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The Montgomery County Council approved the fiscal year (FY) 2019 operating budget on Thursday, May 24, 2018. Included in the budget is a total of $425,000 for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Matching Grant Program. The program provides matching fund for businesses that receive federal SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants.

Bill 41-17, Economic Development Fund – Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Matching Grant Program established a County matching fund for businesses that receive federal SBIR and STTR grants. Councilmember George Leventhal, who serves as chair of the Council’s Health and Human Services Committee and is a member of the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee, was the lead sponsor of Bill 41-17. All other Councilmembers were cosponsors.

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In this new episode of BioTalk, Matt Brady and BHI President & CEO Rich Bendis discuss topics around lab spaces in the area including, availability, shortages, and solutions to create more in the BioHealth Capital Region.In this new episode of BioTalk, Matt Brady and BHI President & CEO Rich Bendis discuss topics around lab spaces in the area including, availability, shortages, and solutions to create more in the BioHealth Capital Region.

Since joining Scheer Partners in 2003, Matt Brady has successfully completed commercial real estate transactions for more than 500,000 square feet of office, R&D and industrial space totaling close to $100 million in transaction value.

Listen now on iTunes , Google Play , and TuneIn. 

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Perceptive Navigation, LLC, a medical device company developing minimally-invasive, image-guidance solutions for the areas of cardiology, emergency medicine, and interventional radiology, announced today that it has been awarded a Phase IIB Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  The award provides up to $3 million in funding to complete the product development and clinical work required to commercialize Perceptive’s first product, the Vu-PathTM Ultrasound System. This award comes as Perceptive completes work on a $1.4 million Phase II award from the NHLBI.

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VLP Therapeutics, LLC. (“VLP”), a biotechnology company focusing on the research and development of therapeutic and preventative vaccines and new cancer therapies, announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued US Patent #9,969,986 covering a virus like particle comprising modified envelope protein E3. The patent protects key composition of matter of VLP’s proprietary i-αVLP virus-like particle platform technology and the pharmaceutical composition for use in preventing infectious disease and the treatment of cancer. VLP Therapeutics is currently focused on developing preventative infectious disease vaccines and therapeutic cancer vaccines utilizing the platform technology covered by patent #9,969,986 and other issued US patents,

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We’re pleased to announce that Richard Bendis, President & CEO BioHealth Innovation, Inc., will be a featured speaker at the 2018 Inova Discovery Series: Early Stage Investing in Health Technology!

We have over 300+ registered for our inaugural event. We hope you’ll join us on June 21st at the Inova Center for Personalized Health.

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The Iowa AgriTech Accelerator has announced the five AgTech startups selected for the program’s class of 2018. The Accelerator, based in Des Moines, Iowa, is a mentor-led program focused on ag technology innovations.

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It’s not just tech companies that can trace their roots back to a garage. According to co-founder Joel Marcus, Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE:ARE) — a real estate investment trust specializing in life sciences laboratory and office space — got its start in a garage, too. Since its founding in 1994, Alexandria Real Estate has grown into an $18 billion commercial real estate Goliath with $1.1 billion in annual revenue. Can this company’s success continue? I recently spoke with Marcus to learn more about the company and its opportunities.

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In the City of Clustered Spires, the steeples aren’t alone in their impressive trajectories. This month, we recognize eight of Frederick’s most successful young entrepreneurs who have also risen above the ordinary, and continue to reach higher.

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AstraZeneca has officially opened its new research facility in South San Francisco, bundling five of its Bay Area sites into a single unit at the heart of California’s biotech cluster.

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Researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park and Baltimore campuses are working to shed new light on how, one day, immune tissues could be designed and implanted to create next-generation vaccines or immunotherapies for a range of diseases, or serve as cutting-edge tools for the early diagnosis of cancers or other illnesses.

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The Maryland Technology Development Corp. has awarded a $750,000 grant to Longeveron LLC, a Miami-based biopharmaceutical company, to study whether stem cells can make a better flu vaccine for seniors with a researcher from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) is a nonprofit organization focused on supporting BioHealth entrepreneurs and related industry growth in Montgomery County and the BioHealth Capital Region (Maryland, D.C. and Virginia). BHI is seeking an energetic and motivated Marketing Intern to assist with communications and marketing-related projects. This position is estimated to be 15-25 hours per week, would start immediately, and continue for 12 weeks. In addition to the responsibilities listed below, the intern may attend meetings and programs to understand the full work of BHI and how the organization accomplishes its mission through constituent outreach and support, commercialization and partnership activity.

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Applications CARB-X welcomes applications from around the world for funding and support for the early development of antibiotics, diagnostics, vaccines, devices and other products to combat the most serious drug-resistant bacteria. Please read the sections below carefully to find out what CARB-X funds and how to apply for funding and support.

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While the number of active investors and funded ventures continued to shrink in 2017, an increase in dollars invested and deal sizes shows angel investors are bullish about their prospects, indicates an annual report by the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research.

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The Administration is kicking off a series of public meetings as part of its “Return on Investment” initiative to increase the benefits that American taxpayers receive from funding $150 B annually in government supported R&D. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is heading the project and issued a request for information (Request for Information (RFI)) seeking ideas on how to improve the commercialization of resulting technologies.

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Brian Hahn, Chief Financial Officer of GlycoMimetics, Inc., provided testimony today on behalf of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) before the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Securities, and Investment. Hahn serves as the Co-Chair of BIO’s Finance & Tax Committee.

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Understanding the far- and wide-ranging Maryland technology ‘household’ or ecosystem is essential to success, according to Glenna E. Cush, director of marketing with the state’s Small Business Development Center.

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The SBIR/STTR program, which dubs itself as “America’s Seed Fund,” is one of the broadest forms of early-stage capital available to small technology companies. During the five-year period from 2013 to 2017, the 11 federal agencies participating in the SBIR/STTR program distributed 25,524 awards. Using charts, maps, and a downloadable spreadsheet, this Digest article looks at trends in SBIR/STTR awards by state over the period, including the companies with the most awards and states where SBIR/STTR awards outnumber VC deals. A future article will look at awards by metropolitan area.

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The United States–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) was created for the promotion of joint activities that would lead to innovation and entrepreneurship through the application of science and technology. US-India research partners working on tangible innovations are suitable for this funding.

9th Call of the United States-India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) Program is now open with a deadline of 15 June 2018. While the detailed information about the program can be accessed through the websites www.usistef.org and www.iusstf.org

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Opioids: Changing the Paradigm on Treating Pain and Addiction

4:15 PM–5:15 PM Jun 5, 2018

Room 256, Level 2

The opioid epidemic knows no age limits. Newborns and young children are the most vulnerable victims of the opioid epidemic. An American Academy of Pediatrics research suggests more than 100 children test positive for opioid addiction or dependency each day in US emergency departments. Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) births in the US occur at the rate of ~6 for every 1,000 and 15 per 1,000 in some rural areas. Studies suggest there will be over 50,000 NAS infant births in 2017.

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Although the concept of immunotherapy has been around for more than a century, it only gained prominence as a method of targeted cancer therapy in the early 2000s. In 2015, Merck’s Keytruda® (pembrolizumab), a checkpoint inhibitor drug, made headlines as a breakthrough therapy for melanoma after former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was treated with it. Keytruda had just received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the first anti-PD-1 therapy, and its highly-publicized success created a frenzy in the media; followed by the initiation of scores of immuno-oncology (I-O) clinical trials.

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The healthcare services and technology market is growing rapidly, which creates opportunities, risks, and structural questions for companies in the sector and those in the broader healthcare value chain.

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The Wall Street Journal just ran an interesting interactive feature looking at where college grads move after graduation. They looked at 445 schools, and tracked destinations by metro area. They discovered that graduates, particularly from stronger schools, are flocking to major metro areas. The Big East, Ivy League, Pac-12, Big-12, ACC, and Big Ten are all over 70% in sending college grads to major metro areas (but see below for caveats).

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Research to develop life-saving products, including new vaccines and other products to protect against deadly drug-resistant bacterial infections, got a significant boost today.

The UK Government’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance Innovation Fund (GAMRIF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) have joined the CARB-X partnership to support scientific research around the world to develop new vaccines, preventatives, and other products against drug-resistant bacterial infections, particularly among vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries.

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New York State will invest $30 million into the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset as part of the state’s $72 million investment to support three transformative, economic developments on Long Island, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.

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Results from a multi-year clinical trial testing hyperbaric oxygen as an intervention for US military service members who have experience mild traumatic brain injuries with persistent symptoms were published recently in Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Journal.

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AI and Big Data allow innovators to leverage neuroscientific knowledge at scale to untapped markets.

We would all like our brains to be more powerful – especially those of us with reason to fear the effects of advancing age or a degenerative illness. For the entrepreneurs behind widely promoted “brain-training” apps like Lumosity, the universal desire for cognitive improvement translates to lucrative opportunities. Some scientists and clinicians, too, have hopped on the bandwagon, seeking avenues to lend their expertise to the business world while theoretically bringing cognitive enhancement to the masses.

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MedImmune Sr. Director, Partnering & Strategy filling role previously held by Emergent BioSolutions CEO, Daniel J. Abdun-Nabi

BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) announced that its Board of Directors has unanimously approved the appointment of MedImmune Sr. Director, Partnering & Strategy, Jarrod Borkat as new Vice Chairman. MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, is a Founding Partner of BHI and continues to be a leader in building the BioHealth Capital Region. BHI would like to thank Emergent BioSolutions CEO, Daniel J. Abdun-Nabi, for his service as Vice Chairman. He will remain as a member of the Board of Directors. Mr. Abdun-Nabi also previously served as chairman of the Maryland Life Sciences Advisory Board (LSAB) and currently serves on Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s Excel Board.

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Margaret Anderson, Managing Director at Deloitte Consulting LLP, sits down with host Rich Bendis for this episode of BioTalk. They discuss her career path, putting patients at the center of biomedical and public health, and engaging with all sectors. Margaret Anderson is a Managing Director at Deloitte Consulting LLP focused on using strategy to make organizations, agencies, and programs stronger and more laser focused on outcomes for patients. Her career has traversed biomedical and public health policy and she’s motivated by the change she’s seen in bringing treatments and solutions for patients forward.

As used in this podcast, “Deloitte” means Deloitte Consulting LLP, a subsidiary of Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of our legal structure. Certain services may not be available to attest clients under the rules and regulations of public accounting.

Listen now on iTunes , Google Play , and TuneIn. 

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Kite, a Gilead Company (Nasdaq: GILD), today announced it has leased a new facility in the Netherlands to engineer cell therapies in Europe. The 117,000 square-foot site in Hoofddorp (SEGRO Park Amsterdam Airport) will enable Kite to efficiently manufacture and deliver its cell therapies to people living with cancer in Europe and will provide more than 300 new jobs when fully operational in 2020.

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StonebridgeCarras and The Donohoe Companies announced plans today for their project at 8280 Wisconsin Avenue which will focus its 175,000 square feet of commercial space on bringing life sciences to the Bethesda Central Business District (CBD).  StonebridgeCarras and Donohoe’s vision for the project is to capitalize on two converging trends:  employers locating their offices in live, work and play environments with access to mass transportation; and life sciences companies co-locating near thought leaders and institutions driving research and advancement.

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BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) is a nonprofit organization focused on supporting BioHealth entrepreneurs and related industry growth in Montgomery County and the BioHealth Capital Region (Maryland, D.C. and Virginia).  BHI is seeking an energetic and motivated Marketing Intern to assist with communications and marketing-related projects. This position is estimated to be 15-25 hours per week, would start immediately, and continue for 12 weeks.  In addition to the responsibilities listed below, the intern may attend meetings and programs to understand the full work of BHI and how the organization accomplishes its mission through constituent outreach and support, commercialization and partnership activity.

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The Iowa AgriTech Accelerator is a mentor-led accelerator focused on AgTech innovations. The Accelerator is led by innovators and leaders in several areas of agriculture, and seeks startups ready to change the status quo.

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MockV Solutions, Inc. (MockV or the Company), a company developing innovative products to analyze virus clearance during process development, announced today that it will be collaborating with the Vaccine Production Program of the Vaccine Research Center/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases/National Institutes of Health (VRC, NIAID, NIH) to evaluate its lead product candidate, the MVM-MVP Kit. The MVM-MVP Kit contains a non-infectious “Mock Virus Particle” (MVP) spiking surrogate that mimics the physicochemical characteristics of Minute Virus of Mice (MVM), a small and physiochemically resistant parvovirus, used as a universal standard for assessing viral clearance during process validation studies. The intention of this collaboration is to determine if the non-infectious MVP could be used as an accurate and economic indicator of MVM clearance during small scale bioprocess development studies.

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The Maryland Tech Council (MTC), Maryland’s largest technology trade association, announced the winners of its 30th Annual Industry Awards during a celebration and ceremony at The Hotel at the University of Maryland attended by more than 550 business leaders from around the state.

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A company that works to turn intellectual property into businesses is backing a new Johns Hopkins startup developing therapeutics to treat cancer.

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Rexahn Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE American:RNN), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative, targeted therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, advances its ongoing Phase 2a study of RX-3117 in combination with Abraxane® in first-line patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer following a recently completed routine Safety Monitoring Committee (SMC) review.

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The MdBio Foundation, a non-profit that provides STEM education and workforce development to underserved communities, today announced that Katy Wnuk-Fink – a senior from Laurel who attends Reservoir High School – was named winner of the 2018 Maryland BioGENEius Challenge, the premier competition for high school students that recognizes outstanding original research in biotechnology for healthcare, sustainability, and the environment. As the Maryland BioGENEius finalist, Wnuk-Fink will represent the state in the International BioGENEius Challenge at the BIO International Convention in Boston in June.

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Maryland Technology Development Corp. has doled out $7.1 million to 25 companies and researchers working on stem cell products and medical therapies.

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Protenus has been selected by Modern Healthcare as one of the 2018 Best Places to Work in Healthcare. The complete list of this year’s winners, in alphabetical order, is available here. Modern Healthcare will publish a special supplement featuring ranked lists of all the winners along with the October 1 issue.

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Paragon Bioservices, Inc. (Paragon), the leading private equity-backed biologics contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with proven expertise in gene therapy and next-generation vaccines, was named the 2018 Life Science Company of the Year by the Maryland Tech Council (MTC). The announcement came at MTC’s 30th Annual Industry Awards held last night in the Hotel at the University of Maryland in College Park.

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SoBran BioScience, a division of SoBran Inc, and a leading provider of pre-clinical GLP contract research announced the grand prize winner of the Innovation for Impact Prize sponsored in partnership with the Maryland Tech Council (MTC). This Grand Prize was awarded last night at the MTC 30th Anniversary Industry Awards Celebration.

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A nonprofit organization, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI), recently filed a lawsuit against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over Gilead Sciences’ patents for a new chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy.

KEI calls itself a “not for profit non government organization that searches for better outcomes, including new solutions, to the management of knowledge resources. KEI is focused on social justice, particularly for the most vulnerable populations, including low-income persons and marginalized groups.”

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The U.S. Small Business Administration, under its Federal and State Technology (FAST) Partnership Program, is soliciting grant applications from New York organizations to help boost the development of technology from small businesses.

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A complication from surgery can cost tens of thousands of dollars and require more surgery to correct — but a young Maryland startup is cooking up a more affordable and less invasive solution.

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Join the FLC on Tuesday, May 22 at 1:00 p.m. EDT for an inside look into these new regulations with NIST’s Courtney Silverthorn. To register for this webinar, visit http://connect.federallabs.org/new-t2-regulations-what-you-need-to-know.

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The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program is an important National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding mechanism used to develop innovative solutions that address public health challenges. A major objective of the SBIR Program is to facilitate the commercialization of technologies developed by small business concerns (SBCs). Yet, the development of biomedical products is often impeded by a significant funding gap between the end of the SBIR Phase II award and the commercialization stage. This gap is increased by the barriers associated with technologies under development for small commercial markets, such as those focused on rare diseases or young pediatric populations. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites small businesses to submit SBIR grant applications to support later stage research and development (referred to as Phase IIB) for promising projects that were previously funded by SBIR or STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) Phase II awards that address rare diseases or young pediatric populations (aged 0-12 years and defined in Section IV, part 7), and will require eventual Federal regulatory approval/clearance. The goal of this FOA and the resulting Phase IIB awards is to assist applicants in pursuing the next appropriate milestone(s) necessary to advance a product to regulatory approval and commercialization by promoting partnerships between small business awardees and third-party investors and/or strategic partners, including patient advocacy organizations.

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The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program is an important funding mechanism that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses to develop innovative solutions that address public health challenges. A major objective of the SBIR Program is to facilitate the commercialization of technologies developed by small business concerns (SBCs). Yet, the development of biomedical products is often impeded by a significant funding gap between the end of the SBIR Phase II award and the commercialization stage. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites SBIR grant applications from SBCs to support later stage research and development (referred to as Phase IIB) for promising projects that were previously funded by SBIR or STTR Phase II awards and will require eventual Federal regulatory approval/clearance. The goal of this FOA and the resulting Phase IIB awards is to assist applicants in pursuing the milestone(s) necessary to advance a product to regulatory approval and commercialization by promoting partnerships between SBIR Phase II awardees and third-party investors and/or strategic partners.

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This white paper takes an in depth look at trends in the pharmaceutical industry that are anticipated to make a significant impact on the sector in 2018. Industry professionals can leverage this information to make the course adjustments that will give their companies a competitive edge in the market.

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Today the President of Iceland awarded Kerecis the Industry Award for Entrepreneurship. Kerecis is the creator, manufacturer and patent holder of revolutionary, fish-skin-based therapeutic products that speed up the healing process of human wounds and repair tissue damage.

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Venture development organizations (VDO), nonprofit organizations across the country investing in innovation startups to help grow their regional economies as well as earn a respectable return, saw at least 20 exits in the first quarter of 2018, based on data entered on Pitchbook.com. Here are some examples from the quarter:

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The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has created a $10 million accelerator fund to speed up the commercialization of research at the school. It’s starting with two investments in drug-development ventures.

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Founders can become myopic during the long, stressful process of fundraising. Many focus solely on the amount of money they’re going to raise, their valuation, and the brand name of the investors they are pitching.

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Tufts University has joined the biotech incubator craze, launching a coworking space in Boston earlier this year that organizers hope will foster another life sciences cluster in the heart of the city.

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Boston Children’s Hospital has teamed up with open-source solution provider Red Hat to create a web-based medical image platform that will speed the time it takes to share and analyze life-saving images.

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Trying to build on Arizona’s significant investments in the life science discovery and healthcare delivery infrastructure, the state’s leaders are focused on bridging the funding gap that slows the growth of Arizona-based life science companies. Leaders of Arizona’s life science sector share a drive to accomplish a common goal: accelerate the growth of local companies that are developing and delivering innovative treatments that truly change lives.

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New Enterprise Associates, one of Silicon Valley’s largest venture-capital firms, plans to sell off a big chunk of its startup investments in response to a dearth of initial public offerings, according to people familiar with the discussions.

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