These top venture capitalists don’t wait for biotech startups to come to them. They create companies themselves.

The path to greatness in biotechnology runs through a vale of tears. Mark Levin wants to remember that.

For Marie Johnson, coming up with a better way to detect coronary artery disease is both a business and a personal mission.

Johnson is CEO of AUM Cardiovascular, a Minnesota medical device company that’s developing a potentially cheaper, simpler, eight-minute test to detect signs of coronary artery disease — the primary cause of heart attack.

Just what is a "National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence," anyway?

I've heard this question muttered repeatedly, in one form or another, in the course of covering the ongoing bio vs. cyber dispute over the future of the William Hanna Center for Innovation at Shady Grove.

Cangene Corporation ("Cangene") (TSX: CNJ) today announced that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued a final order approving the Plan of Arrangement for the previously announced acquisition of Cangene by Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE: EBS). Under the court-approved Plan of Arrangement, Cangene shareholders will receive US$3.24 per share (C$3.56(1) per share) in cash, for an aggregate purchase price of US$222 million (approximately C$244 million(2) ).

Cangene previously announced that the waiting period mandated under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 in connection with the transaction expired on January 28, 2014. On February 12, 2014, the Plan of Arrangement was approved by approximately 99.95% of the votes cast at a special meeting of Cangene's common shareholders, which constituted more than 90.1% of the outstanding Cangene common shares.

Federal and Maryland officials signed an agreement on Tuesday with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg to develop new cyber security technology and provide opportunities for students in the state.

The agreement plans to expand on a February 2012 collaboration agreement signed by NIST, Maryland officials and Montgomery County officials to establish the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.

Epidarex Capital, a leading international early-stage life science venture capital fund, has invested in Confluence Life Sciences Inc., a biotechnology company focused on the rapid discovery and development of drugs to address unmet needs in cancer and chronic inflammatory disease.

Confluence’s innovative KINect Technology Platform enables the identification and development of new protein kinase drugs in a fraction of the time of other approaches.  Confluence’s team of world-class drug developers has created a pipeline of drug candidates which focus on creating kinase inhibitors targeting hard-to-treat cancers.  Confluence’s lead program targets the kinase TAK1, which is important in cancer cell transformation, metastasis, tumor growth and drug resistance, especially in pancreatic and other cancers such as breast and colon.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures and Harpoon Medical, Inc. announced today that Harpoon Medical has obtained exclusive rights to a portfolio of technologies for cardiac valve repair from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). The licensed technology was developed in the Division of Cardiac Surgery at The University of Maryland School of Medicine. A $200,000 award from the BioMaryland Center and a $50,000 BioMaryland LIFE (Leading Innovative Faculty Entrepreneurs) Prize supported the company's early development efforts. Since the company's formation in early July 2013, the Harpoon Medical team has secured more than $300,000 in competitive grants and additional award funding from the BioMaryland Center and TEDCO.

"Harpoon Medical is a particularly exciting UMB startup and the minimally invasive technology for mitral valve repair – without the need to open the chest or stop the heart – has the potential to dramatically improve patient care," said Phil Robilotto, the University's Assistant Vice President, Office of Technology Transfer. "Harpoon's management team has a well-established track record, and Harpoon has already made significant progress on both the product development and fundraising fronts."

Here in Washington, we woke up to a thick blanket of snow from the largest snowstorm of an already active winter season.  The federal government, schools and stores have closed. It got me thinking about what a snow day can tell you about your office, agency or company. It’s a good test that reveals a lot about how you are organized, your technology and your culture.

At my company, we regularly work across multiple client sites, at home, in our D.C. office and in multiple states—snow or no snow. Flexibility is one of our core values. So when a snow day hits, we just keep going. It’s not that different than any other day working from home except for the parents of young children whose schools are closed.

The Tech Council of Maryland (TCM), Maryland’s largest technology trade association with more than 400 life science and technology members employing over 200,000 in the region, today announced that individuals from Hewlett-Packard Co., Johns Hopkins University, MedImmune, RCM&D and SoBran Inc. were named to the association’s board of directors.

“We are excited to have this impressive group of individuals on the TCM board,” said Phil Schiff, TCM’s CEO. “Their individual and collective expertise will be invaluable as the association evolves to address the changing needs of our membership.”

One of IBM's first app ecosystem partners for Watson, the health optimization company Welltok Inc., became the first firm to benefit from a $100 million venture fund IBM established to promote the use of its cognitive computing technology.

Welltok has raised $22.1 million in Series C funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with new participation from IBM and Qualcomm Ventures. This brings Welltok's funding in the last nine months to more than $40 million.

In 2008, Thierry Merquiol joined a crowdfunding effort to produce the first album of a little-known French singer named Grégoire. The investment paid off, Grégoire became a hit, and the experience inspired Merquiol to set up a similar crowdfunding platform for undiscovered companies. Nearly five years later, Merquiol and his business partner’s group, the Toulouse, France-based WiSeed, have helped finance 33 startup firms, including four in biotechnology. “Ours is democratization of equity funding,” said WiSeed associate Souleymane-Jean Galadima.

QIAGEN N.V. QGEN +0.76% (frankfurt prime standard:QIA) today announced the launch plans of several novel products designed to significantly reduce the challenges of the most significant bottlenecks in next-generation sequencing (NGS): sample preparation and bioinformatics. The solutions will enable NGS users to generate more valuable insights from any sample. The new products add to QIAGEN's rapidly expanding portfolio of 'universal' solutions designed to run with any NGS platform, including QIAGEN's GeneReader™ platform, which is being prepared for launch in 2014. Several of QIAGEN's new NGS products will be introduced to genomics researchers this week at the 15th annual Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) meeting in Marco Island, Florida.

Illumina, Inc. today announced the launch of the Illumina Accelerator Program, the world’s first business accelerator focused solely on creating an innovation ecosystem for the genomics industry. Its goal is to speed the time to market and lower the barriers to entry for entrepreneurs, start-ups and early stage companies working on scientifically and commercially promising next-generation sequencing (NGS) applications.

Through the accelerator’s six-month program, Illumina will provide invited participants with technology and business guidance and $100,000 in support, including access to sequencing systems and reagents, as well as fully operational lab space in close proximity to the company’s planned R&D facilities in San Francisco’s Mission Bay. Initial partners include prominent technology investor Yuri Milner, who will offer each participating company $100,000 in exchange for convertible notes, and Silicon Valley Bank, which intends to provide banking services and credit to each participating company.

The DC regional Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program is now accepting university research teams from the DC, MD, and VA area for the 5-week Lean LaunchPad, technology commercialization and customer development workshop beginning March 24th. UMD is the lead institution running the NSF-funded program, and as such, teams from UMD will be given priority in this program. Interested teams can learn more and apply at http://www.dcicorps.org/. Feel free to contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or (240) 319-9594 if you have any questions.

The pharmaceutical industry’s dependence on universities and small biotechs as the source of innovation is laid bare in an analysis of the origin of all the novel drugs approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in the three years from 2010 – 2012.

The analysis shows that 49 per cent of the products granted marketing authorisation during this time were originally discovered by the in-house efforts of pharma companies, with the remaining 51 per cent originating elsewhere. However, of the 94 products that received approval, 87 per cent were owned by pharma companies at the point the license was granted.

Out of 260 applicants, 41 start-ups have advanced in the second annual InvestMaryland Challenge, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED) announced today.

The early-stage business competition—with awards provided by DBED’s Maryland Venture Fund, the BioMaryland Center and other sponsors—seeks to grow entrepreneurship and innovation in the State.

MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, announced it has entered into a three-year collaboration with the Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). The collaboration will focus on CTSI’s Catalyst Awards program, which solicits applications from University scientists who wish to move their translational research beyond the bench and into product development.  

This marks the first industrial partnership for CTSI’s Catalyst Awards program’s therapeutic track, which focuses specifically on discovery and development of patient treatment options. The collaboration will benefit both MedImmune’s biologics and AstraZeneca’s small molecule portfolios and will call for proposals in therapeutic areas of interest to MedImmune and AstraZeneca, including cardiovascular and metabolic disease; oncology; respiratory, inflammation and autoimmunity; neuroscience and infectious disease.

Looking beyond the small-molecule drugs and biologic treatments that have dominated therapeutic development over the past generation, GlaxoSmithKline's ($GSK) all-encompassing R&D department is trying to get a jump on the future of medicine, and research chief Moncef Slaoui is betting that there's a great deal of promise in drug-mimicking electronics.

It looks like Clarus Ventures is planning to reload with investment capital for life science companies.

The Boston- and San Francisco-based venture firm revealed in a SEC filing it’s looking to raise up to $375 million for a third fund.

In a recent post at In the Pipeline, Derek Lowe answers a reader’s question about how best to promote drug discover in India. Given my research on the matter, I figured I would try and provide an answer as well.

In Scientific American’s Worldview, I have been ranking national biotechnology industries for the past five years. When I was recently in New Delhi I presented the Indian innovation figures and asked the audience to guess where they ranked. Much to their amazement, India was ranked with the bottom five of the 50+ countries assessed. The issues are myriad — poor patent protection, infrastructure problems, an insufficient quantity (not quality!) of skilled workers, etc.

Rockville-based MacroGenics Inc. plans to sell 2.5 million shares in a secondary offering, the bulk of which would go toward advancing the biotech's oncology drug candidates through the clinic and expanding its manufacturing capacity.

Much like in MacroGenics' October initial public offering, the chief purpose of this offering is to fund the pipeline, with 1.5 million shares offered by the company and another 1 million shares coming from selling shareholders.

A recent third-party economic development impact study conducted by Battelle Technology Partnership Practice (TPP), the world's largest non-profit research and development organization, has found that the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) currently supports more than $565.9 million in economic contributions and more than 2,835 jobs in the State of Maryland annually, earning $200.5 million in salaries with estimated State and local government revenues of $22.8 million. The study also determined the economic contribution of TEDCO programs is projected to grow to $910.3 million and support a total of 4,527 jobs by 2018. These jobs will earn $320.3 million in salaries with estimated State and local government revenues of $36.6 million.

By Suzanne Raheb, Corporate Supplier Diversity Leader, Lockheed Martin Corporation

Whether working as a subcontractor or a technology mentor, Lockheed Martin provides small businesses with various assistance during different phases of their SBIR/STTR projects. This includes supporting technology requirements, evaluation, co-development, and insertion into larger systems.

Bethesda-based Sucampo named former MedImmune president Peter Greenleaf to serve as the company’s chief executive starting next month, according to a news release.

The appointment brings a high-profile name to the biotechnology firm as it looks to commercialize products for glaucoma and constipation, as well as develop additional drugs to treat eye and digestive issues.

Through the Open Innovation Challenge, the American Heart Association hopes to get closer to its goal of improving Americans’ cardiovascular health by 20 percent by 2020.

The key to crowdfunding success? Pull at the heartstrings of your audience.

That’s what the New York City affiliate of the American Heart Association aims to do in its first-ever Open Innovation Challenge, a program that is part of the AHA’s Health Science Innovation and Investment Forum.

Declines in budgets across the public health community were just one reason the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began looking at innovative approaches for employees and partners to collaborate online.

With the agency’s health informatics partners stretching to state and local public health departments, academics, educational institutions, standards organizations, as well as other countries, CDC in 2009 began examining how it could develop a more cost-effective and efficient way for these key stakeholders to meet, collaborate and advance new ideas.

HHS is committed to implementing all the provisions of the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011 (P.L. 112-81).  NIH has set up a website to keep the small business research community abreast of its implementation plan for the many changes resulting from the reauthorization. The site will be updated as the implementation process moves forward. 

This issuance implements an additional provision of the Reauthorization Act.

TechConnect is pleased to host 2014 TechConnect World, June 15-19 in Washington DC. The event, co-located with the 2014 National Innovation Summit the 2014 National Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Conference, delivers the world’s largest showcase and accelerator for industry-vetted emerging-technologies ready for commercialization.

Don’t miss this opportunity to place your technology, your company, or your agency’s awardee portfolio into the TechConnect Innovation Showcase and Accelerator program to be matched with the world’s largest gathering of potential investment and corporate partners.

One of the old saws in journalism is to “follow the money” when you’re looking for a story. But sometimes you learn even more by following the people.

The people, in this case, are biotech venture capitalists. Regular readers of this column know that biotech VC has been going through a historic shakeout the last few years. The institutional investors who back VCs have gotten fed up with the long investment timelines, high degree of risk, and limp returns from this group of well-compensated asset managers. Not surprisingly, many VC firms have been unable to continue to raise new funds, and have turned into zombies.

It's nearly Valentine's Day. And for humans, love is in the air. But it's a good time to examine how love is in the air for crabs, too, and how their mating affects a Maryland industry.

For blue crabs, it's all about the pheromones in the water. And for female crabs looking for mates, size really does matter.

The Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office is looking to fill a Portfolio Director position. The Portfolio Director will manage a team of licensing professionals and provide scientific, intellectual property, licensing and marketing expertise, mentorship, team building for members working within the portfolio and across portfolios, educational outreach, relationship management, organizational and communication skills to commercialize inventions resulting from research at Johns Hopkins University.

An untraceable currency called Zerocoin is being designed by Johns Hopkins University researchers to compete with other virtual moneys such as Bitcoin. The researchers say that if virtual currencies are going to exist, there should be one that provides the same kind of privacy that people have when exchanging traditional forms of money. 

Inside a drab computer lab at Johns Hopkins University, a team of researchers is trying to build something that has never existed before: a digital currency that changes hands completely in secret. Its name is Zerocoin.

A high sugar diet greatly increases the risk of cardiovascular disease regardless of body weight, according to a new study by the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study, which is the biggest one of its kind to date and has included more than 10,000 people followed for up to 14.6 years, concludes that people who drink, for example, one soft drink per day increase their risk of cardiovascular disease by one-third.

Taking a page from national payers such as Aetna and Humana, Independence Blue Cross opened an innovation lab this week. The idea is to use it to examine the best ways to integrate startup ideas from DreamIt Health companies and research insights produced with its provider collaborations at Penn Medicine and New York University Langone Medical Center.

Insurance companies have a reputation for moving slow as molasses and being resistant to change. But the changes mapped out by the Affordable Care Act are forcing them to make changes. Will adding a few white boards and comfortable chairs in a separate from its corporate offices make that much difference at IBC?

For the first time, Montgomery College and industry giant Lockheed Martin join together to meet the nation’s growing demand for cyber security professionals. Register now to benefit from this exciting partnership where you will learn from the industry’s leading experts in secure software development.