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Cambridge Innovation Center has signed onto 127,000 square feet at UCity Square in Philadelphia.

Known as CIC, the Boston-based company will occupy space at 3675 Market St. in University City. It operates in a similar fashion as a co-working space and incubator, providing flexible space to entrepreneurial startups and other companies. Since its founding in 1999, companies that have been housed in CIC space have raised more than $2.5 billion and added an estimated 40,000 jobs to the economy, according to the company’s website.

Students attending classes in the Paul Peck Academic and Innovation Building may not realize it, but just upstairs, researchers are changing—and saving—lives. Home to the Germantown Innovation Center (GIC), approximately 24 life science companies and more than 100 employees are hard at work on the second floor. One company—Zalgen Labs—played a key role in the development of a test to rapidly diagnose Ebola. Another firm created a pediatric anthrax vaccine.

The NIH has awarded MIMETAS and the University of Pittsburgh a prestigious SBIR grant to develop a Liver-on-a-Chip platform for high throughput discovery and development. Accurate prediction of hepatotoxicity is a major problem in the development of new drugs leading to high development costs.  Animal hepatotoxicity testing is expensive, unsuited to high throughput and overall has unreliable concordance with human hepatotoxicity.

The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) announced today that 19 companies have received over $1.9 million in funding from the organization’s Seed Investment Fund in the last six months. The funding will be used to advance the companies’ technology and product commercialization efforts. “TEDCO’s Seed Investment Fund exists to support seed/early-stage, technology-based businesses in Maryland,” said John Wasilisin, president and chief operating officer of TEDCO. “We make investments in these companies to help them reach a critical milestone that will increase the company’s valuation and better position it for follow-on investment, sustainability, growth, and job creation.”

Root3 Labs, Inc. recently moved operations to their new prototyping and manufacturing facility in Randallstown, MD. This marks an exciting opportunity to increase engineering and manufacturing capabilities in the area.“With over 3,700 sq ft of combined offices and industrial space, we’ll have more room to support our customers growing engineering and product development projects,” said Chad Schneider, President and Founder of Root3 Labs. “The new facility provides office space for our growing staff, a comfortable meeting place for customers and suppliers, a high-tech fabrication and assembly workshop, and storage for prototype and low-volume production units. This expansion will help us better support the broad range of R&D activities needed by our customers.”

ConverGene has entered into an exclusive license agreement with the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), part of the National Institutes of Health.  Under this agreement, ConverGene has the rights to commercialize jointly developed small molecule BET bromodomain inhibitors that have a unique core structure as compared to other cancer therapeutics currently in clinical trials.

Since its inception, biotechnology has been preoccupied with virus filtration, the clearance of invasive and adventitious viruses from biopharmaceutical products. And now, far from waning, virus filtration is set to become even more important. Virus filtration, reports Markets and Markets, constitutes a global market that is growing 12% each year. At present, this market is valued at $1.8 billion. By 2020, it will reach $3.3 billion.

GSK will inaugurate its newest global vaccines research and development (R&D) center in Rockville, Maryland, further strengthening and expanding its vaccines presence in the USA. Up to 200 new jobs will be created at the Rockville facility, with GSK investing over $50 million in the next two years to continue to develop the site with latest state-of-the-art scientific research technology and equipment.

Inova Health System, the giant nonprofit hospital network serving Northern Virginia, is creating a new start-up incubator and investment program focusing on “personalized” medicine innovations.

Executives say they plan to invest at least $100 million over the next three to five years making $2 million to $5 million bets on promising young companies with products that have gained some traction in the marketplace.

Craig Sager II is a managing editor and sportswriter based in Atlanta covering high school sports as well as working with the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the Atlanta Falcons. ‘What I can do and what anyone can do is bring the same passion into each day that he did.’