AstraZeneca on Monday rejected a "final" $119 billion buyout offer from Pfizer, possibly sinking a pharmaceutical mega-merger that could have jeopardized jobs at AZ's Maryland subsidiary, MedImmune.

Pfizer, which would have created the world's largest drug company through the deal, on Sunday evening increased its earlier $106 billion cash-and-stock bid. In a statement, AstraZeneca Chairman Leif Johansson called that new offer "inadequate" and said it would have "serious consequences for the company, our employees and the life-sciences sector in the U.K., Sweden and the U.S."

Cybersecurity is a major growth engine in the region. Get on board by joining over 200 cyber leaders from the private, government and academic sectors at the 2014 CyberMontgomery Forum. Plus, hear a keynote address by The Honorable Thomas J. Ridge, the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and former two-term Governor of Pennsylvania.

Attendees will also get an update on the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence and hear from other industry experts and guest speakers including Congressmen Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett and representatives from Lockheed Martin, Discovery Communications, DMI, Triumfant, Koolspan, Inc. and many more.

Pharmaceutical behemoths New York-based Pfizer and London-based AstraZeneca are waging a trans-Atlantic battle over a potential multibillion-dollar buyout that has put both companies and their respective governments on the defensive.

The kerfuffle raises questions about the future of 3,100 scientists and manufacturers employed in the Maryland offices of MedImmune, a biotechnology company that local officials worry could be gutted if its corporate parent, AstraZeneca, gets bought.

Pfizer has again raised its offer for AstraZeneca, making what it said was a final effort to bring the giant British drug maker to the negotiating table.

The latest offer, made Sunday evening, is worth about $119 billion. It comes after AstraZeneca’s rejection of several private and public offers from Pfizer.

University of Maryland is well-known across the nation and internationally as a forward-thinking research institution, which is why it wasn't too surprising to hear that UMD is now home to one of the nation's fastest university-owned supercomputers.

Put simply, the supercomputer going by the name of Deepthought2 (appropriate, eh?) will help to support advanced, high-performance computing and research with the ability to do things like simulate fire and combustion. The contraption has a processing speed of about 300 teraflops, which is crazy fast. How fast? Absurdly speedy.

Research labs closed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer dot the country: Illinois. Michigan. New Jersey. New York. North Carolina.

Maryland officials don't want this state to join that list.

After Pfizer declared its desire to buy AstraZeneca — which employs 3,100 in the state — Gov. Martin O'Malley and six members of Maryland's congressional delegation fired off concerned letters, even though the purchase is by no means a done deal. So far, London-based AstraZeneca has rebuffed its New York suitor.

Johns Hopkins announced on May 6 its plans to build a new cancer treatment building in Baltimore. The facility will be constructed with the help of a $65 million gift. It will be named after the late Albert P. “Skip” Viragh, Jr., a philanthropist and a former cancer patient treated at Johns Hopkins, who died in 2003, at the age of 62.

The Skip Viragh Outpatient Cancer Building is scheduled for completion in 2017. It will be constructed on the southeast corner of Fayette Street and North Broadway, in East Baltimore, and will feature about 50 exam rooms, advanced cancer imaging, a specially designed cancer diagnostic and treatment planning center, and many other facilities and services.

Translating Ideas from Bench to Bedside

June 3rd, 2014, from 6 to 8:30 pm  

Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Advanced Academic Programs   

Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus, Rockville, MD   9601 Medical Center Drive (A&R Building, Room 106-110)

Connect with physician entrepreneurs and other stakeholders in healthcare innovation as we explore the winning formula for successfully advancing new medical devices and technology to commercialization.

AstraZeneca's boss said on Wednesday he would engage with Pfizer if the price was right and the risks posed from forcing the British drugmaker's operations into the U.S. company's new three-unit model were addressed.

Chief Executive Pascal Soriot stressed his company had a bright future as a stand-alone firm but acknowledged that shareholders would expect AstraZeneca's board to negotiate if terms were sufficiently attractive in a sweetened offer.

The Tech Council of Maryland (TCM), Maryland’s largest technology trade association for life science and technology, today announced the winners of its 26th Annual Industry Awards. More than 700 technology and business leaders from around the state attended the celebration last night, which took place at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center.

“The individuals and companies we honored at last night’s industry awards celebration represent the tremendous talent, innovation and dedication we have in Maryland’s thriving technology community,” said Phil Schiff, TCM’s CEO. “The nominees for this year’s awards were truly outstanding, and exemplify how Maryland’s technology community is playing a vital role in ensuring our state’s long-term prosperity.”

Electronics giant Samsung recently announced a foray into big pharma. The South Korean company is set to invest over $2 billion into biopharmaceuticals—drugs developed from biological sources (e.g. vaccines or gene therapies) as opposed to traditional chemical cocktails—with a focus on creating cheaper versions of existing therapies.

But cheapness won’t be Samsung’s only advantage. The company better known for its smartphones could also take advantage of the fact that the pharma industry has been slow to explore mobile health technology.

It's too early to say what Pfizer's bid for AstraZeneca means for MedImmune. But it's starting to become clearer what MedImmune means for Pfizer's bid for AstraZeneca.

As Pfizer courts MedImmune's U.K.-based parent, one promising immunotherapy product — MEDI4736, now in late-stage clinical trials for non-small cell lung cancer — has seen a flood of attention alongside another closely watched lung cancer drug, AZD9291. Data on both drugs are slated to be presented at the end of May at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual conference in Chicago. AstraZeneca is looking to wield positive results to showcase its immuno-oncology pipeline, undergirding the argument that it's worth more than the $106 billion that Pfizer originally bid for it.

Cybersecurity will be a major growth engine in the region for many years to come. The 2014 CyberMontgomery Forum is YOUR chance to join with cyber leaders from the private sector, government and academia.  Hear from The Honorable Thomas J. Ridge, the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and former Governor of Pennsylvania.

Plus, get an update on the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence and hear from industry experts and guest speakers including Congressmen Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett and representatives from Lockheed Martin, Discovery Communications, DMI, Triumfant, Koolspan, Inc. and…

A 300-teraflop supercomputer named Deepthought2 will now power research at the University of Maryland. Housed in the institution's new 9,000-square-foot Cyberinfrastructure Center, Deepthought2 was developed with high-performance computing solutions from Dell and will support advanced research activities ranging from studying the formation of the first galaxies to simulating fire and combustion for fire protection advancements.

Deepthought2 replaces its namesake Deepthought, installed in 2006. According to a university statement, "the new supercomputer is 10 times faster than its predecessor, able to complete between 250 trillion and 300 trillion operations per second. It has a petabyte (1 million gigabytes) of storage and is connected by an InfiniBand network, a very high-speed internal network. Put another way, Deepthought2 is the equivalent of 10,000 laptops working together, it has 2,000 times the storage of an average laptop, and its internal network is 50 times faster than broadband."

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic have completed a groundbreaking new test: They knocked widespread blood cancer into remission with a single massive blast of measles vaccine.

Stacy Erholtz, who was suffering from an advanced stage of blood cancer, recovered thanks to an intravenous injection of the measles virus, which was sufficient to overwhelm the cancer’s natural defenses, the StarTribune reports.

GlycoMimetics, Inc. announced today that data from a Phase 2 clinical trial of its lead drug candidate rivipansel ( GMI-1070 ) in pediatric patients has been presented at the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology (ASPHO) 27th Annual Meeting . As part of the symposium entitled, “Sickle Cell Disease: Saving the Brain and Treating the Pain,” Timothy McCavit, M.D., M.S., Assistant Professor of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, highlighted the results observed in a randomized, multi-center, double-blind, adaptive Phase 2 study of rivipansel in pediatric sickle cell disease patients with vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC). The ASPHO Meeting is taking place May 14 through May 17 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.

“Because sickle cell disease is genetic with symptoms presenting in patients at very young ages, there is a huge unmet need for managing its symptoms in pediatric populations. Dr. McCavit’s presentation at the ASPHO meeting underscores the potential role of rivipansel in addressing VOC in pediatric patients,” said Helen Thackray, M.D ., Vice President of Clinical Development and Chief Medical Officer at GlycoMimetics. “We remain committed to supporting the advancing study of this potential therapy in both children and adults and look forward to continued research through the Phase 3 study, which will be led by our collaborator Pfizer, Inc.”

OpGen, Inc., a Gaithersburg based molecular diagnostics company, announced today that it has launched a new molecular-based test that can quickly and reliably identify patients at risk for harboring serious disease-causing microbes that can resist even the strongest antibiotics. The Acuitas™ MDRO Gene Test is a comprehensive molecular screening tool that can directly detect as many as seven genes from one patient sample, and will help hospitals and public health officials combat some of the most critical multi-drug resistant organisms (MDROs) threatening patients in healthcare facilities. 

"Drug-resistant 'superbugs' pose a serious and immediate threat to the world's health and safety increasing the likelihood of prolonged illnesses, higher costs – even death," said Evan Jones, Chairman and CEO, OpGen, Inc. "The new Acuitas MDRO Gene Test makes MDRO screening more efficient and cost-effective by delivering comprehensive, precise and actionable information to healthcare practitioners within 24 hours, assisting them in their efforts to combat and prevent the spread of these complex and potentially life-threatening infections."

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:

• NOT-TW-14-008: Request for Information (RFI): Global Cookstove Distribution Programs and Projects for Evaluation of Health Benefits [Posted 05/09/2014]
• NOT-HD-14-015: Notice of Change in Eligibility for PAR-13-358 "Opportunities for Collaborative Research at the NIH Clinical Center (U01)" [Posted 05/09/2014]
• NOT-OD-14-085: Transition Plans for Reporting Sex/Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Information in Non-Competing Type 5 Progress Reports [Posted 05/02/2014]
• NOT-OD-14-086: NIH Launching New System and Procedures for Reporting Sex/Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Information to the NIH [Posted 05/02/2014]
• NOT-OD-14-087: Notice of Change in Eligibility for RFA-OD-14-005 "NIH Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH) Awards (U01)" [Posted 05/02/2014]
• NOT-OD-14-088: Notice of Clarification of Career (K) Award Eligibility [Posted 05/02/2014]
• NOT-HL-14-223: Request for Information (RFI): Strategic Planning for Asthma Research [Posted 05/02/2014]
• NOT-NS-14-029: Notice of NINDS Participation in NOT-HL-14-222 "Request for Information (RFI): Opportunities to Advance Clinical and Epidemiologic Research to Facilitate Aging in Place utilizing In-Home Monitoring" [Posted 05/02/2014]
• NOT-TW-14-008: Request for Information (RFI): Global Cookstove Distribution Programs and Projects for Evaluation of Health Benefits [Posted 05/09/2014]
• NOT-HD-14-015: Notice of Change in Eligibility for PAR-13-358 "Opportunities for Collaborative Research at the NIH Clinical Center (U01)" [Posted 05/09/2014]

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 Venture Capital Association on Wednesday named Scott Sandell, a Silicon Valley-based general partner with New Enterprise Associates, its next chairman.

He takes over as chair of the Arlington-based VC trade group at an optimistic time, at least compared with the years following the recession. By the NVCA's own numbers: Venture firms, nationally, are seeing increasing success luring back limited partners, while a greater number of venture-backed companies are going public. Total VC dollars invested hit a more than dozen-year high last quarter.

David Mott will speak at the BioTrinity 2014 Conference, the European Bipartnering and Investment Conference on May 12-14, 2014. 

BioTrinity is the premier European Biopartnering and Investment Conference, partnering R&D companies with big pharma and more biomedical investors than any other key European partnering conference. 

The National Institutes of Health announced on Wednesday a new policy requiring that both sexes be represented among the subjects of preclinical biomedical research it finances involving animal and cell models.

More than two decades after requiring gender balance among human beings in the trials themselves, NIH leaders said they now realize that the same step should be applied to the laboratory experiments that inform those trials.

Every summer, the National Security Agency offers about 250 internships to undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing careers with the federal agency. If you can snag one, your career will be off to a great start.

But getting one is the hard part. There are more than 10,000 applicants every year for the internships, which span the science, technology, engineering and math fields. Richard Ledgett, deputy director of the NSA, on Wednesday told members of the BWI Business Partnership the selection process is grueling because of the high standards and required security clearances.

Johnson & Johnson's ($JNJ) Janssen arm is planning to open another biotech incubator, this time setting its sights on South San Francisco in hopes of finding a few promising drug developers.

The new operation, dubbed Janssen Labs @South San Francisco, will be a 30,000-square-foot mix of lab and office space with room for up to 50 startups, J&J said. Mirroring Janssen's flagship San Diego incubator, the new facility will be staffed by some of J&J's biotech brains and provide operational support, education and business services to its guest companies. 

Richard Griffin, Director of Economic Development for the City of Frederick, and Julie Garner, Director of External Affairs, Maryland for AstraZeneca, accepted the award at the 2014 MEDA Awards Ceremony. The ceremony annually honors “standouts” in the field of economic development and the professionals who foster MEDA’s success today.

The award-winning plant, located next to the original 163,802 square foot biomanufacturing facility, provides increased capacity and has enabled AstraZeneca and MedImmune to meet the demand for new products. The company boasts world-class protein engineering and process development capabilities.

William E. (Brit) Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland and a longtime national figure in public higher education, will resign from his leadership post when a successor is named, Mr. Kirwan announced on Tuesday.

Mr. Kirwan, who is 76, has led the Maryland system for 12 years and served as president of Ohio State University from 1998 to 2002. He has been at the forefront of national conversations about reducing college costs, including athletics spending.

Mike Baader, the head of Venable’s Baltimore office, will be joining the law firm’s longtime client, Greenspring Associates, as a partner and general counsel, sources said.

The sources said Baader will stay on with the firm for several months to assist in the transition. Courtney Capute has been named to succeed Baader as head of the law firm’s Baltimore practice.

The National Institutes of Health contracting arm has launched a $20 billion governmentwide acquisition program, Nextgov reports based on solicitation documents.

RCT Ventures has just announced a new opportunity for early-stage medical device companies: the 2014 MedTech Innovator competition.  Companies and university-stage teams are encouraged to apply.  Ten semi-finalists will be selected by a panel of medical device venture capitalists that will receive free registration to the Wilson Sonsini Medical Device conference.  There, a live audience will select the winner, who will receive the $100k grand prize.

RCT Ventures’ last contest, Medtech Idol, had a fascinating array of gadgety competition with Aventamed‘s impressive ear-tube placement device coming out on top.  When asked about the competition, Paul Grand, Managing Director for RCT Ventures said, “In today’s lean start-up model, the $100k prize should be enough to allow the winner to bridge the funding gap and achieve a milestone that can help them secure a larger funding round or critical industry partnership.”

Join members from NHLBI's SMARTT team on May 28, 2014 (1:00-2:30 pm EST) for a free webinar to hear how three investigators utilized SMARTT services to advance the development of their lead candidates.

Webinar agenda

• Overview of SMARTT
• Translational Investigator presentations:
• Steven Idell, MD, PhD, Vice President for Research at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Tyler
  Development of fibrinolysin single chain urokinase plasminogen activator (scuPA) for pleural effusions
• Athan Kuliopulos, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Tufts University and Tufts Medical Center
  Development of PZ-128 for the prevention of arterial thrombosis in acute coronary syndrome and percutaneous coronary intervention
• Barry Coller, MD, Vice President for Medical Affairs and Physician-in-Chief, The Rockefeller University
  Development of novel small molecule platelet inhibitors for pre-hospital treatment of myocardial infarction.
• Challenges in Early Translational Science: Industry Perspective
• Q&A with SMARTT

Representatives from NHLBI staff and from SMARTT’s regulatory, manufacturing, and pharmacology/toxicology facilities will be available to answer questions.

“Hi, my name is Krzysztof Sitko, cofounder of Aegle, and I’m going to tell you today about how we failed throughout all of DreamIt Health, and why you might consider investing in us anyhow.”

A month ago, that wasn’t how I pictured my presentation at our startup accelerator’s Demo Day. I was working tirelessly alongside my cofounders to put together a business. Yet there I was in front of a room of 200 to announce that we didn’t have a market for the product we had been working on.

THIS MOBILE HEALTH TOOL HELPS PEOPLE TO BE ABLE TO CONFRONT THEIR ANXIETIES AND THEIR FEARS.

A new self-help tool has now been developed by a team of psychologists, physicists, and developers, which uses augmented reality over a mobile health platform, with the goal of helping users to be able to treat their phobias and overcome their anxieties.

Maryland lawmakers have penned a letter to Pfizer asking the New York-based pharmaceutical giant to ensure that it will not shed jobs at Gaithersburg-based MedImmune should it succeed in acquiring parent company AstraZeneca.

Pfizer has offered as much as $106 billion to acquire United Kingdom-based AstraZeneca in a deal that could rank among the largest ever for the pharmaceutical industry. So far, the companies have not agreed on a purchase price.

San Diego-based biopharmaceuticals developer Lumena Pharmaceuticals has been acquired by UK-based Shire plc, in a deal worth $260M plus earn out, the companies said this morning. Shire said the buy would help add to its rare diseases portfolio. Lumena Pharmaceuticals had filed for an IPO in April; the company was venture backed by Alta Partners, New Enterprise Associates, RiverVest, A.M. Pappas Life Sciences Ventures, and Adage Capital Partners.

The recently published "Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media", weighing in at over five hundred pages, claims to be the first "systematic and comprehensive" reference work on digital media. However, the reader need only scan the table of contents with entries ranging from the expected, such as "Blogs," to the obscure such as "Searle's Chinese Rooms," to appreciate that it is neither systematic nor comprehensive. And, this is not necessarily a bad thing. For, The Guide does indeed accomplish what it sets out to do: provide readers with " a GPS and a map of the territory of digital media, so that they will be able to design their own journey through this vast field of discovery."

D.C. startup incubator and co-working campus 1776 filed paperwork with the SEC to create a $25 million seed investment fund according to a report in the Washington Business Journal. The filing, issued in the name of "1776 Seed Investors, LP," would be part of a longer term plan by 1776 to start funding startups while it continues to incubate them at its D.C. headquarters.