The Greater Washington Partnership (Partnership), a group of leading CEOs and entrepreneurs aimed at addressing the critical economic issues facing the Greater Washington region, announced today the addition of four board members to its 17-person founding Board of Directors, bringing the total to 21. Joining the Partnership board will be:

• Wes Bush, Chairman, CEO and President of Northrop Grumman Corporation
• Chris Crane, President and CEO, Exelon Corporation
• Sheila Johnson, Founder and CEO, Salamander Hotels & Resort
• Luis Moreno, President, Inter-American Development Bank (Honorary Advisor)

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) today held a ribbon-cutting ceremony led by Dr. Rick Bright, director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), and Daniel J. Abdun-Nabi, Emergent’s president and chief executive officer, to mark the formal opening of the company’s newly expanded Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (CIADM) at its Bayview Campus in Baltimore. The facility is one of three centers designated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to provide advanced development and manufacturing of medical countermeasures to support the U.S. government’s national security and public health emergency needs.

During the 2017 FLC national meeting in San Antonio, Texas, the FLC held its annual elections for open positions to serve on the Executive Board and as regional officers. While absentee ballots were available from March 24 – April 18, onsite voting took place April 25 – 26 and was open to Consortium Representatives whose memberships are registered with the Consortium Recording Secretary.

Pharmaceuticals and life sciences companies are experiencing a wave of competing challenges as part of what could be called the New Health Economy. They include consolidation among providers, especially hospitals, intended to produce efficiency gains; the changing demands and expectations of patients, who seek a greater role in their own care; increasing cost pressures from payors leading to calls for pricing reform; and the declining autonomy of the individual physician as rule-based, protocol-driven care becomes ascendant. The resulting healthcare system will focus increasingly on paying for the value rather than the volume of medical care; in other words, it will be a more consumer-facing industry.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) today published the Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for its 2017 Regional Innovations Strategies (RIS) program. The application period will close June 23, 2017.

The $17 million being made available through the RIS NOFA will help to spur innovation capacity-building activities in regions across the nation. Under this competition, EDA is seeking applications for two separate funding opportunities: the i6 Challenge and the Seed Fund Support (SFS) Grant competition.

Collaboration across academia, government, non-profits, and the biopharmaceutical industry fosters innovation and groundbreaking discoveries in science and research. During the 2017 BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) Forum held at our Gaithersburg, Maryland campus, world-renowned speakers and local leaders convened to showcase the benefits of continued collaboration that can help us prevent, treat, and find cures for deadly diseases.

Emergent BioSolutions is one of the vaccine producers that the federal government can tap in case of a virus pandemic, and now it has doubled the size of one of its manufacturing and development facilities with funding help from the feds.

VLP Therapeutics, LLC (“VLP”), a biotechnology company focusing on the research and development of therapeutic and preventative vaccines and antibody agents, today announced that it completed a convertible note financing with an angel investor Dr. Tomy Kamada, through his investment firm TomyK Ltd., that supports technology startups which pioneer new markets and create new industries with their innovative technologies.

When the next flu pandemic strikes or, perish the thought, the Ebola virus starts spreading in the United States, a newly expanded pharmaceutical plant in East Baltimore stands ready to respond.

Emergent BioSolutions, in partnership with the federal government, spent $80 million to double the size of its East Lombard Street plant near Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.

Today, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan signed into law a measure aimed at providing additional support to Maryland small biotechnology companies.  Senate Bill 226 sponsored by Senator Roger Manno, and House Bill 373 sponsored by Delegate Darryl Barnes will support Maryland small and innovative biotech companies by amending the Biotechnology Investor Incentive Tax Credit (BIITC) definition of a Qualified Maryland Biotechnology to allow investment in companies that have been in business no longer than 12 years and in active business for up to 15 years if completing the process of regulatory approval.   The BIITC Extension has been a legislative priority of BioFactura and the Small Biotechnology Business Coalition, and our Coalition has worked closely with Delegate Barnes and Senator Manno on this legislation.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan signed more than 200 bills Thursday afternoon, including one that will present the University of Maryland with $1.5 million a year to establish a new Maryland Energy Innovation Institute on the campus.

The Maryland Clean Energy Center and the University of Maryland Energy Research Center collaborated to work out the details of the initiative, which aims to increase job opportunities and protect the environment by commercializing environmentally-friendly technology statewide, according to Eric Wachsman, director of the Energy Research Center and the Institute.

MSBDFA promotes the viability and expansion of businesses owned by economically and socially disadvantaged entrepreneurs.

MSBDFA uses include working capital, supplies and materials, machinery and equipment acquisition, land acquisition or real estate improvements. Other uses include the purchase of an existing franchise, construction or renovation and franchise fees or obtaining bid, performance and payment bonds for contracts, which receive the majority of their funding from federal, state or local government.

The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) today announced an agreement to feature Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)-funded early-stage biomedical companies in an Innovation Zone at the 2017 BIO International Convention. The Innovation Zone companies, focused on drug discovery, diagnostics and other therapeutic platform technologies, will have dedicated exhibit space and participate in BIO’s One-on-One Partnering™ system. Select companies will make 15-minute company presentations in the BIO Business Forum.

ByteGrid Holdings LLC, which is dedicated to providing the most secure and compliant hosting solutions available, has been awarded “FedRAMP Ready” status by the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

“We are pleased to announce this achievement as we continue to add to our capability in delivering a highly secure and regulatory compliant set of products and services to our customers. This is just one more example of ByteGrid’s commitment to serving our customers’ requirements and going the extra mile in protecting their systems and data,” said Michael Duckett, Bytegrid CEO.

This isn’t Brian Loew’s first run at Internet success.

During the thick of the dot-com mania 20 years ago, Loew and some friends built an online publishing company called Worldweb.net. It had 150 employees and $15 million in revenue but, like many start-ups from the era, it never posted a profit.

EY today announced the finalists for the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2017 Award in the Maryland Region. The awards program recognizes entrepreneurs who are excelling in areas such as innovation, financial performance and personal commitment to their businesses and communities. These business leaders were selected by a panel of independent judges. Award winners will be announced at a special gala on June 28, 2017 at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel.

June 13, 2017 - 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and County Conference Center 5701 Marinelli Road, North Bethesda, MD 20852

Tuesday, June 13 MCCC 58th Annual Dinner honoring Dr. Martine Rothblatt and United Therapeutics as the Visionary of the Year United Therapeutics Corporation is a bio-tech company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative products to address the unmet medical needs of patients with chronic and life-threatening conditions. They have five approved products on the market today and are in relentless pursuit of “medicines for life”®. Their overarching commitment to environmental sustainability is reflected in their new corporate office facility in Silver Spring. This seven-story, 108,000-sq.-ft., cutting-edge collaborative workspace aims to inspire people think out of today's box and into the realm of tomorrow.

Immigration advocates claim that about half of the most lucrative startups in America were founded by immigrants. But it's complicated for a foreigner to start a company in America — there's no such thing as a startup visa.

That's why some entrepreneurs are "hacking the system" through a workaround that started as an experiment in Massachusetts and has expanded to five other states.

VentureApp, a professional chat platform, today announced VentureMap New York City, an interactive network visualization of the city's tech ecosystem, in partnership with RRE Ventures. The map displays 3,043 investments into tech startups by angel investors, venture capitalists, incubators, accelerators, and more.

Sitting around a table before class, Shane Yeager talked about one of his two startups.

“Short Clips is a technology service where brands and agencies can take their media files — videos, audio, photos — put them into our platform, and then within 24 hours, get a professionally cut 15-second to one-minute video,” he said.

QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced the formation of a joint venture with Maccura Biotechnology Co., Ltd., a leading in vitro diagnostics (IVD) company in China. The joint venture, named MAQGEN plans to accelerate local adaptations, development and commercialization of the GeneReader NGS System in the rapidly growing clinical and clinical research markets in China. QIAGEN's GeneReader NGS System is the world's first complete Sample to Insight solution and makes the benefits of next-generation sequencing (NGS) accessible to any laboratory.

Pieris today announced a strategic collaboration in respiratory diseases with AstraZeneca to develop novel inhaled drugs that leverage Pieris' Anticalin® platform, including its lead preclinical drug candidate, PRS-060.

Anticalin molecules are engineered proteins which can mimic antibodies by binding to sites either on other proteins or on small molecules. They are smaller than monoclonal antibodies, offering the potential of direct delivery to the lung.

Medicine is a field slow to adopt an innovation; after all, you are dealing with people’s lives and there is a very high bar for discarding old ways. That said, a huge percentage of the medical community will agree that tradition has often hampered the adoption of new technologies that can significantly improve communication, collaboration, and community.

Healthcare companies (device manufacturers, payors, and providers, among others) have long relied on technology as a core utility—for tracking R&D efforts and patient information, scheduling payments and services, launching new care options, and generally keeping the lights on.

Look out Silicon Valley, there’s a new innovation hotbed in town.

For the second year in a row, Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN) has won the coveted #1 ranking at the Angel Capital Association’s annual ACA Summit in San Francisco.

AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) and its global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune, today announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approval to Imfinzi (durvalumab). Imfinzi is indicated for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC) who have disease progression during or following platinum-containing chemotherapy, or whose disease has progressed within 12 months of receiving platinum-containing chemotherapy before (neoadjuvant) or after (adjuvant) surgery. Imfinzi is approved under the FDA's accelerated approval pathway, based on tumour response rate and durability of response. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.

Tired of seeing most of the $1 billion-plus it raised for startup funding leave the state, Johns Hopkins University has opened a new state-of-the-art technology incubation hub, part of a $65 million expansion project.

If there was any doubt that a Republican-led Congress might give a strong boost to federal science spending, the Trump administration probably sealed the deal.

With its call in March for a mammoth $6-billion cut in the annual budget of the National Institutes of Health, the administration appears to have done more than anything else to energize the science community and supportive lawmakers, advocates said.

NHLBI small business awardees are eligible to apply for a competing revision to your current award. The Regenerative Medicine Innovation Project (RMIP), will support revision projects that propose solutions to widely recognized issues in the development of safe and effective regenerative medicine therapies.

Awards are anticipated in FY 2017

GSK today announced $139 million of new investment in its biopharmaceutical manufacturing site in Rockville, MD to support growing demand for BENLYSTA® (belimumab) for adult patients with active, autoantibody-positive, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) who are receiving standard therapy.

The National Institutes of Health will get a $2 billion funding boost over the next five months, under a bipartisan spending deal reached late Sunday night in Congress. The agreement marks a sharp rejection of President Trump’s proposal to cut $1.2 billion from the medical research agency in the current fiscal year.

For Charles Li, locating his office at the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus is like coming home.

Li received his MBA from the Carey Business School in 2014 and took the majority of his classes at the Rockville campus. Three years later, when presented with the opportunity to open a business office in Maryland, he chose JHU MCC. He likes the campus library and the proximity to his house.