The Greater Washington Partnership, an alliance of local CEOs, is launching a formal collaboration program with a swath of regional universities — part of an effort to spur the development of more tech-focused workers.

United Therapeutics CEO Martine Rothblatt may not sound like a familiar name to an average person, but in the healthcare industry, she is a living legend. Rothblatt was the second-highest paid female CEO in the U.S. in 2017—and the 19th highest paid overall. (She was the highest-paid female CEO in the U.S. in 2013.)

We’re hearing more and more about precision medicine and how it can positively impact medicine. But what is preventing it from reaching its full potential, and how can everyone from hospitals to startups help scale it?

Silence Therapeutics has appointed Dave Lemus to its Board as non-executive director and Richard Jenkins as head of clinical development. Dave has over 20 years of US and international business experience in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, having served in executive management and non-executive board roles in multiple US and European private and publicly-traded companies. He is currently executive vice chair, chief operating officer and CFO of Proteros biostructures. He also currently serves as a non-executive board member of BioHealth Innovation, Sorrento Therapeutics, and the MIT Club of Washington DC.

The second annual Iowa AgriTech Accelerator has chosen five start-up companies to participate in its 2018 program. These innovators will spend 100 days in Des Moines, Iowa, working with mentors in the AgTech industry who will help them with their business plan and making contacts that could help with funding, distribution, etc. They will also receive $40,000 in funding from the program’s sponsors.

TEDCO plans to provide funding and business-building programming to entrepreneurs from groups who are often overlooked by investors through a new fund that will begin this fall.

From cofounding Sirius Satellite Radio to launching a biotech company to find a cure for her daughter’s illness, Martine Rothblatt has had so much career success that any one of her accomplishments would be a crowning achievement for another entrepreneur. “I always try to convert a moonshot into an earthshot,” Rothblatt told hundreds at the Forbes Women’s Summit on Tuesday.

Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, on Thursday broke ground on the $600 million project to build a headquarters in downtown Bethesda.

CASI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: CASI), a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the development and delivery of high quality, cost-effective pharmaceutical products and innovative therapeutics to patients in the U.S., China and throughout the world, announces a strategic and long-term manufacturing agreement with Yiling Wanzhou International Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. for the manufacturing of entecavir and cilostazol. Yiling Wanzhou International Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary of Shijiazhuang Yiling Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. The contracted manufacturing facilities have been inspected by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and China FDA (CFDA) and operate to strict International Council for Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH) Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) standards, which will enable CASI to eventually sell both entecavir and cilostazol in the U.S., China and worldwide markets. Entecavir and cilostazol are part of the 29 abbreviated new drug applications (ANDAs) that CASI acquired from Sandoz in January 2018.

Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has expanded its metro Washington, D.C. innovation hub with the opening today of a new flagship Cyber Fusion Center, located in Arlington’s Rosslyn business district, designed to help organizations apply new techniques and intelligent tools to defend against data breaches and cyberattacks.

The Iowa AgriTech Accelerator recently announced the five AgTech startups selected for the program’s class of 2018.

Based in Des Moines, the accelerator is a mentor-led program that focuses on ag-based technology innovations. This year’s class is the second to go through the 100-day program.

Inky receives series A funding to enhance analytics capabilities of the software and expand sales and marketing.

Inky Technology Corporation, the leading email security company based in Rockville, Maryland, announces today that ClearSky Security led the Series A round to invest $5.6 million to enhance analytics capabilities of the software and expand sales and marketing. Gula Tech Adventures also participated in the round, and Blackstone (NYSE:BX) has joined as a strategic investor. ClearSky Security Managing Director Peter Kuper has joined CEO/founder Dave Baggett, co-founder Simon Smith, and The Kroger Co. (NYSE: KR) CIO Chris Hjelm on the company’s board of directors.

Host:  UM BioPark & Wexford Science + Technology

Location:  UM BioPark On the Nook Cafe Patio 801 W. Baltimore Street Baltimore  Maryland  21201

Date:  June 28, 2018, 5:00pm to 6:30pm

Mingle with BioPark tenants, our UM Ventures staff, UMB faculty and leaders in Baltimore’s technology community. On the Nook Patio, weather permitting.

Today the National League of Cities (NLC) announced a new program, City Innovation Ecosystems, dedicated to helping cities thrive in the modern economy. The program marks a major new push by NLC to support regional entrepreneurship, innovation and STEM pathways in a time when too few cities are fully participating in the high-tech, global economy.

An exciting job opportunity is available to work in the Technology Transfer Center (TTC), National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Service (DHHS).

If you have experience providing leadership and direction on all matters related to the development & management of technology transfer and patenting and licensing then consider becoming a Supervisory Technology Transfer & Patent Specialist at the NCI!

There have been many a product over the years aimed at getting help to seniors who suffered a fall. But when Erich Meissner’s grandmother had a fall of her own, her device didn’t work for her — because she wasn’t wearing it, a problem the University of Maryland alum found to be widespread.

The Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore named Bill Jones as its interim leader on Monday, and said it is exploring a new leadership structure.

April’s 2018 BioHealth Capital Region Crab Trap, an annual pitch competition, featured five Maryland-area startups vying for its $10,000 award.

I got the news that EPA’s Water Technology Innovation Cluster was dead during the webcast of the final public meeting of the Administration’s ROI Initiative. About two hours into the program a speaker mentioned it during his three-minute statement. The two of us may have been the only ones listening that knew about this project.  Just a few years ago I’d called it a “model technology transfer program.”  Now it was gone, taking down several public-sector entrepreneurs with it.

The DRIVe (Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures) website looks like it belongs to a VC company rather than a federal agency – smart graphics and succinct descriptions. That’s not an accident. DRIVe is taking a venture approach to solving some intractable health issues.

When you hear the term “government research” do the words “entrepreneur”, “start-up”, “commercially relevant” or “industry partner” come to mind?  

For many, they would not.  However, if you attended the Second Annual Technology Showcase last week hosted by NCI and the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR) those are the words that came up in each and every presentation.  This event wasn’t your average government research poster session showcasing incredibly interesting, yet commercially irrelevant studies.  This event was all about the commercially relevant technologies being developed at the NCI and FNLCR that have the potential to take to patients, and the success stories of those that already have. 

Fledgling biotechs and medical-technology startups in the U.S. and Europe have found a new source of funding for their costly research: China.

Business partnering, education and networking was the focus of 3500 biohealth industry leaders who attended the BIO International Convention (BIO) Conference earlier this month in Boston.  At the event, BIO set the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for the Largest Business Partnering Event with 41,400 partnering meetings.  Many of these meetings took place in the pavilion hosted by the Maryland Department of Commerce which included space for meetings BioHealth Innovation, Montgomery County Economic Development Corp (MCEDC), Rockville Economic Development (REDI), the City of Gaithersburg, Viva White Oak, PIC-MC (Montgomery College), University of Maryland Ventures, Johns Hopkins University, Fina BioSolutions, Integrated Pharma Services,  Pharmaceuticals International, Inc., Emergent BioSolutions, AsclepiX, and US FDA’s Tech Transfer Office.  Others from the BioHealth Capital Region who attended included:  ABL, American Gene Technologies, AstraZeneca / MedImmune, Altimmune, BioMarker Strategies, Bytegrid, Children’s National Health, CRBE, Creatv Microtech, GlycoMimetics, IDT Biologica, Immunomics, Intrexon, Leidos Health, MacroGenics, Maryland Tech Council, MaxCyte, Newport Board Group, Novodux Paragon Bioservices, REGENXBIO, MacroGenics, Neuronascent, Scheer Partners, Smithers Avanza, TEDCO, the University of Maryland Baltimore, and the University of Maryland’s Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology Research.

The StartRight! Women's Business Plan Competition was founded in 2004 by Rockville Economic Development, Inc. (REDI) to encourage and support women’s entrepreneurship. Now run by the Maryland Women's Business Center, an initiative of REDI, StartRight! awards prizes for winning business plans each year. The women who enter our competition receive more than the opportunity to win a top prize of $5,000; they also receive valuable coaching and feedback on their business plan!

Complete plans are due electronically by July 12^th.  For more information, click here.  

REGENXBIO Inc. (Nasdaq: RGNX), a leading clinical-stage biotechnology company seeking to improve lives through the curative potential of gene therapy based on its proprietary NAV® Technology Platform, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation for RGX-111. RGX-111 is a novel, one-time investigational treatment for Mucopolysaccharidosis Type I (MPS I), that is designed to deliver the human iduronidase (IDUA) gene directly to the central nervous system (CNS) using the NAV AAV9 vector.

REGENXBIO Inc. (Nasdaq: RGNX), a leading clinical-stage biotechnology company seeking to improve lives through the curative potential of gene therapy based on its proprietary NAV® Technology Platform, today announced that it has received an accelerated license payment of $100 million under its license agreement (the License Agreement) with AveXis, Inc. (AveXis) for the development and commercialization of products to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), due to the acquisition of AveXis by Novartis AG (Novartis).

RoosterBio Inc. has joined the new NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies, known as CMaT. The center, launched in 2017 with a $20 million investment from the National Science Foundation, aims to revolutionize the treatment of cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases and other disorders by enabling scalable manufacturing and broad use of potentially curative therapies that utilize living cells – such as immune cells and stem cells – as “drugs.”

Baltimore biotechnology firm WindMIL Therapeutics has raised a $32.5 million to support clinical trials and further development for new cancer therapies.

For half a century, doctors have said human organ transplants will someday be replaced by xenotransplantation, or putting animal organs into people.

Johns Hopkins spinout LifeSprout recently closed on $6.5 million in funding as it looks to bring soft tissue replacement technology to market, according to CEO Sashank Reddy.

Based on data collected by Livability.com, a website that explores what makes small-to-medium sized cities ideal places to live, the City of Gaithersburg ranked in the top 10 of a 2018 listing of Best Cities for STEM Workers, coming in at #6. The site analyzed data from 2,000 cities and towns across the country, looking at such factors as share of total jobs that fall into the STEM category, the median income for those jobs, and the median income for STEM jobs in relation to overall median income within each city. Number one on the list was Huntsville, Alabama.

The Gaithersburg-based company is raising $5 million, ahead of a planned Series A round of at least $30 million in the first quarter of 2019, to bring a therapy for drug-resistant bacteria to market as soon as possible.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE: ARE), an urban office REIT uniquely focused on collaborative life science and technology campuses in AAA innovation cluster locations, celebrated the first anniversary of Alexandria LaunchLabs®, which opened at the Alexandria Center® for Life Science – New York City in June 2017.

The life science industry is growing rapidly around the country and New York City is poised for an explosion of new companies—but there isn’t enough real estate to accommodate them in Gotham, according to industry experts at the first-ever Life Sciences 2018 Real Estate Development Symposium on June 12.

The state’s Biotechnology Task Force released a 44-page report of recommendations to the state that could help New Jersey reinvigorate its life sciences sector.

Many of the themes from the report echo comments from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s annual conference in Boston recently.