Biohealth Innovation
Who knew elephant sharks held potential answers for health problems such as osteoporosis and poor immune systems?
An international team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Germany discovered new insights into human health by sequencing the elephant-shark genome.
MIMETAS and Galapagos will collaborate to develop miniaturized 3D cell culture models that mimic specific aspects of human diseases. These models will be applied to the identification and improvement of novel compounds. Dr. Richard Janssen, Senior Director of Target Discovery at Galapagos, states: “The MIMETAS platform is the first to combine organ-on-a-chip technology with our high throughput screening of primary human cells. As we see it, OrganoPlates™ make 3D culture as straightforward as traditional cell culture.”
Dr. Jos Joore, MIMETAS’ CBO underscores this notion: “This agreement is a crucial step forward for MIMETAS and for the organ-on-a-chip field in general. Galapagos sets an example as one of the first drug discovery companies worldwide to implement innovative organ-on-a-chip technologies. This collaboration helps us to further validate our technology, by enabling development of unique novel compounds with unique human disease models.”
Nationally, startups seeking venture capital at an early stage saw another great year in 2013 with an abundance of active seed investments being made. And according to data released by CB Insights last week, of the seed investors making deals with young companies in 2013, three D.C.-based VCs were some of the most active. Among the likes of West Coast seed powerhouses 500 Startups and Andreessen Horowitz, Washington-area CIT GAP Funds, New Enterprise Associates and Fortify.vc were ranked in the top 60 venture capital funds for most active nationally.
One way pharma giant Johnson and Johnson stays ahead of the competition is via its network of Innovation Centers where researchers are working on new approaches to cardiovascular issues, infectious diseases, neuroscience, and more.
The centers are located in San Francisco, Boston, London, and Shanghai – and this week the company announced that Israel was joining the family, in the form of an incubator J&J will be opening in Rehovot, near the Weizmann Institute. Working together with several other partners, the company said, the new incubator “is the latest in a series of recently announced collaborations to fuel entrepreneurship in the world’s scientific hot spots.”
Entrepreneur Office Hours for University of Maryland Students, Faculty and Staff, and Regional Entrepreneurs with Tech-Based Startups or Ideas
Get answers now from experienced entrepreneurs and legal/business professionals on how to build a successful startup company. Receive free and impartial advice, brainstorm business strategies, investigate funding opportunities and learn about the vast resources available to entrepreneurs.
DATE: Tuesday, January 14, 2014
PLACE: Room 1103, Technology Advancement Program building (directions)
REGISTER: Schedule an appointment here to guarantee your time slot. Walk-in appointments are also available.
Happy New Year! Thanks to two recent, major life sciences announcements spotlighted in Site Selection magazine, Montgomery County shows that our biotech sector is well-poised for accelerated growth in 2014!
The December 2013 Site Selection web exclusive features details on the attraction of Brazilian-based Brace Pharmaceuticals' new U.S. headquarters to the County's Rockville Innovation Center and its plans to invest $200 million. Brace is focused on the late stage clinical development of pharmaceutical products with the potential for near-term commercialization.
Six months into its fiscal year, the Maryland Technology Development Corp. has received almost as many applications from state startups looking for funding as it got in all of the previous year.
As a result of the spike in demand, Tedco is asking the Maryland General Assembly for what Tedco President Robert Rosenbaum called “a substantial increase” in funding for fiscal 2015. The General Assembly convened for its annual session in Annapolis on Jan. 8.
Kauffman FastTrac® has just joined with Montgomery College to support future and current business owners before, during, and after the startup process. Entrepreneurs will receive the information, resources, and networks necessary to start and grow successful businesses.
Classes:
SMB957: FastTrac NewVenture for the Veteran Entrepreneur (2/13-4/24)
SMB956: FastTrac TechVenture (2/26-5/7)
After vanquishing humans on Jeopardy!, IBM says its Watson computer is ready to help save human lives. The company on Thursday announced it has created a new business unit specifically to advance Watson and deliver its artificially intelligent wisdom to research organizations, medical institutions and businesses so that they can process “big data” for detailed answers to complex questions. They won’t actually own a Watson computer—instead its services will rendered via a network connection (the “cloud computing” model).
IBM doesn’t launch new business units every day—or even every decade—chief executive Ginni Rometty noted during the Watson Group announcement. Indeed, the company is making a calculated bet—to the tune of more than $1 billion—on cognitive computing and the role it will play in making big data useful.
Kaiser Permanente will put its longtime IT expertise to work in building a clinical data network aimed at improving patient outcomes in cancer, heart disease and obesity.
Funded with a $7 million grant from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the network is one of 29 projects approved for a total of $93.5 million to form PCORnet: the National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network, which seeks to improve the efficiency of health research.
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.
The National SBIR Conference and the 3rd annual National Innovation Summit and Showcase will be held in parallel with the 17th annual TechConnect World Conference, at the Gaylord Convention Center, June 15-19, 2014.
National SBIR Conference
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer programs are highly competitive, encouraging small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) work with potential for commercialization.
National Innovation Summit
In support of the White House and Congressional call for innovation commercialization initiatives, the National Innovation Summit and Showcase delivers the world's largest showcase of industry-vetted emerging-technologies ready for commercialization. Don't miss as TechConnect presents the Nation's top innovations emerging from our federal technology funding programs. All showcasing innovations are vetted by our industry and investment review committees, and all will participate the TechConnect Corporate Acceleration and Matchmaking Programs with our participating Corporate and Investment Partners.
Last Sept. 22, the chief executive of a startup called CoFoundersLab Inc., Shahab Kaviani, sat up at the moment the clock chimed midnight, ready to tweet.
At that time, a ban on what’s known as “general solicitation” was officially lifted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which meant startups like his could tell the general public, and not just accredited investors, that they were raising money.
Intellectual property featured prominently in 2013’s public discourse. Gene patents, patent trolls, India’s anti-patent actions, and other developments around the world captured headlines. Here are Patently Biotech’s top blog posts written in 2013 by number of views.
Anne Arundel County Executive Laura Neuman has appointed a Brooklyn Park woman to a job she used to hold herself: director of the county's tech incubator.
Neuman announced the hiring Thursday of Laura Willoughby to run the Chesapeake Innovation Center in Annapolis.
GlaxoSmithKline plc announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Mekinist (trametinib) for use in combination with Tafinlar (dabrafenib) for the treatment of patients with unresectable melanoma (melanoma that cannot be removed by surgery) or metastatic melanoma (melanoma which has spread to other parts of the body) with BRAF V600E or V600K mutations. These mutations must be detected by an FDA-approved test. Tafinlar is not indicated for treatment of patients with wild-type BRAF melanoma.
The approval of the combination is based on the demonstration of response rate and median duration of response in a Phase 1/2 study. Improvement in disease-related symptoms or overall survival has not been demonstrated for Mekinist in combination with Tafinlar. The combination was approved through the FDA's Accelerated Approval program and reviewed under a Priority Review designation. This accelerated approval is contingent on the results of the ongoing Phase 3 trial (referred to as MEK115306 or Combi-D), which is designed to evaluate the clinical benefit of the combination in this patient population.
WellDoc®, developers of the first FDA cleared mobile prescription therapy, BlueStarTM, announced today that it received funding from its first institutional investors, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Windham Venture Partners, as part of a $20M round of financing that now broadens its capitalization beyond its initial group of angel investors. For a limited time, WellDoc and its investors will also explore the possibility of adding co-investors that bring strategic value to the company.
“Our new investors share WellDoc’s vision of fundamentally changing how people manage their chronic diseases to improve outcomes and reduce costs,” said Ryan Sysko, co-founder and CEO of WellDoc. “This investment will help WellDoc launch and commercialize BlueStar, the world’s first Mobile Prescription Therapy for type 2 diabetes, on a nationwide basis.”
Johnson & Johnson Innovation has announced that it is expanding its global incubator presence through a novel collaboration with the Office of the Chief Scientist in Israel and other industry partners to establish a new biotechnology incubator near Israel’s Weizmann Science Park.
This is the latest in a series of recently announced collaborations to fuel entrepreneurship in the world's scientific hotspots. In addition, Johnson & Johnson Innovation announced several new collaborations with academia and biotech that focus on multiple disease areas and consumer healthcare challenges.
AstraZeneca today announced that Granta Park-based MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, has entered into a cancer research collaboration and licensing agreement with Immunocore, an Oxford biotech company.
The approach will be to use the power of the body’s own immune system to find and kill diseased cells, avoiding damage to healthy cells.
Intrexon Corporation (NYSE: XON), a leader in synthetic biology, announced today that it has entered into a research and development collaboration with Johnson & Johnson Innovation and its affiliate Johnson & Johnson Consumer & Personal Products Worldwide, a division of Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies, Inc., to advance new skin and hair care products.
"We look forward to advancing new skin and hair beauty products that have measurable impact for consumers," said Randal J. Kirk, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Intrexon. "By combining Intrexon's synthetic biology approaches with the capabilities at Johnson & Johnson Innovation and Johnson & Johnson Consumer & Personal Products Worldwide, we believe that there are multiple areas for new product exploration."
Neuralstem, Inc. (NYSE MKT: CUR) announced today that it has entered into agreements with leading institutional investors for a registered direct placement (the "Offering") of 6,752,744 shares of common stock at a price of $2.91 per share, resulting in aggregate gross proceeds of approximately $19.65 million.
In addition, the Company will issue to each investor a warrant to purchase a number of shares of common stock equal to one-half of the number of shares purchased by the investor in the Offering. The warrants have an exercise price of $3.64 per share, and are exercisable from the issuance date, for a period of five years.
Elliott Sigal has opened the next chapter of his career. The former R&D chief at Bristol-Myers Squibb ($BMY), who helped squire a number of blockbuster programs through the clinic, is joining David Mott as a venture partner at New Enterprise Associates.
Bristol-Myers' R&D group had its setbacks, particularly in 2012, but during Sigal's tenure at the top of the research arm he guided an amazing 14 drugs to an approval, including Abilify, Erbitux and Onglyza. Those were all part of Bristol-Myers' "string of pearls," which earned the company a rep as one of the leaders in innovation in the field. Few other R&D chiefs--including a number who had much larger budgets to work with--even came close.
GlaxoSmithKline plc [LSE/NYSE: GSK ] announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Mekinist® (trametinib) for use in combination with Tafinlar® (dabrafenib) for the treatment of patients with unresectable melanoma (melanoma that cannot be removed by surgery) or metastatic melanoma (melanoma which has spread to other parts of the body) with BRAF V600E or V600K mutations. These mutations must be detected by an FDA-approved test.1 Tafinlar is not indicated for treatment of patients with wild-type BRAF melanoma.2
The approval of the combination is based on the demonstration of response rate and median duration of response in a Phase I/II study. Improvement in disease-related symptoms or overall survival has not been demonstrated for Mekinist in combination with Tafinlar.1 The combination was approved through the FDA's Accelerated Approval programme and reviewed under a Priority Review designation.3 This accelerated approval is contingent on the results of the ongoing Phase III trial (referred to as MEK115306 or Combi-D), which is designed to evaluate the clinical benefit of the combination in this patient population.
The International CES expo in Las Vegas, which kicks off Tuesday, has long been the site of new technology announcements and gadget demonstrations. This year, about 55 Washington area companies plan to exhibit at the show, up slightly from last year’s 53.
The group represents one of the most diverse that the region has sent to Las Vegas, said Jeff Joseph, senior vice president for communications with the Consumer Electronics Association, which puts on the show.
The healthcare industry will continue to command the spotlight in 2014, and healthcare executive search consultants from Witt/Kieffer have some advice for making 2014 a stellar year on the work front, including a recommendation to broaden the role of the CIO.
The recommendations:
Prepare for unplanned CEO turnover – Paul Bohne, managing partner, says, “Technological advancements, physician alignment, market consolidation and government policy changes have all increased the complexities of how large, diverse healthcare organizations operate.” These mounting responsibilities have exacerbated the turnover issue.
New survey data result in an upward revision of the previously published 2011 U.S. research and development performance total and imply a sizable further expansion in 2012. These new data puts U.S. R&D expenditures at $428.2 billion in 2011,[2] an increase of $20.5 billion over the 2010 level ( table 1, figure 1 ). The preliminary estimate of the 2012 U.S. total for R&D is $452.6 billion.
As we go into the last few weeks of the year, my office is busy working up the final numbers on application data for this year. Although the complete set of application data, tables, and graphs will not be available until later in January, I thought I would provide an early snapshot on success rates for 2013 competing research project grant (RPG) applications and awards.
We received 49,581 competing RPG applications at NIH in fiscal year 2013, slightly declining compared to last year (51,313 applications in FY2012).
A 15-minute commute from Baltimore to Washington, D.C., might be a possibility after all.
The Greater Baltimore Committee in 2012 supported a plan to use maglev trains to produce the next generation of high-speed rail in the Northeast corridor.
But the love affair eventually faded and talk of maglev trains coming to the Baltimore area waned. But the Japanese government is promising to lend the United States half the cost of building the first “Super-Maglev” train. The high-speed train would reduce the 37-mile commute between Baltimore and D.C. from one hour to a blazing-fast 15 minutes
The Tech Council of Maryland (TCM), Maryland’s largest technology trade association, released its 2014 Policy Platform, which outlines the organization’s specific priorities in the areas of advanced technology, life sciences, taxation, transportation, higher education and workforce development. TCM’s advocacy efforts during the 2014 session of the Maryland General Assembly, which begins January 8, will focus on further improving the business climate to encourage technology and biotechnology companies to grow and flourish in the state.
Specifically, TCM’s 2014 Policy Platform urges policymakers to increase funding for innovation incentives, such as the Research and Development Tax Credit, the Biotech Tax Credit and the Stem Cell Research Fund, and reject onerous changes to the tax structure, such as combined reporting, to provide more certainty for the technology and life sciences business communities. In addition, TCM would like to see implementation of continued long-term funding and policy solutions for development of Maryland’s transportation infrastructure, higher education institutions and next-generation workforce.
BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX), a leading global medical technology company, announced today that it has acquired Alverix, Inc., a privately-held diagnostic instrument company known for its optoelectronics expertise. Since 2008, BD and Alverix have collaborated in the point-of-care diagnostic market with the design and development of the BD Veritor™ System, which has been very well received in hospitals, laboratories, physician offices and clinics.
"Point-of-care testing is increasingly an integral part of patient healthcare in both developed and developing countries and BD is committed to expanding in this space," said William A. Kozy, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, BD. "This acquisition enables BD to continue to strengthen and grow our point-of-care testing position."
From President George W. Bush's embrace of healthcare IT to the opening of HealthCare.gov, hard work, government incentives, political battles and more have made for broad and rapid changes in healthcare in the past 10 years.
The growing popularity of cyber security is leading the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s research and development park to look into expanding its CyberHive incubator.
The new space would be an additional 3,500 to 3,600-square feet and would cost anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000.
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center will receive $90 million in new funding as part of a $540 million gift from Ludwig Cancer Research to six institutions, the school announced Monday.
The gift is among the largest for a single private gift to cancer research, according to the school. The five other Ludwig Centers to share in the current award are Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago.
As leaders of Montgomery County life science companies, we have a stake in whether local students like science. If they do, they are more likely to work for companies such as ours. If they don’t, our pipeline of future workers gets slimmer. So we have taken special note of a science education gap in our region that we believe will have a long-term impact on our minority students, our communities and our businesses.
University of Maryland Ventures (UM Ventures) announced today that Dr. Martha J. Connolly has been named director of bioentrepreneurship, a new program supported by the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) and the A. James Clark School of Engineering, designed to enhance collaboration between the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) as part of the MPowering the State initiative.
"UM Ventures creates an integrated innovation ecosystem that includes entrepreneurial support resources," said James Hughes, Chief Economic Development Officer and Vice President at UMB. "Experts like Martha help turn novel ideas into sustainable businesses, and I'm pleased to have her as part of our enterprise."