admin

Alex Philippidis joins Rich Bendis on BioTalk to discuss the BioHealth Capital Region from a National viewpoint, other Hubs, and how the industry has adapted in the age of COVID-19.

Alex specializes in biopharma business news and industry issues for GEN. He joined GEN in 2011 after four years at GenomeWeb, where he covered research institutes and spent three years following biotech economic development as editor of the weekly newsletter BioRegion News. Alex reports a variety of news stories for GEN and Clinical OMICs and compiles the popular A-Lists series.

Our newest Johnson & Johnson Innovation JLABS location, JLABS @ Washington, DC, continues to move closer to opening later this year. We recently caught up with Sally Allain, Regional Head of JLABS @ Washington, DC to get the latest updates on construction, how the team has adjusted in response to COVID measures, and what we can expect for the remainder of 2020.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today launched Project Patient Voice, an initiative of the FDA’s Oncology Center of Excellence (OCE). Through a new website, Project Patient Voice creates a consistent source of publicly available information describing patient-reported symptoms from cancer trials for marketed treatments. While this patient-reported data has historically been analyzed by the FDA during the drug approval process, it is rarely included in product labeling and, therefore, is largely inaccessible to the public.

Image: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/astrazeneca_today-the-fdas-oncology-center-of-excellence-activity-6681307663625728000-S01t/

Johnson & Johnson Innovation is recruiting a Scientific Engagement Lead of Johnson & Johnson Innovation JLABS.  The goal of Johnson & Johnson Innovation is to advance transformative healthcare solutions that improve the lives of people around the world and, in so doing, to deliver value to Johnson & Johnson (“J&J”).  JJI accomplishes this by catalyzing new science and technology through collaboration and exchange of ideas. This growing team is looking for a colleague inspired to help build and innovate new ways of fostering a productive life-science ecosystem.

Scott Plank’s latest investment is in a company that aims to solve logistical challenges within the organ transplant industry.

MediGO offers a hardware and software platform for organ transplantation logistics, designed to make it easier to track donated organs as they are delivered to their recipients.

Image: https://www.bizjournals.com – JONATHAN MUNSHAM

Novavax Inc. plans to advance its Covid-19 vaccine candidate with new additions to the company and about $200 million in new funds from selling convertible preferred stock — the latest cash infusion for the Gaithersburg vaccine maker.

The preferred private placement with a Boston-based RA Capital Management investment fund, in a deal that closed June 16, came fewer than two weeks after Novavax (NASDAQ: NVAX) won a Department of Defense contract worth up to $60 million to help manufacture its coronavirus vaccine candidate. It also builds upon $388 million Novavax landed from the Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations for the same program. And it follows the company’s preparations to sell up to $250 million in common stock, a move that sent its stock soaring toward the end of May.

ROCKVILLE, Md. & SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Replicate Bioscience, Inc. (“Replicate”), a privately-held biopharmaceutical company creating novel treatments to prevent drug resistance in cancers, and Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc., (“ITI”), a privately-held clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the study of nucleic acid immunotherapy platforms, announced today that the companies have entered into a research and licensing option agreement to combine their platform technologies to combat infectious diseases and cancers.

NEWARK, Del., June 24, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Today, the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmacueticals (NIIMBL) announces that they have identified nine projects to allocate approximately $8.9 million from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) award received in May 2020 towards the support the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.