The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development says its Maryland Venture Fund has made follow-on investments in two Maryland startups totaling $700,000.
Bethesda-based KoolSpan, a mobile security encryption company, received $400,000. BrainScope, also in Bethesda, got $300,000. BrainScope is developing neurotechnology for quickly assessing traumatic brain injury.
Over $21M in New Funding Available for Bioreactors for Reparative Medicine
Learn more at webinar on September 12, 3 pm ET
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) announce a new program that aims to support multidisciplinary small business teams in the development of complex, three-dimensional engineering systems for growing heart, lung, or bone marrow tissue. Ultimately, bioreactor designs should provide the most physiologically relevant environment to promote correct 3-dimensional tissue growth and maintenance, which is also efficient, safe and economical. Such devices should be made commercially available and widely disseminated to researchers for application in the translational setting.
Baltimore is going to be OK, as long as it has its big name medical centers.
That’s the big takeaway from a new report by Moody’s Investors Service that looked at the economic impact large medical and education systems have on the cities where they are based.
Venture capital continued its love affair with biotechnology in the second quarter, with investment in biotech reaching record levels.
Venture capitalists invested $1.84 billion in 122 biotech deals in the period, according to a MoneyTree report released Monday by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, using Thomson Reuters data.
Funding and Research Opportunities
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notices:
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
Emergent BioSolutions is looking to fill a position for a senior scientist position.
If hired, the senior scientist will be responsible for vaccine potency and assay development at Emergent BioSolutions.
Key responsibilities of the position include the design and execution of experimental protocols for developing and qualifying animal-based potency assays, conducting in vitro potency assay development and leading vaccine product stability studies with the company’s Potency Assay Group.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced that it will freeze the prices of its vaccines for five years for developing countries that graduate from GAVI Alliance support. By committing to offer GAVI Alliance prices for vaccines against pneumonia, diarrhoea and cervical cancer, GSK will support developing country governments as they transition to financing the full cost of their local vaccination programmes.
Since its formation in 2000, the GAVI Alliance has helped to fund the immunisation of 440 million children in some of the world’s poorest countries. GSK is a long-standing partner of the Alliance and reserves its lowest prices for GAVI-eligible countries, which can be as low as one-tenth of prices in developed countries.
On September 14, 2007, Lorenz Diesbergen, age 44, stepped off a commuter train in downtown Chicago and began his daily walk to work in the Chicago Loop. As he crossed the bridge over the Chicago River, his heart’s normal rhythm suddenly deteriorated into an uncoordinated frenzy of useless fibrillations. He may have managed a few more steps—we don’t know—before he pitched forward and fell face-first onto the sidewalk. Paramedics were on the scene within minutes, but efforts at resuscitation proved futile. He left behind a wife and four children.
Venture capital (VC) funding for the Life Sciences sector, which includes Biotechnology and Medical Devices, reached $2.5 billion in 195 deals for the second quarter of 2014, according to a new report, “Biotech soars to record high,” which includes data from the MoneyTree™ Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. While this quarter was the highest Life Sciences investment since the second quarter 2007, it was also the strongest second quarter since 1995, which is the earliest data recorded by the MoneyTree.
Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur, author and professor at Stanford University, developed the curriculum for the National Science foundation’s business boot camp for scientists before the NIH adopted it for scientists in the SBIR grant program. At a fireside chat at New York University Langone Medical Center hosted by NYC Bio this week, Blank talked about a new investment group called M34 Capital that will invest in technologies seeded by federally funded research, particularly graduates of I-Corps boot camps.
Led by CEO Errol Arkilic, founding and lead program director for the NSF I-Corps program, the Berkeley-based company was co-founded by Arkilic, Blank, Jim Hornthal, and Tom Baruch, according to its website. Its seed investment spans from $50,000 to $250,000. “We want to be the first external capital invested, and work closely with the founding team to help refine their business model and create the framework to systematically demonstrate its full potential,” according to the website. “We believe that the best entrepreneurs have the ability to blend technical insight with market-based feedback, allowing their innovations to mature into a successful company.”
