Qiagen will acquire Spanish biotech STAT-Dx for up to €153M – more than 3 times the total funding it has raised so far – to produce fast and effective diagnostic tests for infections and cancer.

One Week Left to Apply!!

Deadline: Friday, February 9, 2018, 5pm

We are looking for the best university startups from schools around the world! 

Over $1 million in Prizes! 42 startup teams will be invited to compete in front of hundreds of investors. 

Join the more than 200 startups that have been successfully launched after competing at the RBPC and raised more than $1.7 billion!

Competition Dates: April 5-7, 2018

Rice University, HoustonJones Graduate School of Business

Global venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) today announced that Jeff Immelt has joined the firm as Venture Partner. Immelt, who recently retired from his role as Chairman and CEO of GE after 16 years at the helm of the 125-year-old company, is widely regarded as one of the world's most innovative and capable business leaders. His extensive domain and company-building expertise are closely aligned with NEA's core sectors of focus, and he will work closely with technology and healthcare companies across the firm's portfolio in this new role.

A new oncology company spun out of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is raising up to $40.5 million to develop its platform of anticancer therapies.

The U.Va. Licensing and Ventures group is offering funding to three local health and technology startups. 

20/20 GeneSystems, Inc. finalized its first equity crowdfunding campaign this week with gross proceeds of $1.07 million, the maximum amount permitted under current SEC rules pursuant to Regulation CF. In so doing, the company became only the second medical technology firm to reach this maximum. 20/20 is now listed as one of the "Top 20 Regulation Crowdfunding Campaigns of All Time" by Crowdfund Capital Advisors. The campaign was posted on First Democracy VC, a joint venture between Indiegogo and MicroVentures and was assisted by marketing firm Enventys Partners.

Innate Pharma and MedImmune will test the combination of Innate’s cancer antibody and the checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab in patients with solid tumors.

Betamore, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures and the University of Maryland, Baltimore are looking for five local digital health, bio-health or life sciences companies to participate in a new collaborative accelerator program.

A new study from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, suggests that replacing time spent sitting with light-intensity physical activity may benefit health more than previously thought.

March 22, 2018 5:30 – 8:00 p.m.

The Grand Lodge of Maryland 304 International Cir Cockeysville, MD 21030

Influential Marylanders was created to honor individuals who have made significant impacts in their field and continue to be leaders in Maryland. These individuals are selected by The Daily Record’s editors for their significant contributions to their respective fields and for their leadership in Maryland in the following areas: civic leadership; communications; education; finance; freestyle; general business; health care; law; philanthropy; real estate; and technology. Three-time winners are inducted into the Circle of Influence.

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:

Sophie Martyr was just 13 years old when she learnt she had brain cancer and was asked to make a decision about whether she wanted to have children in the future.

At many university TTOs, a historical focus on faculty research has resulted in relatively weak support for the student innovation ecosystem – and it’s a gap that many schools are now rushing to fill. It’s true that many universities hold student innovation contests and offer mentoring programs for the most promising business-minded students. But your TTO can go further by creating an ecosystem with a strong talent pool to not only build valuable start-ups, but keep these young entrepreneurs and their companies in the region, contributing to the local economy and creating an environment that’s attractive to outside investors and industry partners.

Three corporate behemoths — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase — announced on Tuesday that they would form an independent health care company for their employees in the United States.

A Baltimore biotechnology company is raising up to $40.5 million and working to develop pharmaceutical technology born out of Johns Hopkins University.

The team at Roche’s Basel-based underdog R&D group pRED has something to cheer about today. The FDA has designated their autism drug RG7314 (balovaptan) as a “breakthrough” therapy worthy of VIP treatment at the agency.

Summer RISE is your chance to impact the future workforce of Montgomery County for three weeks in July.  Be the organization that gives real career experiences to County youth and helps them realize the opportunities ahead of them.

Nearly all states added jobs in 2017, but the latest Labor Department data suggests most states experienced slower growth last year than in 2016.

Still, it proved to be a particularly strong year for a select group of states -- 10 of which recorded year-over-year job gains exceeding 2 percent.

Tanisha Carino, Ph.D., the respected senior executive with more than two decades of experience in academia, government, and the private sector, is joining the Milken Institute as executive director of FasterCures, the center devoted to saving lives and improving the medical research system.

The new year is off to a great start for the partnership between University of Maryland (UMD) and Shanghai’s East China University of Science and Technology (ECUST).  This partnership began five years ago when Prof. Greg Payne, from UMD’s Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) and Fischell Department of Bioengineering, was appointed a Chaired Professor in ECUST.  The goal of this partnership has been to integrate UMD’s expertise in biofabrication with ECUST’s translational research in biomedical materials.  Prof. Changsheng Liu, ECUST’s Vice President and a member of the Chinese National Academy of Sciences, initiated this collaboration as part of ECUST’s efforts to attract international participation in their research programs.  “Our work with Maryland has been one of our most successful examples of international collaboration and has led to numerous technical advances while enhancing our graduate student training,” noted Liu.

American Gene Technologies International Inc. (AGT), a leading gene and cell therapy company, today announced completion of the pilot runs of its HIV Functional Cure automated cell processing protocol. This completes a key milestone of AGT’s planned Phase I clinical trial of AGT103-T, a genetically modified autologous T cell product in development as an HIV functional cure.

Join BioBuzz and sponsor BioIT Solutions in Rockville at Bar Louie on February 13th, 2018 from 5 - 7pm. Only a 5 minute walk from the Rockville Metro, please join us for this exciting event. BioIT Solutions offers a range of services from enterprise systems built on their 1Platform4® Suite for advanced computational, workflow, and data management systems to IT strategy, architecture and management consulting. The 1Platform4® Suite consists of a software foundation on which various highly configurable modules are assembled and tailored to each client's specifications and needs.

Northrop Grumman will form a new business sector focused on new, innovative technology once it closes on its acquisition of Orbital ATK this year, a top Northrop executive said during a Thursday earnings call.

Innovators Magazine asked some biotech stakeholders what trends they expect to see in their markets this year.

The opinions were published in our special biotechnology edition, which was distributed to delegates at an industry conference in Glasgow this week.

AOL co-founder Steve Case will be the inaugural speaker for Anchor Ventures’s speaker series. Anchor Ventures is a collaboration between University of Maryland Ventures and Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures.

Paragon Bioservices, the leading private equity-backed biologics contract development and manufacturing organization with proven expertise in gene therapy and next-generation vaccines, is expanding a new process development and cGMP manufacturing facility located conveniently near Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) Airport in Baltimore, Maryland.

2017 marked continued growth for Rockville Economic Development, Inc. (REDI) and the Maryland Women's Business Center (MWBC).

We are pleased to highlight our many accomplishments in the 2017 Annual Report, which was released today.

Cambridge's up and coming life sciences firms will be able to benefit from the expertise of some of the biggest names in the sector at a new bio-incubator and life science accelerator.

The pharmaceutical industry continues to pursue the discovery of medicines for cancer patients with unprecedented rigor. Over the past several years, three major trends have reflected this pursuit. They include the growth of the industry pipeline of cancer-drug candidates, the evolution of the clinical-trial landscape, and the explosion of available clinical and real-world data

Paragon Bioservices, the leading private equity-backed biologics contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with proven expertise in gene therapy and next-generation vaccines, announces today the promotion of key personnel and the addition of two industry veterans to its leadership team. Specifically, the Company appoints Philip Wills, PhD, as Chief Commercial Officer, John Conner as Chief Manufacturing Officer, and William "Bill" Thomas, Jr., PhD, as Chief Scientific Officer, and hires Randy Henrickson as VP of Manufacturing and Dermot McCaul as VP of Information Technology.

QIAGEN announced that it has received clearance for its ipsogen JAK2 RGQ PCR Kit (ipsogen JAK2 assay) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for additional use in the diagnosis of all myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs), which are a group of cancers in which immature blood cells in the bone marrow do not mature and become healthy blood cells.

On Jan. 22, 2018, Sanofi announce that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire all outstanding shares of Bioverativ, the hemophilia and blood disorders-focused spin-off company of Biogen, for $105 per share, or a transaction value of approximately $11.6 billion. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of Sanofi and Bioverativ.

Accelerate@Babraham is designed to support the earliest stages of new life-science ventures, by providing easy-access laboratory and office space, (the ‘bio-incubator’) together with supporting programmes of business, science, finance and entrepreneurial mentoring (the ‘accelerator’) provided by strategic partners.

The ETC (Emerging Technology Centers), Baltimore City’s award-winning technology and innovation centers, announces the Accelerate Baltimore (AB) program will run for its seventh consecutive year and applications are now open. The ETC will select six tech startups for the 13-week program set to begin mid-March. The Abell Foundation has awarded ETC $250,000 in funding for this seed accelerator for the third year in a row. Based on the model of last year’s successful program, each of this year’s AB winners will be awarded $25,000 in seed stage funding, while one company will be awarded an additional $100,000 in follow on funding at the end of the program.

Richard Hughen’s first entrepreneurial experience was as Managing Director at e-learning startup LearnWare, where he says his “addiction” to startups began in earnest.  The former manager at Abbott Diagnostics, Cordis and Johnson & Johnson enjoyed LearnWare for the very reason that entrepreneurs usually get hooked: building something from scratch is exhilarating