OpGen Inc. (NASDAQ: OPGN) raised $10.4 million in a recent funding round led by the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, the venture capital arm of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co.

When you think about the headliners at a music festival, it’s unlikely that the first person to pop into your head would be Martine Rothblatt—the founder of Sirius XM, the one-time highest-paid female CEO in the world who made a robot clone of her wife, and the founder of the Terasem religion, which believes we’ll live forever by uploading our consciousness to the cloud. But Moogfest, a four-day citywide festival of music and technology in Durham, North Carolina, was not the average music festival. Unlike other festivals that make cursory overtures to technology, Moogfest dedicated as much time to explaining how technology influences creativity as to the creative output itself, even listing headline ‘technologists’ alongside its top-billed musical acts.

Bio-Trac®, in partnership with Montgomery College, is proud to offer graduate/post graduate level hands-on laboratory training workshops for research scientists within the Pinkney Innovation Complex for Science and Technology (PIC MC), an integrated academic, business and research campus.

For those in the health and life sciences industry, May is known as National Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, more than 50 million Americans suffer from allergies, and more than 24 million Americans are affected by asthma. And while there still isn’t a known cure for these conditions, one Rockville biotechnology company is working to change that.

Greenspring Associates raised $200 million in a new fund that focuses on investing in venture capital fund limited partners and managers that in turn invest in growth-stage companies.

Qiagen is closer to completing its DKK683 million ($104 million) acquisition of Exiqon, a provider of RNA analysis solutions, but has decided to extend for a second time the offer period for Exiqon's shares.

County Executive Isiah Leggett announced that Montgomery County is moving forward on its vision of creating a local community in East County that provides opportunities to live, work and play in a walkable, mixed use transit-oriented development. The County has reached an agreement with Global LifeSci Development Corporation (GLDC) to develop Viva White Oak, a 300-acre joint mixed use development project.

The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area is the hottest spot in the country for entrepreneurship according to a new report from the Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship. The ranking is based on a combination of how many new startups there are, how startups in the area have scaled in the course of a decade and how many companies show rapid growth. All told, D.C. easily beats out Austin, Columbus, San Jose and Nashville, the next ranked cities, and far ahead of Boston, New York or other hubs of innovation.

There’s been a lot of talk about bolstering institutions like universities as places to drive the entrepreneurship Maryland needs to become a BioHealth hub. In North Baltimore, Sinai Hospital doesn’t have a connected university, but it still sees an opportunity to turn research into startups.

Did you miss the first I-270 Bio Corridor event last month? If so, you missed out on learning about and connecting with some of the top bio and life science companies and experts as well as resource partners like REDI, the MD Department of Commerce, the Montgomery County Economic Development Corp, Frederick County Office of Economic Development, Frederick City, the City of Gaithersburg Office of Economic Development and Montgomery College.

Over 100 attendees enjoyed a happy hour and discussion of how best to help the I-270 corridor grow with more bio and life science companies at CRB's new headquarters in Rockville.

This event was scheduled as a precursor to the BIO International Convention taking place this month in San Francisco, REDI, our I-270 Corridor partners, will be there in the Maryland pavilion with information and resources for those companies that may be looking for the perfect location for their bio and life science businesses, promoting the I-270 corridor a hub for this niche market.

When the federal government agreed to a major price hike for Nuo Therapeutics Inc.'s lead wound therapy product last October, officials at the Gaithersburg biotech felt it was the game changer they'd been waiting for.

Twenty-two finalists have been selected for the Maryland Incubator Company of the Year Awards.

bwtech@UMBC leads the incubator list with eight tenant companies up for awards. Previous winners include Emerging Technology Centers-based SocialToaster, Spark’s Avhana Health and Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship’s Milestone Sports.

The U.S. health care system has a tremendous need for novel high- (and low-) tech solutions to increase its quality, agility and affordability.

To meet this need, the National Science Foundation (NSF) supports research and early-stage development of novel biomedical products, processes and services.

On May 23, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) convened at Johns Hopkins Hospital a scientific expert panel to discuss what to do about the Zika epidemic. Organizing the event within two business days was no small feat, as Cardin, scientific experts, health department leaders, hospital executives and industry representatives all had to quickly clear their very busy morning schedules. The attendance of television and newspaper outlets (such as the Baltimore Sun) meant that the discussion’s proceedings would be available to the public. From the very start, Cardin kept the tone very science-focused: The Zika epidemic is a public health emergency, and the issue is how best scientifically, collaboratively and expeditiously to handle this emergency.

The fifth annual U.S. News STEM Solution Conference kicked off May 18 with a half-day look at STEM education in the Baltimore region and its impact on the local economy.

Pharma major Lupin today said it has received an establishment inspection report (EIR) from the USFDA on closure of inspection of its Mandideep and Aurangabad facilities.

In a BSE filing, Lupin said: "It has received establishment inspection report (EIR) for its Mandideep and Aurangabad facilities wherein the USFDA has concluded that the inspections stand closed."

Two sets of numbers shows how far biopharma activity has progressed in Asia recently. The value of biotech venture capital funding during the first quarter zoomed to $174 million in the first quarter from $150 million in Q4 2015 and a mere $9.4 million in Q1 2015, according to Tech In Asia.

Thursday, June 2, 2016 7:30 AM - 9:00 AM, Bethesda Country Club

An IPO is one of the most important events in a company’s history, and navigating the course requires an enormous amount of endurance. Choosing an investment bank, perfecting your roadshow, and meeting with investors is just the tip of the iceberg. Join Vit Vasista, Chief Financial Officer of REGENXBIO, at All the Right Moves: Planning a Successful Exit Strategy, on Thursday, June 2, from 7:30 – 9:00 a.m. Vit will share tips that were integral to REGENXBIO's successful 2015 IPO, from pitching to trading.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Health and Human Services IDEA Lab are looking for a “talented, awesomely connected” entrepreneur-in-residence to shepherd creation of a new pre-certification process for IT vendors interested in working with states.

America wouldn’t be what it is today without innovation.

So says Steve Case, the entrepreneur who co-founded AOL, the company that helped introduce the public to the Internet. Now the chief executive of investment firm Revolution LLC, Mr. Case sat down with Dennis Berman, financial editor of The Wall Street Journal, to discuss the next wave of the Internet’s evolution and how midsize companies might take advantage of it.

Newly released research from the Kauffman Foundation finds that in 2016, Washington, D.C., Austin, San Jose, Columbus, and Nashville were the five highest ranked metropolitan areas for the Index of Growth Entrepreneurship. The five highest ranked states were Virginia, Utah, Maryland, Arizona, and Massachusetts. As described in the SSTI Digest last week, The Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship measures the growth of entrepreneurial businesses in the United States, complementing the foundation’s recently released Index of Startup Activity and Index of Main Street Entrepreneurship.

The Baltimore-area slipped 10 spots on a new report ranking entrepreneurship growth.

Too often, it seems, the mark of a “good” scientist is the ability to give an excruciatingly embarrassing and incomprehensible scientific presentation – the sort of presentations that litter academic conferences.

Thursday, June 23, 2016 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. • Washington, D.C.

Join the Maryland/Israel Development Center for its second annual MIDC Day at the Israeli Embassy for an exclusive networking event and interactive panel discussion.

Imagine being 15 years from the traditional retirement age and deciding to start your own company. Or deciding to enter a completely different industry—at age 60. Or spending your twenties deferring further study to find out what really drives you.

Few industries are facing as much external change as pharmaceuticals and medical products, whether it be sustained global demand and the need for drugs and devices, accelerating cost pressures on health systems, growing complexity in emerging markets, or the disruptive effect of new technologies in therapy and care provision.