a $70 million early-stage life sciences fund with a focus in the mid-Atlantic region, announced today that it has added six new companies to its portfolio in the last 18 months and has made follow-on investments in eight of its existing companies. Combined, these investments represent a commitment of $6.875 million to the success and growth of life science companies in the region. BioAdvance also announced a transition in leadership with long-time Managing Director and CEO Barbara Schilberg retiring and Shahram Hejazi, Ph.D., appointed as incoming Managing Director and CEO effective October 1, 2021.
“Like many investors, when the COVID pandemic began, we focused on helping our existing companies survive the various disruptions to product development and product sales,” said Schilberg, outgoing CEO of BioAdvance. “Within six months, we were able to resume investing in new companies and also have a robust pipeline of opportunities in active diligence.”
Nearly 4% of the world’s population is affected by one of more than 80 different autoimmune diseases, according to the National Stem Cell Foundation, and incidence is rising.
However, of the 30 million patients diagnosed with moderate-to-severe forms of chronic immune diseases, only 5 million receive advanced therapies and only 2 million experience adequate responses.[1] A key barrier to the development of novel therapies and treatment paradigms has been the complexity and heterogeneity of these diseases, which consist of different disease states with distinct unmet medical need and biology.
Are you a biohealth start-up in Maryland, DC or Virginia seeking feedback on your biohealth business idea, pitch deck, or commercialization plan? Schedule your feedback session with BHI EIRs on one of the following dates. Pre-registration is required; Sign up here tinyurl.com/EIRfeedback
For questions/more information, contact BHI.
September 28, 2021 RESTON, Virginia—During a year of unprecedented reliance on intellectual property rights to solve massive global challenges through business collaborations, namely the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 and its profound disruptions of personal and business lives, today the Licensing Executive Society (USA & Canada) announced that it is making a President’s Award and three Deals of Distinction™ Awards, along with the Frank Barnes Award. The Deals of Distinction Awards are given each year, to recognize major business transactions involving licensing, that exemplify best practices and creativity to achieve strategic business objectives, with a significant impact on advancing innovation in the industry Sectors that comprise LES. Similarly, the Frank Barnes Award is given each year to celebrate an exceptional individual who embodies the highest cultural values of LES by selflessly investing their time and expertise in developing the careers of others – an outstanding mentor.
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Sept. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Cartesian Therapeutics, a fully integrated, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering RNA cell therapy in and beyond oncology, today announced the hire of Miloš Miljković, M.D., as Vice President and Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Miljković will oversee the strategy and execution of the Company’s growing clinical pipeline of RNA cell therapies. In addition, the Cartesian appointed co-founder Metin Kurtoglu, M.D., Ph.D., as the Company’s first Chief Operating Officer, responsible for bridging clinical operations with the cGMP manufacturing and translational medicine groups. Cartesian also announced that it has expanded its cGMP manufacturing facility in Gaithersburg, MD to support its growing clinical pipeline.
Universities have long nurtured the development of new ideas. Over the last decade, they’ve increasingly become key incubators of new ventures. Throughout the Baltimore region, university leaders are seeing students and faculty just as interested in entrepreneurship as they are in an academic discipline. In response, they’ve invested a wave of new resources to bolster these activities. Every nearby university now has a hive of startup activity, educating community members on starting new businesses and showcasing their work through pitch competitions. In many cases, universities have specifically created entrepreneurship centers and hired teams to lead these efforts.
Image: (Photo by Stephen Babcock)
