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The Maryland Department of Commerce has created a new role focused on the state’s startup ecosystem and tapped a former investment banker and angel investor to head up the effort.

Allyson Redpath, who previously worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, started as the department’s entrepreneurship director on Dec. 18, Secretary Kelly Schulz announced Thursday. In her new role, Redpath will work to attract and retain early-stage companies in Maryland. She will also help facilitate connections between these businesses and available resources, such as access to capital, company counseling and other small business workshops and events.

Image: Joanne S. Lawton

Rockville, Maryland-based Hememics Biotechnologies Inc. has secured a $2.5 million investment from AMVI Partners, an international investment firm with offices in McLean, Virginia.

The startup is working on developing a handheld device equipped with a multiplex panel chip that is able to rapidly test a blood sample to detect bacteria or proteins in less than a minute. The initial device in development, named HEMEMICS, is a point-of-care panel to test for sexually transmitted diseases.

IBT Vaccines, a wholly owned subsidiary of Integrated Biotherapeutics Inc., announces it has received $3.9 million to advance the development of the IBT-V02 vaccine for Staphylococcus aureus induced recurrent skin and skin structure infections (SSSI). The funding is part of a $48 mil. investment in 8 companies by Novo Holding’s REPAIR Impact Fund, established in 1999 to support the discovery and early development of therapies targeting drug resistant microorganisms. IBT-V02, which is currently in late pre-clinical development, is a unique and potentially first-to-market multivalent toxoid vaccine with broad coverage. S. aureus produces a remarkably large number of toxins that modulate host immune response. The goal is to harness the growing knowledge about its complex relationship with the host to develop effective prophylaxis and immunotherapy for S. aureus/MRSA disease.

When Daria Mochly-Rosen discovered a compound in her lab that promised to lessen the effects of heart attacks, she set out to convince pharmaceutical companies to develop it.

She couldn’t.

So the professor of chemistry and systems biology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine took a leave of absence and started her own company to further test and potentially commercialize the drug.

It seemed the obvious next step. After all, universities often speak of their success in turning research into products that make life better, with the added bonus of contributing to the economy. There are seemingly countless examples, including Gatorade, invented at the University of Florida; Google, which began at Stanford; web browsers and plasma screens, both created at the University of Illinois; and the drug that became the allergy medicine Allegra, developed at Georgetown University.

The big deal about the just-completed J.P. Morgan (JPM) 38th Healthcare Conference had little to do with big M&A deals, because there weren’t any. This time last year, the $74-billion Bristol-Myers Squibb acquisition of Celgene was announced, as was Eli Lilly’s takeover of Loxo Oncology for $8 billion.

There were no such blockbusters this year, though there was an interesting potentially up-to-$2 billion-plus collaboration: MorphoSys outlicensed ex-U.S. commercialization rights to its anti-CD19 Fc-engineered antibody tafasitamab to Incyte, with the companies agreeing to co-commercialize the B cell malignancy candidate Stateside.

Image: A dearth of deals, Illumina’s double launches, and the usual crowds marked the 38th J.P. Morgan 38th Conference. – https://www.genengnews.com

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — AMPEL BioSolutions’ Co-Founder and COO/CSO Dr. Amrie Grammer today at the Biotech Showcase at JP Morgan Healthcare announces the kickoff of a Series A $12.5M raise to commercialize LuGENETM, a gene-based diagnostic.  AMPEL’s initial focus is Lupus, but the test can be used for many autoimmune or inflammatory diseases.  AMPEL’S goal is to have its test available for routine use by physicians within the next few years.

Why me?

I have spent the last 20 years as a serial CEO of multiple healthcare startups, as well as spending the last 3 years as a corporate/strategic venture capitalist. I have made many mistakes and gotten lucky on more than a few occasions. What I hope to accomplish in this blog is simple: educate and, on a good day, entertain. There are many that are much, much more successful than me (nearly everyone in Silicon Valley!). There are some that are worse (also in Silicon Valley…e.g. Elizabeth Holmes re: Theranos). I am not from Silicon Valley. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions (future topics), please feel free to reach out to me.

Image: https://www.linkedin.com

AstraZeneca today announced the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted a supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) and granted Priority Review for FARXIGA® (dapagliflozin) to reduce the risk of cardiovascular (CV) death or the worsening of heart failure (HF) in adults with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) with and without type 2 diabetes (T2D).

The Prescription Drug User Fee Act date, the FDA action date for this supplemental application, is scheduled for the second quarter of 2020.