When Novavax Inc. received $1.6 billion last year from the federal government to speed up testing and production of a coronavirus vaccine, some observers were incredulous. The small biotechnology firm, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was largely unknown and had never successfully brought a product to market.

But now that the company nears completion of its Phase 3 trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, which was found to be nearly 90% effective during clinical testing in the United Kingdom, it is grabbing headlines around the world.

Rockville, Md. — The Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) awarded a total of $96,430 to six small life science companies as part of its recently completed Bio Lab Pilot Project. The project was launched in 2019 to assist local growth-stage life science companies with their wet lab and infrastructure needs. Applicants seeking financial help to build out small wet lab space less than 5,000 SF were encouraged to apply for $10 per SF of lab fit out costs, up to $30,000 per company. Project funding was provided by MCEDC and the Maryland Department of Commerce. 

COLUMBIA, Md. (March 25, 2021) –TEDCO, Maryland’s economic engine for technology companies, announced today its request for applications for the Agriculture and Rural Rebuild (ARR) Challenge, created to assist Maryland’s rural and agricultural businesses that have been detrimentally impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic downturn. TEDCO will award grants up to $200,000 per project. 

“The ARR Challenge encourages purposeful collaboration between rural businesses, research institutions and industry partners,” stated Dr. Arti Santhanam, MII executive director. “Examples of a successful project may include, but is not limited to, the development of an innovative product or a novel application of an existing technology applicable to agriculture or other rural industry sectors.” 

WASHINGTON, March 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Congenital heart disease (CHD) affects six out of 1,000 babies born in the U.S. each year and is often complicated by arrhythmias, a condition where the heart beats too rapidly, too slowly or irregularly due to a misfiring of the body's electrical impulses. While the last decade brought great advances in technologies that improve the care of adult arrhythmias, pediatric patients have been left behind, with only five devices approved for use in children in the same period. As a result, pediatric specialists are often using off-label or improvised devices to treat pediatric arrhythmias, including in the smallest newborns.

When Novavax Inc. received $1.6 billion last year from the federal government to speed up testing and production of a coronavirus vaccine, some observers were incredulous. The small biotechnology firm, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was largely unknown and had never successfully brought a product to market.

But now that the company nears completion of its Phase 3 trials for its COVID-19 vaccine, which was found to be nearly 90% effective during clinical testing in the United Kingdom, it is grabbing headlines around the world.

GERMANTOWN, Md., March 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Precigen, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the development of innovative gene and cell therapies to improve the lives of patients, today announced that the first patient has been dosed in the Phase I study of PRGN-2012, a first-in-class, investigational off-the-shelf (OTS) AdenoVerse™ immunotherapy in adult patients with recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP) (clinical trial identifier: NCT04724980). The US Food and Drug Administration recently granted Orphan Drug Designation for PRGN-2012 in RRP in March 2021.

PRGN-2012 is an innovative therapeutic vaccine with optimized antigen design that uses Precigen's gorilla adenovector technology, part of Precigen's proprietary AdenoVerse platform, to elicit immune responses directed against cells infected with HPV 6 or HPV 11. Gorilla adenovectors have numerous advantages, including the ability for repeat administration, the inability to replicate in vivo, which may improve safety, and the ability to deliver large payload capacity. In preclinical models, PRGN-2012 has demonstrated strong and specific immune response against HPV 6 and HPV 11.

BIoHealth Innovation is sad to hear of the passing of Jose Basegla, the Head of the ASTRA Zeneca Oncology R&D business and the Gaithersburg Site Head.
Jose was a strong proponent for making the BIoHealth Capital Region a leading BIoHealth hub with a connected ecosystem. AZ was also a founding member of BIoHealth Innovation and continues to support us today.

An outstanding scientific leader, José leaves a lasting legacy in the scientific community and here at AstraZeneca. He set our Oncology R&D function on a remarkable trajectory, and his visionary leadership, deep scientific expertise and strategic insight have delivered so many achievements that we can all be proud of and that will benefit patients’ lives in the years to come.

Stefanie Tompkins takes the reins today as the 23rd director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

With nearly eleven years of DARPA service under her belt, Tompkins, a former military intelligence officer in the U.S. Army, has an exceptional understanding of the agency’s culture. From 2007 through 2017, she held multiple positions, including program manager and deputy director of the Strategic Technology Office, a systems-oriented technical office; DARPA chief of staff; and director of the Defense Sciences Office, a highly exploratory office that identifies and accelerates new technologies. In 2017 and into the beginning of 2018, she served as the acting deputy director of the agency.

AstraZeneca announced on Monday that its vaccine was 79 percent effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in Phase III U.S. testing with no safety concerns found.

The company said in a statement that the vaccine was also found to be 100 percent effective in preventing serious cases of the disease and hospitalizations.

AstraZeneca said it will submit the findings to the Food and Drug Administration in a bid for emergency use authorization in the U.S.

“Who do you know that others need to know?

We are always one conversation away from changing our lives, and Rich Bendis of BioHealth Innovations started the BioTalk podcast to connect the world of biohealth better.

In a world where medical science advances are growing at the fastest pace in human history, we can still run into a problem where the people who know each other don’t get connected to advance therapy, new medicine, or new approaches.”

Key Topics:

What is the goal of Biohealth Innovations (1:44)

How has the medical research changed as a result of COVID (3:24)

How was the COVID vaccine researched (8:06)

What made podcasting the right next step for BioHealth (10:22)

Who has benefited from the podcast (12:29)

Visit https://causepods.org/podcast/the-more-we-know-with-rich-bendis-of-the-biotalk-podcast/ to listen.

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Are you a biohealth start-up in Maryland, DC or Virginia seeking feedback on your biohealth business idea, pitch deck, or commercialization plan? Schedule your feedback session with BHI EIRs on one of the following dates. Pre-registration is required; Sign up here tinyurl.com/EIRfeedback

For questions/more information, contact BHI.

WASHINGTON, MARCH 19, 2021 – This week, U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), both members of the Senate Appropriations Committee and Senate Competitiveness Caucus, reintroduced the Innovation Centers Acceleration Act, a bill which would expand research and development (R&D), targeted to reach a broader portion of the country. The legislation would complement a nationwide effort to compete with China economically by placing renewed emphasis on sectors key to economic resiliency and productivity, including biomedical technology, advanced manufacturing, and more.

"We lost about nine months in time," said Galen Robotics CEO Bruce Lichorowic.

Image: David Saunders (left) and Bruce Lichorowic are the co-founders of Baltimore-based medical robotics startup Galen Robotics. GALEN ROBOTICS

Richmond-based Phlow Corp. announced Thursday the launch of a coalition that will help ensure that children’s hospitals across the country receive key medications. The Virginia Commonwealth University-affiliated Children’s Hospital of Richmond is one of 11 founding hospital members.

Children’s Hospital Coalition (CHC) aims to provide certainty in availability and access to medicine and address supply chain issues. Citing a 2019 survey of 330 American hospitals — including 29 children’s hospitals — Phlow says that medicine shortages disproportionately and uniquely impact children’s hospitals. The company also says that the pandemic has further exposed the vulnerabilities of the supply chain.

Image: Dr. Eric Edwards, co-founder and CEO of Richmond-based Phlow Corp.

It is with immense gratitude and sincere best wishes that I announce National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) Director Christopher P. Austin, M.D. will be departing NIH. His last day will be April 15, 2021. After nearly a decade of bold leadership as the founding director of NCATS, Chris will become CEO-partner at Flagship Pioneering, a life science platforms company in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Image: NCATS Director Christopher P. Austin, M.D.Daniel Soñé Photography, LLC

RICHMOND, Va., March 18, 2021 – Phlow Corp., a U.S.-based, public benefit corporation committed to a bold mission of providing every American with access to affordable, high-quality essential medicines, today joins in announcing the launch of a groundbreaking Children’s Hospital Coalition: Powered by PhlowTM (CHC). This first-in-kind coalition brings together some of the top children’s hospitals across the nation, in collaboration with Phlow, to provide certainty in availability and access for key medicines necessary to sustain life and conquer disease and to address the nation’s broken essential medicines supply chain.

Launching an innovative product or technology takes more than a good idea, and there are many actions startups can take to strengthen their offering and overall chance of success as they develop the latest innovations to bolster health security, including battling COVID-19. Over the last year, the global scientific community has proven critical to our collective ability to combat the pandemic, and BLUE KNIGHT™ offers a new way to build the kinds of partnerships needed to advance potentially life-saving technology during public health emergencies.

In March 2021, the Dutch government celebrates the start of Horizon Europe. Horizon Europe is the new European framework programme for research and innovation. During a series of online events, we will inform you about the possibilities within this large funding programme.

The National Contact Points from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency organise these events.

The series of events starts with an online kick-off event about the importance of Horizon Europe for the Netherlands. This event focusses on the policy aspects of the programme and is in Dutch. Find out more about the kick-off event (in Dutch).

Blacksburg, VA – March 18, 2021 -- The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center (VTCRC) in partnership with the Virginia Tech Foundation (VTF) has been awarded a grant from the GO Virginia program to fund the evaluation and design of new lab concepts to serve southwest Virginia’s growing life and health sciences industry. The award is part of the Enhanced Capacity Building program that will support Virginia’s Region 2.

“We’re honored to be selected to lead this project. The VTCRC is dedicated to making flexible lab space more accessible for smaller startups as well as some of our high-growth companies. This effort will lead to much-needed resources that will help us grow our biotech industry, recruit new companies, and create valuable jobs for our local economy,” said Brett Malone, Ph.D., CEO of the VTCRC.

Image: https://www.vtcrc.com

As COVID-19 became a growing concern around the world early last year, Lauren Gardner tapped into her research expertise as an infectious disease modeler. Gardner, director of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, along with her Ph.D. student, were motivated to create a dashboard to track the spread of the novel coronavirus. During a panel Tuesday at this year's virtual South by Southwest conference, she shared how the journey unfolded. 

Image: https://www.cnet.com/

Amalgam Rx, Inc., the leader in connecting healthcare providers and life sciences companies through a SaaS-enabled digital marketplace and product platform, is announcing the appointment of Jennifer Main as chief operating officer (COO) and chief financial officer (CFO). On April 5, 2021, Ms. Main will join Amalgam Rx from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) where she has served as COO, responsible for a wide range of functions, including financial management, information technology, acquisition, human capital, facilities, strategic planning, and enterprise risk management. Prior to that, she held senior executive titles, including that of CFO, in five different public and private organizations over the span of her 25+ year career. 

Visualized: Key Events in the COVID-19 Timeline It’s been a long and eventful year since COVID-19 was officially declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020.

The tangible and intangible costs of COVID-19 have been severe. In this visual COVID-19 timeline, we delve into some significant milestones that have occurred around the world.

LONDON—The Oxford startup behind AstraZeneca PLC’s Covid-19 vaccine has raised $168 million in new funding, which it plans to use to adopt its vaccine technology for the treatment of other diseases.

The move is a step in Vaccitech Ltd.’s preparations for going public as soon as this year, according to people familiar with the plans. The moves were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Image: Royal Navy personnel administer the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine at a center in Bath, England. PHOTO: BEN BIRCHALL/ZUMA PRESS

Here are eight recent health IT vendor contracts and go-lives accelerating digital transformation efforts at healthcare organizations.

1. Highmark Health, the parent company of Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network, is building upon its tech partnership with Google Cloud through a new six-year collaboration with the tech giant's sister company Verily. 

2. The Department of Veterans Affairs, in partnership with T-Mobile, is deploying 5G technologies to the Miami VA Healthcare System.

The 8-year-old vaccine maker focuses on addressing unmet medical needs.

OXFORD, United Kingdom, March 17, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vaccitech Ltd (“Vaccitech”), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel immunotherapeutics and vaccines for the treatment and prevention of infectious diseases and cancer, today announces that it has raised $168 million in a Series B financing. This includes $43 million in convertible loan notes previously issued by Vaccitech that converted into Series B shares.

The Series B financing round was led by M&G Investment Management (part of M&G plc), with further participation from new investors including Tencent, Gilead Sciences, Monaco Constitutional Reserve Fund, and Future Planet Capital among others. The Series B financing round was also supported by existing investors, including Oxford Sciences Innovation.

Four Johns Hopkins professors have received grants for their research through the Bisciotti Foundation Translational Fund.

Established with a generous multiyear gift from the Stephen and Renee Bisciotti Foundation, the fund provides $300,000 annually in seed money to advance Johns Hopkins discoveries on a commercial path. Recipients are awarded from $25,000 and $100,000 to conduct their work during a period of up to nine months.

Image: The faculty winners of prizes from the Bisciotti Foundation Translational Fund are (clockwise from top left) Vivek Kumbhari, Xingde Li, Sung Hoon Kang, and Alan Cohen

A year ago, just before the start of pandemic lockdowns, some 10% or less of the U.S. labor force worked remotely full-time. Within a month, according to Gallup and other surveys, around half of American workers were at distant desktops. Today, most of them still are. And surveys of employers and employees alike suggest a fundamental shift. While forecasts differ, as much as a quarter of the 160-million-strong U.S. labor force is expected to stay fully remote in the long term, and many more are likely to work remotely a significant part of the time.

Image: ILLUSTRATION: JAMES GULLIVER HANCOCK - https://www-wsj-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/how-remote-work-is-reshaping-americas-urban-geography-11614960100

CHICAGO/FRANKFURT • The chief scientist of Johnson & Johnson said the company expects to produce up to three billion doses of its Covid-19 jab next year, after the European Union (EU) approved the one-shot vaccine on Thursday.

The company is bringing on three manufacturing plants to produce the key drug substance for the vaccine. It will also have seven plants globally to handle the "fill and finish" - the final production steps and bottling into vials.

IonQ, a quantum computing startup born in College Park, announced Monday that it would likely soon become the first publicly traded company to specialize in commercialized quantum computing.

The company plans to file paperwork with the Securities Exchange Commission in the next week, which will allow it to go public on the New York Stock Exchange through an acquisition deal that would set the valuation of the combined entity to nearly $2 billion.

Image: The IonQ headquarters in College Park on Nov. 9, 2020. (Kurt Leinemann/The Diamondback)  

The past year has been the most important in Emergent BioSolutions’ history. We’ve had the honor of helping our country address Covid-19, manufacturing vaccines in a way few companies can. Deploying longstanding pandemic preparedness capabilities to shorten timelines and ramp up large-scale manufacturing, we can now make more than a billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine a year.

GAITHERSBURG, Md., March 15, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- US-based biotech company VLP Therapeutics, Inc. (VLPT) announced that it has named Ms. Miwa Toyoda, formerly a venture capitalist specialized in pharma and biotech at JAFCO Group Co., Ltd., as chief business officer, effective March 15, in a bid to accelerate its vaccine research and development projects and expand the portfolio.

SIBF welcomes new members.  See the list here.

This free webinar will feature a fireside chat-style conversation with Dr. Robert Scharpf (Delfi Diagnostics) and Dr. Christie Bergerson (Exponent). Drs. Scharpf and Bergerson will discuss how machine learning and artificial intelligence are impacting biomedical engineering and the wider world of human health.

Rich Bendis (BioHealth Innovation/BioTalk podcast) will facilitate the discussion. View the speaker bios for more information.