Monday, September 21, 2015 from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM (EDT)
This event is to gather interested small businesses seeking assistance from the Small Business Innovation Research grants program from the National Institutes of Health. This is a free event brought to you by BioHealth Innovation. Hear from the SBIR managers on current Institute funding priorities. Meet one-on-one with program managers regarding your current project. Learn of SBIR assistance provided by BioHealth Innovation.
Revolve Biotechnologies, Inc. has been awarded a $450K Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to develop iRFP-Max, a near-infrared fluorescent protein research tool that will enable in vivo imaging of brain and other tissues up to ten-fold deeper than currently available tools. Current fluorescent protein tools operate at wavelengths at which tissue absorbance allows scientists to image only close to the surface. This tool will enable a range of new applications and has the potential to become the industry standard for pre-clinical in vivo imaging for drug development and neuroscience research for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
When Japanese doctors Ryuji Ueno and Sachiko Kuno came to Bethesda two decades ago, they already had a drug company back home. They founded what would become Sucampo entirely with their own capital in 1996 to see if they could sell treatments to a much larger American market.
Two decades later Sucampo is under new leadership, and is buying out its Japanese predecessor R-Tech Ueno for $278 million in cash and stock.
BioMarker Strategies, LLC, a private company, has developed SnapPath®, a cancer diagnostics system that automates and standardizes functional ex vivo profiling of live solid tumor cells from fresh biopsies or other fresh, unfixed samples such as xenografts or tumorgrafts, according to the company’s website (see here: www.BioMarkerStrategies.com). SNNLive spoke with Jerry Parrott, President and CEO of BioMarker Strategies at the BioMaryland Booth at BIO International 2015 in Philadelphia, PA.
The transformations in healthcare have gotten the attention of many healthcare investors, including private equity firm NaviMed Capital. It closed a $110 million healthcare fund last month. I recently spoke with Managing Director Bijan Salehizadeh about its investment priorities and how he regards the digital health sector.
The firm’s mandate is to do small buyout deals of profitable companies in healthcare.
QB3@953, a San Francisco, USA-based incubator created by QB3, a University of California research institute and biotech accelerator, has announced an agreement with UK pharma company GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK).
Together the companies will identify and facilitate collaborations to translate early drug target concepts into medicines that benefit patients. It formalizes an existing relationship between QB3@953 and GSK’s Discovery Partnerships with Academia team.
Symbiomix today announced the completion of patient enrollment in a Phase 3 clinical study, the second pivotal trial of SYM-1219, which is a single-dose, oral product candidate for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis (BV). Earlier this year Symbiomix announced positive results from the first pivotal trial for SYM-1219. Symbiomix expects to finish this second pivotal trial by the end of 2015, which would enable a New Drug Application (NDA) filing with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in mid-2016.
Symbiomix also announced that the FDA has granted Fast Track designation to SYM-1219. The FDA’s Fast Track program is designed to facilitate the development and expedite the review of drugs that are intended to treat serious conditions. Earlier this year Symbiomix announced that the FDA had designated SYM-1219 as a Qualified Infectious Disease Product (QIDP) for the treatment of BV. QIDP designation makes SYM-1219 eligible for certain benefits, including priority review. Further, if ultimately approved by the FDA, SYM-1219 would be eligible for a five-year extension of exclusivity in addition to new chemical entity (NCE) market exclusivity.
In 2011, the World Well being Group compiled an inventory of each illness, dysfunction, and ailment recognized to man. The listing ultimately crested the 14,000-ailment mark when it was full. However amongst all of those illnesses, it is debatable that none attracts extra consideration from drugmakers or the general public than most cancers.
TOPIC: “Innovating through the U.S. Economic Development Administration”
PRESENTER: Julie Lenzer Kirk, Director Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship U.S. Economic Development Administration
ABSTRACT: Housed within the U.S. Economic Development Administration, the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (OIE) works to foster a more innovative U.S. economy focused on turning new ideas and inventions into products and technologies that spur job growth and competitiveness while promoting economic development. Ms. Kirk will discuss OIE programs including: • Promoting and supporting high-growth entrepreneurship. • Accelerating commercialization of federally funded research. • Working with other agencies and the White House to collaborate on policies and programs to support entrepreneurship and commercialization. • Supporting the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship (NACIE), which is chaired by the Secretary of Commerce. • Leading the $15 million 2014 Regional Innovation Strategies Program competition.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have been working on a new solution for sepsis, a complication of infection that affects more than a million people in the U.S. each year and kills between 20 and 40% of them.
But this tool for treating sepsis isn’t strictly a medical intervention — it’s a computer code.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015 2:00 pm
Patents help define the scope of your invention. In this two-part webinar, we shall provide a simple overview of the patent litigation process in the U.S., some options to defend against a patent infringement lawsuit brought against you, and how to protect your patent rights from being infringed by others.
Heading up the Johns Hopkins Medicine Technology Innovation Center, Gorkem Sevinc, MSE, CIIP, focuses the bulk of his attention on partnering with clinical and research personnel within Hopkins Medicine to collaboratively build innovative Health IT tools. Software development, IT infrastructure, workflow and collaboration tools are all part of his purview.
Sevinc started the informatics research laboratory in the Department of Radiology at Johns Hopkins Medicine along with his director and chair-elect of SIIM, Paul Nagy, PhD. They grew it to serve all of Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Health IT needs, but the department of radiology continues to be the lab’s anchor.
The Daily Record’s Innovator of the Year recognizes individuals and companies that have created a product, service or program that has had a positive effect on their business, industry or community.
Innovators make the extraordinary ordinary. They make the impossible possible. In many ways, they turn dreams into realities. We congratulate this year’s winners! Event:
Thursday, October 15, 2015 The Center Club 100 Light St. #16, Baltimore, MD 21202
The Cordish Companies proudly announce Baltimore’s newest collaborative workspace for creators and innovators: Spark. Spark, designed by Baltimore based Verve Design, will be ideally located in the central business district at The Offices at Power Plant Live!. Baltimore’s tech community is thriving, creating a need for non-traditional, businesses to work collaboratively under the same roof. Spark will be uniquely set-up to help businesses connect with different industry professionals, from education to health IT to finance.
Sept. 17th, 2015, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Washington DC, 1619 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington, DC, 20036
Are you an entrepreneur and thinking of starting your own company? Are you a small start-up looking for local resources that will help your company succeed? Are you a small company looking to expand and enter the next stage of commercial success? If you said “Yes” to any of these questions, then this WIB event is for you!
Our panel of industry experts from MD TEDCO, BioHealth Innovation, and the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development will provide you with invaluable information about resources their organizations provide to the local business community, including idea/product development, early and late stage funding, and business accelerator programs.
Pharmaceutical companies are running hard to keep pace with changes brought about by digital technology. Mobile communications, the cloud, advanced analytics, and the Internet of Things are among the innovations that are starting to transform the healthcare industry in the ways they have already transformed the media, retail, and banking industries. Pharma executives are well aware of the disruptive potential and are experimenting with a wide range of digital initiatives. Yet many find it hard to determine what initiatives to scale up and how, as they are still unclear what digital success will look like five years from now. This article aims to remedy that. We believe disruptive trends indicate where digital technology will drive the most value in the pharmaceutical industry, and they should guide companies as they build a strategy for digital success.
Is the U.S. market for consumer wearable devices headed toward the trough of disillusionment on the Gartner Hype Cycle? A new report suggests that explosive growth in demand for fitness bands, smartwatches, smart glasses (think Google Glass) and the like peaked in January and has been headed downward ever since.
On the surface of a living cell at any given time, hundreds of tiny bubbles are popping into existence, surrounding and incorporating proteins, hormones, fats, and the occasional bacteria or virus. But until now the details of this activity were inferred – you couldn’t actually see it. The problem wasn’t just that the structures taking part in this bustling activity are too small, but that our bodies work on an invisibly fast time scale—important changes are taking place over fractions of a second.
Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has hired Jason Hardebeck to work on internet access issues for the city.
Hardebeck will serve as “Broadband Coordinator” for the city. He recently left his role as director of DreamIt Health Baltimore. The mayor made the announcement at a weekly media availability at City Hall.
A blood test that could quickly detect a brain injury and measure the damage it has done could help doctors provide better care for the millions of people suffering from such injuries, potentially improving their chances of avoiding long-term disabilities.
The trick is identifying proteins that appear in the blood in elevated amounts only after a brain injury and then developing tests that can both detect those markers and determine medically relevant information from them. Two companies, Quanterix and Banyan Biomarkers, have identified promising biomarkers and are devising and evaluating diagnostic tests.
In the future, Baltimore will basically be part of Washington, D.C.
So says Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Capitals and Wizards, who predicts in a blog post that Baltimore will be the northern edge of a D.C. supercity. Leonsis writes: “By 2050 – DC will be like London, it will take up about 100 miles end to end, we will think of it as a area that goes from Middleburg to well north of Baltimore on 95.”
Wednesday, September 16, 2015 12:00 pm-1:15 pm, Silver Spring Innovation Center, 8070 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910
The Angel Venture Forum is starting up its annual educational training series to prepare business owners to make their pitches in front of 30 angel investors on November 10 at the National Press Club. Angel investor Valerie Gaydos will explain the process and give a few highlights from the training series. Learn the six basic lessons that every entrepreneur should know and what investors want to know about you before investing: 1) Funding 2) Term Sheets & Cap Tables 3) Financials 4) Intellectual Property Protection 5) Leadership 6) Valuation & Price. Free, a light lunch will be served. Parking is available in the garage adjacent to the Silver Spring Innovation Center.
