This free event brought to you by BioHealth Innovation is to gather interested small businesses seeking funding from the NCI SBIR grants program.

• Connect with NCI SBIR program managers
• Hear about the current NCI contract solicitation
• Learn about additional support from BioHealth Innovation

When: Wednesday, September 7, 2016 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM

Where:Germantown Innovation Center 27201 Goldenrod Lane Germantown, MD 20876

RSVP: jorozco@scheerpartners.com

Attendance is limitied to BioHealth companies. The parking at the GIC can handle 20 non-resident companies labeled in the GIC reserve spaces. Others will be ticketed.

Symbiomix today announced it is accelerating plans for the commercial launch of Solosec™ (secnidazole) oral granules following the presentation of clinical results from the second pivotal trial for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis (BV) with the hiring of Taunia Markvicka, PharmD, MBA, as Chief Commercial Officer. Symbiomix had a significant presence at the Infectious Diseases Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology (IDSOG) Annual Meeting in Annapolis, Maryland this past weekend with both the oral data presentation and sponsorship of a panel discussion on emerging diagnosis and treatment recommendations for BV. In addition, the company announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued conditional acceptance of the proprietary name Solosec™. Solosec™ was previously known as SYM-1219.

QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced plans to return approximately $250 million to shareholders through a synthetic share repurchase proposal that combines a direct capital repayment with a reverse stock split.

These actions, which will lead to an adjustment in QIAGEN’s share capital, have been used previously by other large, multinational Dutch companies as an efficient way to provide returns to shareholders. The proposal, if adopted, is expected to be similar to QIAGEN repurchasing approximately $250 million of its own shares, but will enable the return of capital to all shareholders in a much faster and more efficient way than through a traditional open-market repurchase program.

Betamore personally invites BioHealth Innovation companies to apply to pitch and/or demo at Beta City 2016

Details

BetaCity (9/29/2016) celebrates Baltimore’s place as a global destination for entrepreneurship

Seeking the Best + Brightest to Pitch + Demo

• Pitch Competition: 3 PM - $75K+ to be awarded
• Demo Companies showcase products/services to VIP’s, investors, and the broader community
• Focus: Cybersecurity, Health IT, Other Technology

Other Notes

• In addition to the Pitch Competition + Company Demos, the event will feature a VIP Reception, Awards Ceremony, Live Music + Merrymaking

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (EBS) today announced that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has exercised a contract option valued at $11.6 million over 12 months under contract 200-2012-52242 for the supply of Vaccinia Immune Globulin (VIGIV) into the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile. VIGIV is a therapeutic licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of complications due to smallpox vaccination. The contract option will require Emergent to conduct manufacturing runs and additional activities in support of maintaining FDA licensure of VIGIV.

PathoVax was founded in late 2014 and is currently managed by myself (Weijie Poh, PhD) and Joshua Wang, PhD. We are both Singaporeans who were awarded fellowships to attend the Pathobiology graduate program at Johns Hopkins University, which is where the RGVax platform was developed.

We also received training in Singapore under esteemed A*STAR investigators Dr Axel Ulrich (Weijie Poh) and Dr Lisa Ng (Joshua Wang). My research background included infectious diseases and cancer, and I have previously managed a biotech startup (Vector BioLabs) in Philadelphia where I oversaw business development, marketing and product expansion.

New treatments are needed for severe asthmatics who do not respond to standard therapy with inhaled steroids, especially those with a “type 2 low” phenotype, such as individuals with neutrophil-predominant inflammation. This solicitation is for the development and early commercialization of an inhalational formulation of the 5A apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) mimetic peptide that can be administered to asthmatic subjects in Phase I clinical trials and subsequently developed into a new treatment for severe asthma.

Proposals will be due October 21, 5 pm and there will be a pre-proposal webinar on August 24, 2 pm (http://bit.ly/FY17ContractsWebinar) for companies who may be interested in applying."

Maryland officials announced Tuesday that William Kirwan will chair the Maryland Commission on Innovation and Excellence in Education. The panel will follow up on the work of the Thornton Commission, which resulted in 2002 legislation that set K-12 education aid formulas. Those have increased public school funding in Maryland by more than 100 percent over the past decade.

Get Real Health’s InstantPHR® Powers Patient Engagement Tool for Saskatchewan Residents: eHealth Saskatchewan pilot provides 1,000+ residents centralized access to their health records.

Rockville, Maryland-based Get Real Health furthered its mission of empowering patients across the globe by developing a pilot program for eHealth Saskatchewan targeted at improving access to health data for residents of the province, giving patients a real-time view of their overall health.

Bristol-Myers Squibb’s acquisition of Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals and its prodrug used to treat heart failure earned top honors in the Mergers and Acquisitions category from Thomson Reuters’ Allicense event on June 8.

Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures and a visiting researcher from the National Institutes of Health helped put the Johns Hopkins University scientists who compose the startup in touch, which led to the creation of Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals.

In case you haven’t heard, BioBuzz just announced the launch of the BioHive – an Online Community and Collaboration Platform that is now open to general public. The BioHive will help enable all the components in our regional biotech ecosystem to work more efficiently to accelerate innovation, collaboration, workforce and growth opportunities.

Categorized into industry specific networks, the BioHive was built to bring together this region digitally and cultivate relationships that otherwise would not have been created due to company, role, geography, etc.

Please help us by pointing your coworkers and peers to the BioHive tab at http://www.biobuzz.net/ or directly at https://biohive.breezio.com to learn more and register for free today for their own BioHive account.

Working to build a stronger Biotech community has been BioBuzz’s mission for more than six years, so they are very excited to bring to you this great resource – so come join me on the BioHive!

On the 10th anniversary of a project that redefined the landscape of Kendall Square, developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities is gearing up to transform yet another area into a mecca for the biotech industry.

Digital Counties Survey award considered a top measures of government technology performance

For the fifth year in a row, Baltimore County is ranked among the top ten counties in the nation according to the Center for Digital Government’s 14th annual 2016 Digital Counties Survey in conjunction with the National Association of Counties (NACo).

Illumina Inc. rose as much as 8 percent to its highest level since December after a report that Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. made a $30 billion offer for the rival maker of gene-sequencing equipment.

A new book by Andrea LaFountain, CEO of Mind Field Solutions, looks at the science of patient behavior to answer the questions that big data cannot. LaFountain stopped by the Knowledge@Wharton Show on Sirius XM channel 111 to talk about the book, How Patients Think: A Science-Based Strategy for Patient Engagement and Population Health.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: In this age of technology and big data, why is there still that disconnect between healthcare providers and patients?

Defense IT firm Leidos today announced it has successfully closed on the acquisition of Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems & Global Solutions business, formalizing a deal announced in January.

With Lockheed Martin’s $5 billion IT business, Leidos becomes the government’s largest IT provider—nearly doubling its annual revenue to $10 billion—and further cements its place as a force in the growing federal health IT market.

Companion diagnostics is gaining currency as novel drugs are being paired up with tests that determine which patients will have a higher chance of responding to that drug.

But 15 years after the human genome project has been completed, the progress of precision medicine appears to be woefully slow, at least according to Nicholas Dracopoli, vice president and head of Oncology Biomarkers at Janssen Research & Development, part of Johnson & Johnson. Others believe precision medicine and companion diagnostics have a chicken and egg problem.

Tioma Therapeutics, Inc., a venture-stage biopharmaceutical company developing anti-CD47 antibodies for the treatment of solid and hematologic cancers, today announced it has raised $86 million in Series A venture financing. Proceeds from this financing will be used to further develop Tioma's antibody portfolio, including its lead drug candidate -- an anti-CD47 immune checkpoint inhibitor -- through advanced proof-of-concept in human clinical trials.

Attention, startups creating the next smartwatch or heart-rate sensing fabric: The Homeland Security Department wants your products.

DHS on Monday opened applications for the second round of its federally focused tech "accelerator," in search of wearable devices that can be customized for first responders.

In the past few years the wearables sector has been a hive of activity, but it feels like this year things have accelerated, particularly in the realm of health and wellness. A report by Forrester Research projected that 29 percent of Americans will use wearable devices, compared with 18 percent in 2015. It predicts that wearables sales will rise from $4.2 billion in 2015 to $9.8 billion in 2021.

As members of a life sciences advisory and investment banking group, my partners and I have often noted that life sciences companies fall victim to the same mistakes and misconceptions, repeated again and again. These failures mostly hinge upon company management misunderstanding the fundamentals of market dynamics and failing to appreciate the importance of the exit—the sole event where company investors receive a return on their investment, either through an initial public offering (IPO) or a company sale. Unfortunately, the biotech industry's track record on exits is disappointing. According to the National Venture Capital Association (Washington, DC), between 2005 and 2014, only one in five US biotech and medical device companies achieved liquidity after six years. And from my perspective over the past 20 years, that low success rate does not appear to be improving.

Women of the Virginia bioscience community from across the state will lead this first-ever full day event offering examples of working together to build a stronger bioscience industry, stronger companies and institutions, stronger teams and networks, and stronger individuals.

When: Thursday, September 29, 2016 10:00AM-5:00PM

Where: Inova Center for Personalized Health 3225 Gallows Rd Fairfax, Virginia 22037 United States

Disruptors are a special type of innovator who go outside the box and attempt to change preconceived notions and practices. If you take a look at the meaning of the word, “to disrupt” means to “rupture” or break apart, and essentially disruptors do this - discarding the old ways to bring in new ones. We might even take it a step further and look at as the commonly used root of "dis" which means to "do the opposite of" - and see the idea that disruptors are "fixers" essentially putting the pieces of something broken back together. Here’s a look at three disruptors in Boston Biotech who are revolutionizing traditional pharma to radically change the ways cures are being brought about for disease.