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A coalition of 13 leading life science and diagnostics organizations today announced the formation of the Allele Frequency Community, a landmark initiative that is creating an extensive, high-quality and ethnically diverse collection of human genomes to address a key challenge in interpreting sequencing data for research and clinical applications. The announcement coincides with the start of the 16th annual Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) scientific meeting in Marco Island, Florida.

Signing a deal can seal your fate. An exit for your investors may mean the end of your dream. What if you decided to forego the exit route, leapfrog to an IPO, and use commercial partnerships to fuel your scale-up into a fully integrated biopharma company? For an example in progress, look at Sucampo — a still-small company with two FDAapproved products, many more in the pipeline, a healthy balance sheet, and a commitment to maintain its long-term independence.

Vaccination may be the most effective public health intervention of all time. This is especially true in developing countries, where many families can’t find or afford health care when they get sick. The prevention offered by vaccines can be life-saving.

Five Maryland life science companies and a medical institution will share a total of $865,000 in grants from the BioMaryland Center. The awards — up to $200,000 per recipient — are part of the center’s Biotechnology Development Awards program, which is designed to help accelerate commercialization of medical treatments and technologies.

Smart Asset names Rockville and Bethesda as having the best paying STEM jobs in the nation

Looking for a job in STEM-related fields (Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics)?  Look no further than Montgomery County.

A recent report by Smart Asset (smartasset.com) lists Rockville and Bethesda as the top spots in the nation for well-paying STEM jobs.  The area (which included Frederick, MD) beat out Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Boston and New York in offering the most financially rewarding opportunities. 

In the latest look at stocks ordered by largest market capitalization, Russell 3000 component Qiagen N.V. (Symbol: QGEN) was identified as having a larger market cap than the smaller end of the S&P 500, for example Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. (Symbol: JEC), according to The Online Investor .

The Cambridge Biomedical Campus will become a new UK home for biologics research and protein engineering next year, as pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca opens its new headquarters.

Venture capital investment in U.S. life sciences companies soared 29 percent in 2014 from the year before, reaching $8.6 billion, the highest level since 2007. And there is reason to think 2015 will also be a big year for a sector having its third boom of the last two decades.

Did you see the recent news that the FDA has approved the first direct-to-consumer genetic test in the U.S.? Can you say game-changer? Talk about personalized medicine, what’s more personal than our own genetic blueprint? In a health care era defined by patients taking more personal responsibility for their own health and well being, including the costs, it’s about time that we enabled consumers directly with access to their own health care data and the tools to interpret and act on it. Access to our own genetic data gives new meaning to the buzzword, patient-centered care.