Baltimore entrepreneurs cleaned up at the Maryland Technology Development Corp.’s annual ICE Awards, which recognize some of TEDCO’s most successful portfolio companies.
Analytical Informatics, Lookingglass and Opiatalk CEO Tom Popomaronis, all based in Baltimore, took top honors for innovation, corporate excellence and entrepreneurship.
The statistics are staggering: 1 in 2 women and 1 in 3 men will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. This means that cancer will very likely affect each and every one of us at some point in our lives — whether it is through our own personal diagnosis or through that of someone we love. In light of this, I’d like share eight things that we as survivors and potential targets of this disease need to know.
The region’s biggest venture capital raise of the year belongs to RegenxBio.
The Rockville-based biotech company has closed a $70.5 million Series D round led by new investor Vivo Capital, a Silicon Valley health care backer, and existing investors Venrock and Brookside Capital.
Baltimore City was among five urban locales to be selected for the first-ever City Accelerator initiative.
Run by Citigroup’s Citi Foundation and Living Cities, the initiative is providing money to five cities in order to promote innovation in local government.
QIAGEN today announced the opening of its new principal office in Malaysia to serve its growing base of customers for Sample to Insight solutions, enabling them to help fight diseases using molecular diagnostics, break new ground in research for the life sciences and pharmaceutical industry, and protect the public through food safety and forensics testing applications.
Relevant Health, a newly launched innovative health technology startup accelerator focused on bringing products to market, announced that it is now accepting applications from health tech startups for its Fall 2015 class. Additionally, the accelerator launched its website and the portal to its streamlined application process. U.S. and international startups are encouraged to apply.
Relevant Health’s five-month program involves an intensive product-focused curriculum that gives founders of health tech startups the skills to define, develop, position and launch a viable health tech product. The new accelerator will be based out of a brand-new cowork space in the Rockville Innovation Center, centrally located in the heart of the Montgomery County (Maryland) life sciences corridor. Companies admitted to the accelerator will have access to the cowork facility along with other support that includes up to $50,000 in funding, mentorship, development support from a pool of software engineers, and access to the local health tech ecosystem.
Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE: EBS) announced that it has signed a strategic long-term manufacturing agreement with ProMetic Life Sciences Inc. This agreement provides ProMetic access to Emergent’s cGMP FDA-licensed biopharmaceuticals facility located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
The SR One VC unit of GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) (NYSE:GSK) has contributed in the Series C $39 million funding round of PsiOxus Therapeutics. The company is raising funds for conducting clinical trials of an oncolytic virus treatment with a checkpoint inhibitor. The fundraising has been initiated after the Phase 1 trial results of a study involving infusion of the oncolytic virus enadenotucirev that showed tumor cell infections
A multidisciplinary team led by Johns Hopkins researcher Venu Raman, Ph.D., with notable contributions from Guus Bol, Farhad Vesuna and Phuoc Tran of Johns Hopkins, has identified a new therapy for lung cancer, the most common cancer worldwide. The therapy has been in development for six years and involves a first-in-class molecule designed by the team. The molecule, RK-33, interrupts the cell cycle of lung cancer cells without harming normal cells, and it is effective both on its own and in combination with radiation therapy.
Pharma firms need better incentives to create novel antibiotics to head off an ‘apocalyptic scenario’ where commonplace infections become deadly once more. And the latest report from economist Jim O’Neill, who has been commissioned by the UK government to investigate how to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR), offers two ways to make developing antibiotics more attractive to industry. He recommends rewarding firms that develop a new antibiotic with a substantial lump sum. Secondly, a global innovation fund should be set up with $2 billion (£1.3 billion) to be invested over five years to boost blue skies research into drugs and diagnostics. But questions remain over how to run such a scheme and where the money would come from.
