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Johns Hopkins is getting involved with the vast and swiftly growing field of psychedelic research.

The prestigious university is throwing down $17 million from a group of private donors on its Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research. It’s the first of its kind the United States and the largest in the world — intended to expand our knowledge and our minds through psychedelic research.

Hopkins Medicine will explore use of psilocybin to treat diseases such as opioid addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, eating disorders, depression and chronic Lyme disease.

CEO Pascal Soriot knows what’s at stake for AstraZeneca’s business. It is whether China, now the British drugmaker’s second-largest market, can sustain double-digit growth—and some investments that support the Chinese government’s goals are necessary.

In a slew of news coming out of Shanghai on Wednesday, AstraZeneca is teaming up with investment shop China International Capital Corporation to launch a $1 billion fund focused on healthcare, upgrading its Shanghai R&D operations to a global center, establishing a new artificial intelligence innovation center, and partnering up with Sun Pharma to market some oncology drugs in China.

Just a year after I arrived at UMBC as a young vice provost in 1987, what we now know today as the University System of Maryland (USM) was formed through the merger of the five University of Maryland campuses and the six campuses in the State University and College System. The late John S. Toll, a renowned physicist who devoted the prime of his career to public higher education, served as the first Chancellor and quickly established a system that optimized the varied strengths of eleven institutions to give families and employers throughout the state access to outstanding academic programs and research discoveries, and talent.

Image: Baltimore Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor

A pediatric gastroenterologist who is the veteran president of the University of Maryland at Baltimore was named Thursday to become the chancellor of the state’s public university system.

Jay A. Perman will be the fifth chancellor of the University System of Maryland, which encompasses the state flagship campus in College Park and 11 other public institutions serving 176,000 students. Perman will succeed Chancellor Robert L. Caret when the incumbent steps down in coming months. Perman’s start date has not been determined, a system spokesman said.

Image: Scene from the campus of the University of Maryland at College Park. (MARVIN JOSEPH/Washington Post)

Keynote: Rebecca Canino of Johns Hopkins Office of Telemedicine

Digital Health inventors and innovators are invited to discover novel technologies with the potential to transform medicine. Digital Health Day centers around a healthcare technology expo featuring inspiring technologies offered by regional start-ups, industry, and Johns Hopkins innovators.

Image: https://www.eventbrite.com

The New Haven area has become a hub for thriving and growing young bioscience companies like Arvinas and Cybrexa Therapeutics, which are working to develop potentially game-changing cancer cures.

The region’s biotechs are developing treatments for a range of ailments, from Alzheimer’s disease to spinal-cord injuries.

But just as a growing infant can’t stay in an incubator for long, many New Haven-born bioscience companies need room to grow — and fast.

Image: PHOTO | NEW HAVEN BIZ – John Keogh, senior broke with Colliers International, in lab space at 5 Science Park on Winchester Avenue in New Haven.

AstraZeneca said today it will create new R&D centers focused on drug development and artificial intelligence (AI) in Shanghai, as well as partner with state-run China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC) to launch a potentially $1 billion fund whose investments will aim to advance innovation in China’s healthcare system.

Image: AstraZeneca’s China headquarters at Shanghai Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park – https://www.genengnews.com

Gaithersburg, MD, November 5, 2019 – Cartesian Therapeutics, a fully integrated, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing cell and gene therapies for cancer and autoimmune diseases, today announced that it has initiated a Phase 1/2 clinical trial (NCT04146051) of its lead CAR-T candidate, Descartes-08, in patients with generalized myasthenia gravis (GMG).  To the company’s knowledge, the program is the first CAR-T investigational candidate to enter clinical development for an autoimmune disease.

“Patients with severe GMG have limited treatment options and are often dependent on nonselective, chronic immunosuppressive therapies (ISTs) that have long-term toxicities,” said Volkan Granit, MD, the trial’s principal investigator and Assistant Professor of Neurology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. “Cartesian’s CAR-T technology selectively targets the primary culprit in the disease:  antibody-producing plasma cells.  Such selective targeting would be a first in GMG and could help patients discontinue use of chronic ISTs.”

For those that lived through the devastation and horror of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s, effective treatment, let alone a cure for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), seemed unimaginable. 

Some three decades later, a host of Maryland life science companies and research organizations are getting closer to making what was once unthinkable, real.

So little was known about this devastating immune disorder in the early phases of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.