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 With Fall approaching, everyone is preparing for their favorite things whether that's football season, pumpkin carving, or more reasonable temperatures in Central Maryland. Fall is also a great time for the Small Business Innovation Research grant program throughout National Institutes of Health. In partnership with the NIH, BioHealth Innovation is sponsoring a fall gathering to talk about SBIR awards.
It's useful to hear directly from NIH program officials on the current funding priorities per Institute. We have assembled program leads from NHLBI, NIAID, and NCI who can provide small businesses with more insight into their SBIR programs. They will also be available for one-on-one consultations at the conclusion of the event.
Event Details:
Wednesday, October 9th, 1:00pm – 4:00pm (EDT)
VisArts
155 Gibbs Street, 6th Floor
Rockville, MD 20850
(Overlooking Rockville Town Center)
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 WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today announced that the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, Inc. and BioHealth Innovation, Inc. of Montgomery County have been awarded a combined $520,000 grant through the U.S. Department of Commerce's (DOC) Economic Development Administration (EDA). The federal funding will be used to establish the Healthcare Regional Innovation Cluster (H-RIC) initiative which will combine the strengths of Maryland's cutting-edge health research institutions and unique federal assets to speed the development of new treatments and cures, supporting Maryland jobs and keeping families healthy.
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By Alissa Gulin, Daily Record Business Writer
A sizeable portion of a federal grant will go toward launching an intensive, 16-week accelerator program for health information technology entrepreneurs in Maryland.
Rich Bendis, president and CEO of BioHealth Innovation, said participants in the competitive program will come to Baltimore, meet with potential investors and partners and access the resources of Johns Hopkins Medicine, one of the partners in the accelerator. Officials will unveil more details of the program within a couple of weeks.
BioHealth Innovation, a Rockville-based group that acts as an intermediary between research institutions and the private sector, was one of two Maryland organizations that received a combined $520,000 grant, announced Wednesday, to help grow the state’s burgeoning biotechnology industry. The Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, an economic development group, was the other recipient.
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United Therapeutics Corporation announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has acknowledged the resubmission of the new drug application (NDA) for treprostinil diolamine extended release tablets (oral treprostinil) for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. The FDA classified the resubmission as a complete, class 2 response to its March 22, 2013 complete response letter, and set a user fee goal date of February 16, 2014.
About United TherapeuticsUnited Therapeutics Corporation is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of unique products to address the unmet medical needs of patients with chronic and life-threatening conditions.
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The University of Maryland and Northrop Grumman will jointly announce the launch of the Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES), the nation's first cybersecurity honors program for undergraduates, at a special event on Wednesday, September 25, 2013, from 10:30-11:30 a.m. in the Stamp Student Union Atrium on the University of Maryland College Park Campus.
The ACES program is designed to educate future leaders in the field of cybersecurity through rigorous, hands-on learning experiences, an intensive interdisciplinary curriculum, collaborative projects, and professional insight from industry and business leaders. The four-year honors program offers students a living-learning experience, giving them the opportunity to collaborate and work closely together as they pursue their advanced program of study in cybersecurity. The inaugural ACES cohort is comprised of 57 students. The ACES program is supported by a major grant from Northrop Grumman. For more information about the program, visit aces.umd.edu.
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The INNo program trains research scientists in the entrepreneurial skills needed to bring technology inventions and services to the healthcare market.
Participants in the INNo program learn to:
- Identify and evaluate the commercial potential of intellectual property
- Understand the business fundamentals related to technology start-ups
- Create a value proposition and business concept for a new product, platform, or service
- Articulate investment opportunities persuasively to potential investors and partners
- Develop a network of resources in the Maryland entrepreneurial community
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The Abell Foundation underwrote a comparison of Baltimore’s innovation ecosystem with that of Boston. Sean Pool and Matt Van Itallie, of Canterbury Road Partners, undertook the work and their report is telling of the challenges in front of us, but also reveals great promise of the resources we already have and what Baltimore’s innovation ecosystem can become. The full report can be found on the Abell Foundation website.
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This video is the first in a series about Startup Shell, the first student-founded, student-run venture incubator at the University of Maryland.
The Startup Shell is a vibrant co-working space at UMD where talented students guide their colleagues through ideation, research and development, product prototyping, business model creation and more.
Startup Shell is located in the Technology Advancement Program (TAP) incubator, an initiative of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) in the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
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University System of Maryland increased the number of new companies formed out of university technology by 29 percent in fiscal 2013 and is aiming to keep up the pace this year.
The university system credits the growth in new businesses in part to its heightened focus on entrepreneurship and transforming university research to commercial technology. Assistant Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Suresh Balakrishnan said the university system will look to continue adding new companies by looking for new ways to support startups, such as an investment fund.
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The Johns Hopkins University edged closer to the top 10 of national universities on the U.S. News and World Report annual rankings, which were released Tuesday.
U.S. News moved Hopkins up one spot to No. 12, just behind Dartmouth University and tied with Northwestern University, in the most-often cited of numerous college rankings. It was the highest ranking for Hopkins in 14 years. As expected based on prior rankings, Princeton, Harvard and Yale remained in the top three spots, in that order.
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Cars entering UMBC’s campus from I-195 will pass by a collection of nice looking buildings and a Subway restaurant. When temporarily stopped to obey the four-way stop before crossing the intersection, passengers may notice the sign that says bwtech@UMBC.
While the buildings and the sign are a familiar sight to many, their significance may remain unknown to those who pass by. These buildings house part of a research park run by UMBC named bwtech@UMBC.
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The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is interested in fostering communication between eligible small businesses and prime contractors.
The event, held in Rockville MD, will provide information about upcoming subcontractor opportunities for eligible small businesses, while assisting primes with meeting their subcontracting goals. NCI is interested in identifying a variety of small businesses that have expertise and capabilities in a range of specific NAICS codes listed.
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University of Maryland Received a 2013 NIH Grant for $219,084 for Age-Related Changes in Renal Morphology and Function in Chronic Kidney Disease. The principal investigator is Yu Chen. The program begain in 2012 and ends in 2014. Below is a summary of the proposed work.
This application is in response to PA-09-166 "Renal Function and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in Aging (R21)". CKD is a growing problem among the aging population. According to the United States Renal Data System, the number of older patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) has almost doubled over the last 25 years.
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Two Washington region tech companies — Clarabridge Inc. and Virtustream Inc. — rolled out a combined $120 million in funding on Tuesday, another sign of an improving venture ecosystem. Both rank among the Top 10 biggest D.C. Tech investments thus far in 2013
Not all of the fundings on this list qualify as "venture," of course. Some of the larger ones could just as easily be called private equity, or at least the hybrid term "growth." Like we see with Clarabridge's $80 million, big-ticket financings like these often go partly toward cashing out earlier investors. And not all came from traditional VC. In Virtustream's case, the entire $40 million Series D round came from a single corporate source: SAP AG.
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Maryland entrepreneurs are getting the chance to bring their small business plans directly to a panel of angel investors who could bring those ideas to life.
“The one thing we want to do is bring your story back with us,” said Mike Binko, founder and co-chair of Startup Maryland. “We want to put a big spotlight and a big megaphone in your hands to tell your story in your words.”
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In investing, comedy, and business, timing is a key component of success. It’s not enough to have a sense of where the future is going, directionally – you have to have some sense of when it’s likely to arrive.
In investing, this challenge is perhaps seen most vividly in bubbles, as Gregory Zuckerman details in The Greatest Trade Ever, providing example after example of exceptionally smart people — from Isaac Newton to Stanley Druckenmiller — who were able to correctly perceive a bubble, but who nevertheless lost huge sums of money by inaccurately estimating when it would burst.
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Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) has launched the first cyber-security technology startup accelerator program in the U.S. The Mach37 Cyber Accelerator is intended to locate and leverage the wealth of cyber security talent in Virginia to create companies that will develop and launch new products.
Mach 37 represents 37 times the speed of sound, which is approximately the same as the Earth’s escape velocity.
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I don’t think I’ve ever (in 20+ years of writing) reprinted a press release verbatim. Often I don’t even get to the end of them because of all the PR speak. However, today the Mayo Clinic sent out this list. It is concise, compelling and I can’t think of any way to improve it. The 10 ways the human genome map can affect diagnosis and treatment is an important reminder that we have come a long way in a short time, and that healthcare in the United States is not all about arguing about who gets care and who pays for it.
In case you had any doubts that the $3.8 billion investment in the genome mapping project was worth it, consider these 10 advancements compiled by the Mayo Clinic.
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Normal adult cells have been reprogrammed to become stem cells inside live mice for the first time.
As stem cells can be coaxed into developing into almost any kind of cell, being able to prompt this behaviour in the body could one day be used to repair ailing organs including the heart, liver, spinal cord and pancreas.
"By doing it in situ, the cells are already there in the tissue, in the right position," says Manuel Serrano at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, and co-leader of the new work.
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Roche’s move to skip over Inovio’s (NYSE: INO) late stage drugs for cervical cancer and Hepatitis C and make a beeline for its preclinical DNA vaccines for prostate cancer and Hep B was initially a little puzzling. Investors have preferred to park their money further upstream when products are in the clinic and they’ve been derisked. Big pharma is always looking for ways to take costs out of research and development. But the prospect of utilizing new technology with the potential to improve treatment is appealing for drug developers that want to build up and strengthen their drug pipeline.
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Target has joined one of the growing trends in healthcare: innovation challenges. It announced on Monday two contests: one will seek a solution that helps people make positive lifestyle and prevention choices, while the other will gather ways to help people live well with a chronic condition.
The Target Simplicity Challenge will reward the creators of the winning ideas $25,000 apiece, their own Target-branded flip camera, and a chance to partner with Target to develop the concepts. The deadline for ideas is Oct. 24 and winners will be announced by January.
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Harvard University has partnered with several venture capital firms to launch The Experiment Fund. The Experiment Fund is starting with $10 million and was co-founded by Harvard alumni Patrick Chung (New Enterprise Associates) and Hugo Van Vuuren. Accel Partners and Polaris Ventures is also associated with The Experiment Fund.
Two of the world’s most prolific technology entrepreneurs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, are known for being Harvard University dropouts. Why did they drop out? Possibly due to lack of resources at the University. Mark Zuckerberg moved to Silicon Valley from Harvard University to raise VC funding for Facebook in May 2004 and never looked back.
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