Investigators at the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies (ICRHPS) at Tufts Medical Center (Tufts MC) and Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) - a shared resource between Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM), together with the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine's Brain Injury Outcomes (BIOS) Division and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), won a seven-year, $25 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to form one of only three new national Trial Innovation Centers (TICs) that will provide high-quality design and operational support to investigators conducting multi-center clinical trials.

Joint replacements. Cardiac care. Chemotherapy.

What do those things have to do with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act?

Economists and policymakers think the U.S. may be overpaying for such services, which helps drive up healthcare expenses for everyone. And the health law has a program that includes testing new ways to pay for care — including in those three areas — that might result in better quality and lower costs.

A five-year extension of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs took a big step forward at the end of November.

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, announced that language she wrote seeking the extension was included in a compromise National Defense Authorization Act, with votes expected soon.

Marriott Hotels in Europe has launched an accelerator program for tech companies to enhance the travel and hospitality experience. Each startup will be given expert guidance and the opportunity to pilot their product. Following a successful test period, Marriott Hotels could potentially offer them an ongoing partnership.

Thermo Fisher has bolstered its stem cell technology and reagent business through the acquisition of MTI-GlobalStem.

AstraZeneca will partner with Bicycle Therapeutics to develop respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic disease treatments based on Bicycle’s proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle®) product platform through a collaboration that the Cambridge, U.K., startup said today could generate for it more than $1 billion.

Under the collaboration, Bicycle has agreed to identify Bicycle bicyclic peptides for an undisclosed number of targets specified by AstraZeneca. The pharma giant has agreed to oversee further development and product commercialization.

Buyout firms have taken an increasingly large role in healthcare, investing in the full range of companies: insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical-technology firms, and many kinds of service provider. Historically, success has come from making “smart bets” on companies well positioned to capitalize on an industry trend or shift. TPG’s buyout of Par Pharmaceutical and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice’s acquisition of Envision Healthcare are examples of investments that benefited from secular industry tailwinds. Those same factors have propelled the healthcare sector to a leading performance in public markets over the past five years (Exhibit 1).

This request for information (RFI) seeks comments regarding early translational research activities supported by NHLBI.

Background

NHLBI seeks to facilitate and accelerate the development of new clinical interventions by bridging the gaps between mechanistic, discovery, and early translational research. This includes providing appropriate mechanisms to support investigator-initiated research, addressing resource and knowledge gaps, and creating initiatives to support career development of translational scientists and biomedical entrepreneurs.

Alexandria Real Estate CEO Joel Marcus on the company's deal to develop Merck's new research facility in California.

America’s entrepreneurial economy is the envy of the world.  Young companies account for almost 30 percent of new jobs, and as we have fought back from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, startups have helped the U.S. private sector create 15.5 million jobs since early 2010—the longest streak of private-sector job creation on record. 

Today, in celebration of National Entrepreneurship Month, the Administration is releasing a Top 10 list of President Obama’s most significant specific actions to promote American entrepreneurship, as well as announcing new efforts to build on these successes. The President’s unprecedented focus on the role of startups in the United States’ innovation economy is exemplified by his launch of Startup America in 2011, a White House initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the Nation.

MedImmune and Abpro said today they will partner to develop a preclinical, novel, bispecific antibody targeting angiopoietin-2 and vascular endothelial growth factor (Ang2-VEGF).

Through the collaboration—whose value was not disclosed—several potential therapeutic areas will be explored where inhibition of the Ang2 and VEGF pathways with the bispecific antibody may provide clinical benefit, MedImmune and Abpro said.

The emergence of big data, as well as advancements in data science approaches and technology, is providing pharmaceutical companies with an opportunity to gain novel insights that can enhance and accelerate drug development. It will increasingly help government health agencies, payers, and providers to make decisions about such issues as drug discovery, patient access, and marketing. From our unique vantage points at Genentech, a leading biotechnology company with a major data science practice, and The Data Incubator, a data-science education company that places and trains data scientists, we have seen how the pharmaceuticals industry has leveraged big data for some potentially revolutionary advances and the challenges it has faced along the way.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures and CoapTech, LLC, announced today that the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has granted CoapTech exclusive licensing rights for the commercial development of a platform technology called Coaptive Ultrasound.  CoapTech will use the technology, initially, to bring to market a medical device allowing non-surgical providers to safely perform feeding tube placement at the bedside through a novel procedure termed PUG (Percutaneous Ultrasound Gastrostomy).  PUG is a minimally invasive and more cost-effective method for the placement of permanent gastrostomy (feeding) tubes into stomachs of patients who need long-term nutritional supplementation.

Stephen Moret, the head of LSU's major fundraising arm and a former key adviser to then-Gov. Bobby Jindal, is leaving Louisiana for Virginia.

Moret has been tapped to lead the embattled Virginia Economic Development Partnership after less than two years leading the private LSU Foundation.

In its third year of mentoring and investing in cybersecurity start-ups in Northern Virginia, state-funded start-up accelerator Mach37 is starting to show it can churn out self-sustaining businesses.

Venture capital has been on a good run over the past few years across a range of sectors; even with recent slowdown relative to 2014-2015, venture-backed investments remain above historic averages. In fact, the first three quarters of 2016 alone are already higher than the annual rate of venture investing in all but two years since 2002.

Quasi-public venture capital firm MassVentures reports that its SBIR Targeted Technologies (START) program has invested $12 million into 50 companies that need more time to commercialize high-risk, high-reward technologies — and those companies have leveraged that state investment to raise an additional $278 million in outside capital.

Becton, Dickinson and Co. (NYSE:BDX) presented their roadmap for the future on their recent analyst day briefing. The presentation laid out ambitious plans that management has set out for the company through to 2019, including targeting top line expansion and double-digit bottom line expansion to be driven by margin improvements. The management has also set out to increase dividends through to 2019, through roughly $11 billion in operating cash flow (OCF) generation.

QIAGEN and CosmosID, a leading genomic big data company, today announced the launch of a metagenomics analysis plugin for the QIAGEN Microbial Genomics Pro Suite and CLC Genomics Workbench. The launch of the Cosmos ID plugin expands QIAGEN’s industry leading platform for NGS bioinformatics and strengthens its role as a provider of Sample to Insight metagenomics solutions.

Seeking to deliver the “final nail in the coffin for HIV,” NIH scientists have kicked off a large clinical trial of a vaccine regimen this week in South Africa.

Under a collaboration that includes GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases started a phase 2b/3 trial of a new vaccine regimen in 5,400 sexually active men and women aged 18 to 35 who don’t have the infection. They’ll receive five injections over a year.

Scientific efforts to find cures for cancer will be severely hampered if the scientific community does not change the ways in which patient data is collected, shared, and analyzed. The development of targeted therapies and immunotherapies — the two biggest hopes for cancer cures — depend on the existence of large data sets comprising patients’ genetic and clinical information. Today, that data is fragmented and guarded in silos. Indeed, the well-kept secret in the cancer space is that progress in finding cures is being impeded as much by the lack of sharing by the players in the precision medicine ecosystem as it is by the stubbornness of the underlying science.

A $65 million building was dedicated Monday afternoon at the East Baltimore Development Inc. project that will include a business incubator, research space and a Starbucks job training site.

The University of Virginia Health System has named its first-ever Chief Innovation Officer, a position that's expected to bridge the gap between research and treatment.

UVA is home to revolutionizing research and technology but newly-hired CIO Jeff Keller will facilitate in putting the research to use.

House and Senate leaders announced late Friday night that they had finally hammered out a deal on landmark legislation designed to speed federal approval of new drugs and devices and boost funding of medical research.

But what Republican lawmakers call the “final” version of the 21st Century Cures Act is actually still in negotiation with Senate Democrats, a senior Democratic aide told STAT on Sunday.

The 2017 FLC Awards is now open for nominations.  One of the most coveted honors in the technology transfer field, the FLC Awards have been presented to over 200 federal laboratories since their inception in 1984. Many of our winning technology transfer efforts have gone on to become products and devices that are indispensable in our daily lives, including:

House and Senate health committee leaders have released the final "21st Century Cures” bill and announced that the House of Representatives will vote Wednesday on a $6.3 Billion landmark medical innovation package that will accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of new cures and treatments and provide new funding for the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration. The leaders said the House would also vote Wednesday to include in the Cures bill legislation that updates major mental health programs for the first time in a decade. The new funding includes $1 billion in state grants to fight opioid abuse.

The Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine will receive $138 million in federal funds that will support the work of the newly created Center for International Health, Education and Biosecurity to build programs in Africa to combat HIV/AIDS.

Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. (ITI), a privately-held, Maryland-based biotechnology company, today announced the issuance of a new United States Patent which extends ITI’s intellectual property portfolio covering their proprietary vectors, including ITI’s out-licensed investigational DNA vaccines. Specifically, U.S. Patent No. 9,499,589 (‘589 Patent) issued on November 22, 2016, entitled “Chimeric Vaccines.”

Quantified Care is making moves this fall.

The health IT startup received an investment from KiwiVenture Partners II earlier this month. The terms of the infusion from the New York-based venture firm were not disclosed.

The i6 Challenge award sets aim on enhancing Long Island Bioscience Ecosystem

The Center for Biotechnology at Stony Brook University has announced that is has received a three-year, $500,000 U.S. Department of Commerce i6 Challenge Investment. The award will support the Center for Biotechnology’s (CFB) efforts to bolster the regional bioscience ecosystem by supporting a formal mentorship program, as well as a critical NIH-focused SBIR/STTR training and application development program which will assist in capital formation and launching new companies.

Venture capital has been on a good run over the past few years across a range of sectors; even with recent slowdown relative to 2014-2015, venture-backed investments remain above historic averages. In fact, the first three quarters of 2016 alone are already higher than the annual rate of venture investing in all but two years since 2002.

When a scientist discovers a new drug to cure a disease, it’s cheers all around. But what happens next? How is the drug produced for commercialization so that it can actually be administered to a patient?

That’s where Michael Betenbaugh, a Whiting School of Engineering professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, comes in. He and his laboratory team are working with researchers at MedImmune to develop a more efficient media in which to grow the microbes used to produce genetically engineered human antibodies for testing, development and commercialization.

EY has named J.W. “Bill” Marriott, Jr., Marriott (MAR) International Executive Chairman, its 2016 US EY Entrepreneur of the Year. The honor was announced at the EY Strategic Growth Forum in Palm Springs, California.

The legendary hotelier credits hard work and high expectations for his associates as two key reasons for his success. Under his more than 50 years of leadership, Marriott has grown from a family restaurant business into the world’s largest hotel chain.

GSK has recently been ranked first in the Access to Medicine Index for the fifth consecutive time, taking a leadership position in research and development, pricing, manufacturing and distribution, and product donations.

The Index, which recognises GSK for its clear access to medicines strategy and company-wide ownership, is an independent measure of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies' efforts to improve access to healthcare in developing countries.

During the STRT1UP Roadshow, lots of companies around the state pitched on the Startup Maryland bus.

They were looking to get exposure from the video evidence it provided, but also looking to move on to the next round.