A total of 87 applicants from more than 30 cities across Russia sought to land one of just three residency openings in the U.S.-Russia Innovation Corridor (USRIC), a collaborative innovation initiative led by American Councils for International Education. Of the 12 finalists selected for interviews, two startups and one university technology transfer office will take on a renewable three-month residency in USRIC.

Through USRIC, the residents will collaborate with U.S. partners and develop new markets, using the resources of the Maryland International Incubator (MI2) housed at the University of Maryland at College Park (UMD).

DC Innovation Corps (I-Corps), the new, National Science Foundation-backed program aimed at translating the region's vibrant research community into successful startups and licensed technologies, kicks off its first cohort this week at the George Washington University with 20 teams of inventors and current and aspiring entrepreneurs.

The cohort launches with a diverse mix of teams from the Children's National Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, the George Washington University, Virginia Tech, George Mason University, and regional entrepreneurs from the Emerging Technology Center, Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) and bwtech@UMBC.

Washington, D.C. has become one of the centers for high-tech innovation, spurring some of the biggest investments from venture capital firms in the country. In fact, according to The Atlantic Cities, D.C. ranks among the top 10 cities for venture capital funding.

With the influx of startups and entrepreneuers looking for funding, venture capitalists are beginning to leverage social media to brand their firm, position themselves as thought leaders, and attract the top talent in the city. With the help of Klout, an online-influence scoring site, we checked out which local VC firms are leveraging Twitter the best. Take a look at the factors involving Klout scoring here, and without furhter ado, here the highest ranking VC firms in D.C. 

The HIMSS Innovation Center opens today in Cleveland, a city, known around the world for the Cleveland Clinic and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and one that prides itself on being a city of firsts.

HIMSS leaders who describe their 50,000-plus member organization of health IT professionals as "cause-based," make no bones about their intent to shake things up in healthcare – more than a little bit.

British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline will seek marketing approval for the world's first malaria vaccine next year after trial data showed the shot significantly cut cases of the disease in African children.

The vaccine known as RTS,S was found, after 18 months of follow-up, to have almost halved the number of malaria cases in young children in the trial, and to have reduced by around a quarter the number of malaria cases in infants.

"Based on these data, GSK now intends to submit, in 2014, a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA)," GSK, which has been developing the vaccine for three decades, said in a statement.

Kids today ... are actually doing some amazing stuff. Take 15-year-old Jack Andraka, who recently won the grand prize of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for developing an early detection test for pancreatic cancer.  

Andraka came up with the idea for the test after a close family friend died of pancreatic cancer. Using free online science papers, he formed a basis for the test, which looks for increased levels of a biomarker for pancreatic cancer in blood and urine. He contacted 197 scientists, seeking help with his research, and was rejected by each one, before Dr. Anirban Maitra at Johns Hopkins University agreed to donate lab space and help him develop his research.

(Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Bicoastal venture firm New Enterprise Associates owns 75.2 percent of GlycoMimetics Inc., making NEA by far the biggest beneficiary of the Gaithersburg biotech's planned initial public offering.

The company revealed NEA's outsized ownership in its IPO paperwork, filed on Friday. It is not yet clear whether the firm, which has a major office in Chevy Chase, plans to sell some of its 26.7 million shares in the offering.

MacroGenics Inc. is slated to go public this week.

The Rockville drug-maker plans to raise as much as $73.6 million to fund the development of its pipeline, selling 4 million shares at a forecasted range of $14 to $16 per share. Shares of MGNX are expect to start trading Friday on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Noble Life Sciences (Gaithersburg, MD), in collaboration with ImQuest BioSciences (Frederick, MD), has successfully developed a neutropenic mouse thigh model of infection and demonstrated its use in a study evaluating vancomycin for the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus infection. The model will serve as a new Noble service for the evaluation of the efficacy of novel anti-microbial compounds in the treatment of microbial infections.

Complicated skin and soft tissue infections are frequently encountered in clinical practice and are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. The neutropenic mouse thigh model of infection has been used extensively to test and benchmark antimicrobial drugs leading to a significant impact on our current knowledge of antimicrobial pharmacology. This model allows the quantitative comparison of different agents and different dosing regimes and the determination of the time-course of antimicrobial activity under conditions optimal for efficacy, i.e., neutropenia.

Donald E. Ingber, a professor at Harvard University, has combined advanced electronics and biology to create a "lung on a chip," a breakthrough device that could safely allow precise tests of risky new medical treatments before they are tried out on humans.

Just as eye-opening as his work, however, may be his source of federal financing.

It's not the National Institutes of Health, the $30-billion agency that is the largest provider of federal basic-research money to universities. Instead it's the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, an agency one-tenth as large as NIH and responsible primarily for meeting the military's technological needs.

GlycoMimetics, Inc. announced today that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the proposed initial public offering of shares of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. GlycoMimetics has applied to list its common stock on the NASDAQ Global Market under the ticker symbol “GLYC.”

Jefferies LLC and Barclays Capital Inc. are acting as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering. Stifel is acting as co-lead manager and Canaccord Genuity Inc. is acting as co-manager.

The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. When available, copies of the preliminary prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained from Jefferies LLC, Equity Syndicate Prospectus Department, 520 Madison Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10022, by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by phone at 877-547-6340 or Barclays Capital Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or by phone at 888-603-5847.

Even people without diabetes could be at higher risk of dying from disease

High blood sugar has been linked to a greater risk of dying from several types of cancer, a potentially worrying finding for countries with growing rates of obesity.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, USA and Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea made the discovery by following more than 1.2 million Koreans for 10 years.

BioMarker Strategies announced the appointment of Jerry Parrott as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director, effective immediately.

According to a release, Parrott will report to the Company's Board of Directors, which will continue to be led by Chairman Jack Davis, a co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Dianon Systems.

Fyodor, a Baltimore-based biotechnology company, announced today that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded the company a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 grant. The $729,000 funding will help accelerate Fyodor’s effort to develop and validate a noninvasive multi-disease urine-based diagnostic test for Acute Febrile Illness (AFI), enabling the differential clinical diagnosis of leading global health diseases like malaria, typhoid, dengue, and leptospirosis from a single urine specimen in patients with fever.

Berlin, Germany, and U.S.A. - Epigenomics AG (Frankfurt Prime Standard: ECX, OTC: EPGNY), the German-American cancer molecular diagnostics company, announced today that it has entered into a joint commercialization agreement with Polymedco Inc., a leading provider of colorectal cancer tests in North America. Both companies will jointly commercialize Epi proColon®, Epigenomics' blood-based test for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, in North America.

Chevy Chase-based New Enterprise Associates has joined in a $10 million financing for Cydan LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based orphan drug accelerator.

The additional funding comes months after the project’s launch in April, and brings its total financing to $26 million. Lundbeckfond Ventures and Bay City Capital led the most recent financing.

A veteran biotechnology reporter once complained privately that covering the industry was like watching grass grow—companies seemed to inch by slow degrees toward products and profits, sustained by a dwindling stream of funding.

For an antidote to that dreary picture, consider the swift developments at StartX Med, a life sciences accelerator program founded by Stanford University students in 2012. It’s a health care-oriented offshoot of StartX, the original student-initiated incubator program for researchers and others affiliated with Stanford.

BIO's announced agreement with National Science Foundation (NSF) to bring SBIR-funded, early-stage biotech companies to present at BIO Investor Forum 2013. Presenting companies in NSF track include ADMdx, Biodesy, Carmot, CertiChem, Jade Therapeutics, Nano3D Biosciences, Nanofiber Solutions, Parabon Nanolabs, Stemina, and Tymora Analytical Operations. All are funded by NSF and focused on drug discovery, diagnostics, and other platform technologies.

As health systems and hospitals consolidate and battle for patients, they are starting to employ online consumer marketing efforts. A new Provider Web Presence Index is now available to track the success of providers.

Payer+Provider Syndicate has created the Provider Web Presence Index, which was released Tuesday, and evaluates the quality of the web presence of hospitals compared with competitors. The tool is based on a single indicator, which incorporates measures of web traffic, inbound linking and site relevance.

When Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Intuitive Surgical hit the market in 1999 with its surgical robot, da Vinci, the company and many of its early adopters hailed the new technology as a revolution that would benefit patients, surgeons and the health care system as a whole. Da Vinci combines high-definition visual tools with robot-guided medical instruments that allow surgeons to do complicated procedures using a few tiny incisions. The da Vinci system, which is widely used in urologic surgeries such as the removal of prostate tumors, has been shown by Intuitive and outside researchers to reduce post-surgery complications and shorten hospital stays.

Two days into a government shutdown over resulting from the Congressional showdown over funding Obamacare, funding is at the front of mind for many researchers who rely at least partially on grants from National Institutes of Health and other government sources. A survey of 608 translational researchers revealed that although insufficient funding is a significant barrier to the path to commercializing their work, there are other related challenges that are just as critical to their future.

How can translational researchers improve the rate of reproducible results? What other factors are undercutting funding? Where can they find collaboration opportunities?

The STEM workforce in the DC area is sizable and totals about 330,000 workers. Some of these employees are retiring, some are changing jobs, and others are getting promotions leaving positions open. The healthy STEM climate means that there are a lot of job opportunities at all levels. But where do your students find STEM jobs? On TCM's targeted career center, CORE.

CORE is a comprehensive resource for finding all levels of biotechnology, technology, and business jobs in the Mid-Atlantic region.CORE provides detailed job and internship listings in 15 categories that are updated frequently and promoted through our social media channels for easy access. Many companies in the area that hire STEM workers are TCM members and are vested in hiring local talent. So prepare your students for success and direct them to CORE. In addition to job listings, we also offer timely career resource articles to help students meet the many challenges of their job search.

Want to show your students that you're committed to their future? Purchase a banner ad on the CORE website to let local companies know about the courses, certificates, and degrees you offer to prepare your students for STEM jobs.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Center for Vaccine Development announced on Thursday that it has received a renewed contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for its research and clinical studies.

“The University of Maryland’s Center for Vaccine Development has long been a partner of the federal government in the clinical evaluation of vaccines,” Karen L. Kotloff, a professor of pediatrics and medicine and the head of infectious disease and tropical pediatrics at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, said. “Renewal of our contract is a testimony to our expertise in helping protect people throughout the world against diseases that pose significant public health threats.”

The Department of Health and Human Services isn’t the only federal agency interested in funding medical research.

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense’s primary innovation engine that’s responsible for developing new technologies for use by the military, also frequently undertakes project in biology, medicine and neuroscience.

After nearly 17 years, Elaine Amir, executive director of Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus, retired, effective Sept. 30. Elaine has been the face of Johns Hopkins in Montgomery County and a leader on several community boards and initiatives. Through her work, she touched many lives, both personally and professionally.

Before she left, Hopkins Happenings asked her to look back on her years leading JHU MCC:

Improving health literacy and patient engagement and developing alternative ways to appraise apps and physicians are among the ideas that have reached the finals of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation competition. The people and companies behind these ideas are vying for the opportunity to get funding as part of a program to fund transformative innovations in healthcare.

Among the judges are Angel investor Esther Dyson (@edyson), PatientsLikeMe Co-Founder and President Ben Heywood (@patientslikeme), Rhode Island School of Design President John Maeda(@johnmaeda), IDEO Life Sciences Chief Strategist Rodrigo Martinez(@rodrigoatcg), Games for Health Co-Founder Ben Sawyer (@bensawyer), Fast Company Staff Writer Ben Schiller(@btschiller) and NPR Science Correspondent Shankar Vedantam(@hiddenbrain).

Cydan, LLC, an orphan drug accelerator that identifies and de-risks programs with therapeutic and commercial potential, today announced that the company has expanded its initial round of financing, bringing its total financing raised to $26 million. Cydan launched in April 2013 with a $16 million financing from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Pfizer Venture Investments and Alexandria Venture Investments. New investors Lundbeckfond Ventures and Bay City Capital led the $10 million expansion of this round of financing and were joined by Cydan’s previous investors NEA and Alexandria Venture Investments. In conjunction with this investment, Lundbeckfond Ventures Managing Partner Mette Kirstine Agger, MBA and Bay City Capital Investment Partner and Managing Director Carl Goldfischer, M.D., are joining Cydan’s Board of Directors.

Sequencing the human genome seemed like a discovery so important that it couldn’t be overhyped—we had, after all, transcribed the blueprint for human life—but biotech executives somehow managed the trick. William Haseltine, the founder of Human Genome Sciences, predicted in 2000 that he would halve the time and money required to bring a drug to market. Randy Scott of Incyte Genomics claimed that, “In 10 years, we will understand the molecular basis for most human diseases.”

Not quite. The cost of bringing a drug to market has increased dramatically, quibbles about accounting methods notwithstanding. The process still takes more than a decade. We already had a thorough understanding of diseases linked to single genetic sequences, such as Huntington’s and cystic fibrosis, but if anything, exploring the genome has taught us how complicated the relationship between genes and diseases really is. Last year, for example, researchers in Canada linked 71 genetic regions to inflammatory bowel disease, bringing the total to 163 and counting.

An early-stage investment fund founded by Revolution has raised $200 million in commitments, blowing past its $150 million goal. The new fund, Revolution Ventures, will invest in technology firms, mostly under $10 million in revenue, that are seeking to disrupt traditional industries.

“We are doing the things that we’ve been doing for the last decade,” Revolution co-founder Steve Case said. “Trying to find early-stage companies that are using technology to disrupt traditional industries, create new business models and have all kinds of different aspects that we find interesting.”

As the Managing Director at a tech accelerator, I face a dilemma. I need to fund the most talented people, because they’ll be most likely to build great companies. But I also need to find the hidden gems.  I’m the sort of person who’s always looking for the best deals.  Let me tell you, great deals almost always come from unexpected sources.

Here’s the problem: If I look for talent in the same places everyone else does — at Stanford, Harvard, and MIT — I’ll have to fight crowds of investors and even other accelerators who are trying to do the same thing I am. I don’t like lines, and I hate waiting, so I don’t go with the crowd. I try to create value where others don’t recognize it.

Emergent Biosolutions, the maker of the only FDA-licensed anthrax vaccine, is expanding its footprint in Montgomery County, with a little bit of financial help from the state and county. Emergent is taking 50,000-square feet (the precise number was reported by the Washington Business Journal earlier this month) at 400 Professional Dr., a 129,360-square foot, five-story building here, owned by Corporate Office Properties Trust. It will be moving 112 of its current employees to the building in early 2015. Emergent plans to purchase building, which is adjacent to its current research and development facility located at 300 Professional Dr.

What is interesting about the deal is the rare glimpse it reveals about the type of state and county incentives available for such transactions: the State of Maryland contributed $2 million, Montgomery County $750,000 and the City of Gaithersburg $250,000.

These days, having a strategic investor or partner has become almost a matter of survival for healthcare startups.

Corporate investing and partnering has really taken off over the last few years as pharma and medical device companies have opened their doors and wallets to find innovation outside of their four walls.

Anyone can have a great business idea, and now students don’t have to be enrolled in the business school to get help making their ideas a success.

This semester, the business school’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship expanded its Innovation Fridays program to reach students of all majors. The program, which used to be advertised only to business school students, gives student entrepreneurs free consultations with successful business owners to get advice for starting their own small businesses, promoting social causes or creating new technology.

Earlier this year Sun Yat-sen University, a well-regarded institution in Guangzhou in the Guangdong province of China, announced that the university and affiliated hospitals were entering into a novel collaboration with Johns Hopkins Medicine. The agreement would see Hopkins faculty working bilaterally with Sun Yat-sen’s medical faculty both in China and at Hopkins in order to help the university become a world-class biomedical research institute. The deal has significant implications for U.S. hospitals because, facing declining revenues, international collaborations like these offer a new path for growth.

It was the 30th major, revenue-producing, international healthcare collaboration for Johns Hopkins Medicine, with several more currently under negotiation — when the rest of the world combined has perhaps a few dozen similar partnerships. One reason Hopkins is outpacing others is because it created an agile satellite unit – Johns Hopkins Medicine International (JHI) – within the much larger parent organization solely dedicated to these projects.

Bureaucracy is one of the dirty words in business. Nobody wants to publicly admit their company is bogged down with too many layers of management, or needs a dozen committees to sign off on every little decision. For a couple years now, I’ve been hearing entrepreneurs complain about suffocating bureaucracy in pharma.

So I started asking people to name names by answering this question: