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Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is in the news lately and for good reason. Diseases that were once easy to treat are becoming increasingly difficult to cure. But the largest contributor to AMR is a disease that rarely makes headlines – drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), the world’s only airborne drug-resistant infection. DR-TB makes up a third of the world’s burden of AMR and in 2017, there were more than half a million cases of DR-TB globally – including some right here in the District of Columbia. It is estimated that two-thirds of individuals with DR-TB do not even know they are infected, posing a threat to their own health and to global health security.

One company gets absorbed into a larger brand and a host of companies flower as a result. The Biohealth Capital Region’s (BHCR) cycle of creative destruction has continued with Harpoon Medical. This was the story shared at the TEDCO Entrepreneur Expo’s session titled, “Success Breeds Success.” 

Image: https://biobuzz.io

Leeds, UK, 14 November 2019: LUNAC Therapeutics (LUNAC), a UK based drug discovery company focused on the identification and development of advanced anticoagulants with minimal bleeding risk, today announced it has spun out of the University of Leeds with £2.65M funding in the first close of a Series A financing round. The investment is being led by Epidarex Capital and the University of Leeds. The Company was founded based on IP generated by Prof Helen Philippou and Dr Richard Foster, through unique insights built on a decade of academic research into Factor XII which has been supported by the Wellcome Trust, British Heart Foundation and the Medical Research Council.

Qiagen NV shares jumped the most in 17 years after people with knowledge of the matter said Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is considering a takeover of the molecular testing firm.

Thermo Fisher has approached the Dutch company about a potential purchase that could become one of its biggest-ever acquisitions, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Shares of Qiagen rose 13% to 33.20 euros at 1:10 p.m. in Frankfurt, giving it a market value of $8.3 billion.

Earlier this year we reported on the First of Its Kind Apprenticeship Program at GSK’s Rockville, Maryland Site. We are happy to provide an update on that story with news that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has expanded their apprenticeship program to now include Biopharmaceutical Associates.

GSK is an industry-leading pharmaceutical, consumer products and healthcare company and is known for taking a future-oriented approach to their talent strategies. The Validation Technician Apprenticeship was the first of its kind in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. They have also begun to explore Virtual Reality training as a model that can be used to speed up employee development.

Virginia Tech is coming to Children’s National Hospital’s new campus at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The partnership will bring a 12,000-square-foot biomedical research complex to the 12-acre Children’s National Research and Innovation Campus, slated to deliver in December 2020 as part of the project’s first phase. In the university’s first D.C. location, Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion will establish a D.C. team to work with Children’s National on translational research projects, faculty recruiting, intellectual property work and commercialization, and trainings for students and fellows — all focused on pediatric cancers of the brain and nervous system.

Newswise — If the saying that two heads are better than one is true, then joining two fields of science may be better than one to spur more advances in medicine. With a $6.7 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers will bring together immunologists, oncologists and biomedical engineers in an effort to build new tools to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases.