Biohealth Innovation
GSK is quietly building a new treatment pipeline, in parallel to its established work on molecular medicines, that hopes to use peoples’ nerves to treat disease. If successful, it could not only revolutionize its product offering, but change the very way we think of medicine.
“There are fewer players looking at it,” said Kris Famm, who leads the dedicated R&D unit at GSK. “We’ve gone out on a limb to capture what we believe is a game-changing therapeutic opportunity.”
Everyone loves the backup quarterback because they’ve never played a down. But once those backups play, the sports analogy goes, and they are almost always worse than the starter.
Are digital health VCs the backup quarterbacks of healthcare investing? Rightfully, there’s a lot of excitement about corporate venture’s increasing prominence in healthcare. But don’t get overexcited.
The pursuit of truth requires both free speech and racial justice
Nearly two centuries after his birth as a slave in Maryland, the great orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass has come home. His statue, just installed at the University of Maryland, now towers over a square inscribed with his soaring words on racial justice and the transformative power of education.
The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) announced today the release of the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund (CRCF) annual report for FY2015, which tracks investments in high-potential technology development and commercialization initiatives throughout Virginia.
In FY2015, CIT announced 38 grants to startups, universities and research institutes engaged in research and development projects totaling $2.8 million in key sectors such as life sciences, cyber security, advanced manufacturing and energy. This investment was leveraged to secure an additional $5.6 million from private sector and university matching funds.
A Roche drug that can prolong the lives of some women with advanced breast cancer has been plunged back into the centre of a drug pricing row after Britain's health cost agency declared that it is still too expensive.
The stand-off shows how the price of medicines is as pressing and emotive an issue in Europe as in the United States, where Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has promised to clamp down on alleged profiteering by the drug industry.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Term Sheets But Were Afraid to Ask!
It is an entrepreneur's dream...to receive a term sheet for your venture! Don't let it become your nightmare by not understanding the terms or ramifications of what you are about to sign! Learn from a panel of legal and venture capital experts about what to expect, how to navigate the terminology, and what strategies you can deploy to get you the best possible deal structure. Our presenters are willing to take on your questions, from basic to the most advanced, so join us at the next National Capital SoPE Chapter meeting.
Dr. Jayfus Doswell has become accustomed to finding solutions to complex problems.
The Baltimore-born founder of The Juxtopia Group— a nonprofit established to reduce the critical STEM learning gap of underserved communities— has helped to find another solution to a problem that involves Alzheimer’s disease.
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:
Notices:
Requests for Applications:
The University of Maryland has been named a finalist for the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities’ Innovation & Economic Prosperity University Awards this year in recognition of its commitment to promoting regional economic development. The advocacy association gives the awards to universities that use their resources to better society and engage their local community, according to a university news release.
Martine Rothblatt is one of the founders of Sirius Satellite Radio and the founder and CEO of United Therapeutics, a biotechnology company. Rothblatt founded United Therapeutics in 1996 to find a cure for her daughter’s rare lung disease. In 2013, she was the highest paid female CEO in the United States. Rothblatt wrote her dissertation for her Ph.D. in medical ethics of xenotransplantation, the act of transferring cells, organs or tissues from one species to another species. She is also the founder of the Terasem Movement Foundation, a nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting the ethical use of nanotechnology for extending human life. She has written several books, including Apartheid of Sex on gender identity and Two Stars for Peace on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Rothblatt came out as transgender in 1994. Last Thursday, Rothblatt sat down with students from various campus media organizations for an interview before speaking in Finney Chapel as a convocation speaker.
Supernus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:SUPN), a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on developing and commercializing products for the treatment of central nervous system diseases, today announced that it has received notice that, effective following the close of trading on November 11, 2015, New Enterprise Associates (NEA) distributed an aggregate of 3,820,625 shares of Supernus Pharmaceuticals common stock to its partners. "The distribution announced today is a continuation of the actions NEA took in June 2015 to distribute a portion of its position to its limited partners after holding that position for over nine years," stated Jack Khattar, president and chief executive officer of Supernus. The NEA funds continue to hold 3,820,625 shares.
California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), the leading voice to drive innovation for California's life sciences sector, and PwC US today released the 2016 California Life Sciences Industry Report. The annual report indicates that California's life sciences sector has a profound impact on the state's economy, showing industry increases in the areas of sector employment growth, wages, research funding and life sciences venture investment.
The new report suggests that while biopharmaceutical and medical device employment in numerous top-ranked biotech states, including New York and Massachusetts, has decreased in recent years, sector employment in California grew by six percent between 2010 and 2014. Overall, California's life sciences sector directly employed 281,000 people in 2014 and indirectly employed another 581,000 – totaling nearly one million people employed due to life sciences innovation by Californians.
San Diego-based Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, which is developing antifungal agents that treat life-threatening fungal infections, has raised $40.5 million in Series B funding. RiverVest Venture Partners led the round with participation from other investors that included New Enterprise Associates and BioMed Ventures. In conjunction with the funding, Dr. Niall O’Donnell, managing director at RiverVest Venture Partners and Ed Mathers, a partner at New Enterprise Associates, were added to Amplyx’s board of directors.
A new experimental monoclonal antibody developed by AstraZeneca is being watched as a possible contender to shake up the market for lupus treatments—a neglected disease space—by offering a more targeted approach to treating lupus.
Over the past 60 years there has been only one new FDA-approved treatment for the inflammatory disease: The FDA granted marketing approval to GlaxoSmithKline's Benlysta in 2011.
If you’re tired of wearable fitness trackers fighting for space on your wrist, it might not be a problem in the near future: researchers say they can reliably measure your heart and breathing rates just by looking at data from a smartphone sitting in your pocket or bag.
Researchers at MIT are working on a project called BioPhone that derives these biological signals from your smartphone’s accelerometer, which they say can capture the small movements of your body that result from the beating of your heart and rising and falling of your chest. A paper on the work was presented at a conference in August.
Boehringer Ingelheim is launching a new research and development (R&D) strategy and a five-year R&D investment programme. This new plan was announced today at its R&D press conference in Berlin. The company pledges to invest a total of 11 billion euros in its new R&D programme over the next five years. Of the total investment, 5 billion euros will go to preclinical R&D with 1.5 billion euro thereof planned for collaborations with external partners. The company is aiming to develop the next generation of medical breakthroughs and maintain its excellent competitive position. The new R&D strategy embraces open innovation in the form of external collaborations to better leverage emerging science and Boehringer Ingelheim’s experience and capabilities for the discovery of new medicines.
Johns Hopkins tech transfer is at the heart of a new agreement meant to bolster the development of a DNA-based vaccine for allergies.
Formally, Rockville-based Immunomic Therapeutics inked a licensing deal with Astellas Pharma, which will develop the allergy vaccine. Through the deal, Immunomic will receive an upfront payment of $300 million, and is entitled to 10 percent royalties from vaccine products developed. Astellas, a Japan-based pharmaceutical giant, gets the right to produce the vaccine worldwide.
The University of Maryland has quietly started its next capital fundraising campaign with an eye on raising more than $1 billion.
In a wide-ranging conversation with the Washington Business Journal, President Wallace Loh said he hopes to build on his recent success, raising more than the record-setting multiyear "Great Expectations" campaign in the next three years. The campaign is in a quiet phase and won't be officially launched until at least half of the goal is raised.
A new report shows that participation of corporate venture capitalists in life sciences investing has been increasing.
The MoneyTree report from the National Venture Capital Association and PricewaterhouseCoopers with data from Thomson Reuters show that in the nine months of the year, corporate VCs pumped a total of $1.18 billion into life sciences startups. Whereas in all of 2014, corporate VCs have shelled out $1.2 billion. Back in 1995, as far back as the MoneyTree report goes back, corporate VCs invested only $70.7 million dollars.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved Swiss drugmaker Roche's Cotellic to be used in combination with the company's Zelboraf drug to treat BRAF V600 mutation-positive advanced melanoma.
Roche is counting on the addition of Cotellic to help it revive flagging sales of five-year-old Zelboraf, which dropped 25 percent during the first nine months of 2015 and has been under intense pressure from rivals' drugs as the standard of care moves to combination therapy.
The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur magazine today announced the results of The Princeton Review's 10th annual survey that names the 25 undergraduate and 25 graduate schools best for entrepreneurship studies.
Babson College captured the #1 spot on the undergraduate entrepreneurship programs ranking list for the 4th consecutive year. Harvard University finished #1 on the graduate entrepreneurship programs list for the 2nd consecutive year.
The I-Corps™ at NIH program, supported by President Obama’s Strategy for American Innovation, aims to support biomedical innovation and translation, with the goal of expediting the development and commercialization of a range of technologies to address the leading causes of death and disability in the United States. I-Corps™ participants will receive lessons on how to build a scalable business model as well as entrepreneurial trainings, and mentorship opportunities. In addition, modest funding will be provided to teams to assist them in translating their ideas from the lab into a viable product on the market and to help them avoid common failure points.
NHLBI Small Business programs support the development of new technologies from lab to market.
The NIH will host a webinar on the I-Corps™ at NIH program to provide information about the program, eligibility, benefits, and how to apply. Participants will also be offered an opportunity to engage with program leaders. Registration for the webinar is free, but required.
Three years into President Wallace Loh’s campus-wide initiative to engage students of all majors in innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E), the University of Maryland has been named a Top 25 School for Entrepreneurship Studies by The Princeton Review.
In the 2016 rankings released today and featured in the December issue of Entrepreneur Magazine, UMD climbed 11 spots from last year to No. 10 for undergraduate entrepreneurship education. This marks the fifth consecutive year that UMD has been named a top 25 program, and the first time the university has ranked in the top 10. UMD also ranked No. 6 among public universities and No. 18 for its graduate program.
Lupus is a poorly-understood autoimmune disorder that is characterised by joint pain and swelling, rashes on the skin and extreme fatigue, with some patients experiencing intermittent flare-ups which can lead to severe and even life-threatening symptoms.
GSK reported new phase III data on a new subcutaneous formulation of its market-leading Benlysta (belimumab) product - which was approved as in one-hour infusion formulation for SLE in 2011, the first new therapy for the disease in five decades.
The Chesapeake Regional Tech Council (CRTC) named a permanent leader to succeed former executive director Kris Shock.
Tami Howie assumed the helm of the Maryland organization, which looks to organize and connect the state’s tech sector, on Nov. 2.
British biopharma startup NightstaRx, which develops gene therapy for inherited retinal dystrophies, just closed out a $35 million Series B led by New Enterprise Associates. The funding will help NightstaRx advance several gene therapies into human trials, as well as expand its existing clinical program for the treatment of choroideremia.
The company’s approach to gene therapy involves harnessing an adeno-associated viral vector to deliver a corrective gene into patients with inherited progressive blindness. Specifically, to treat choroideremia, NightstaRx delivers a wild-type copy of the Rab-escort protein 1 (REP-1) gene (AAV2-REP1) straight into the retinal cells.
The University of Maryland BioPark is looking to add another building that would feature a biotech incubator as its anchor.
Real estate firm Wexford Science + Technology is seeking public financing for a future building at 873 W. Baltimore St., which would be key in attracting a new branch of the Massachusetts-based Cambridge Innovation Center to Baltimore, officials say.
GenArraytion, Inc., is pleased to announce the successful completion of a project for the optimization of five separate MultiFLEX™ molecular assay panels for the identification of over 65 infectious disease targets of world-wide US military concern. The project was in support of the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense’s (JPEO CBD) Global Biosurveillance Technology Initiative (GBTI), which is working to improve the biosurveillance capacity for the Department of Defense to systematically deploy an infectious disease testing capability to improve detection capacity while connecting these labs to a networked analytics and communication hub, JPEO provides worldwide users with timely, actionable, and operationally valuable information enabling a more effective response to a health crisis anywhere in the world. The MultiFLEX molecular assays are infectious disease panels with 12 to 20 individual molecular targets for fever causing and vector born microorganisms of military concern across the globe. The tests are designed to work on the Luminex MagPix instruments which have been distributed to the military area labs around the world.
Please join us on November 12, 2015 at 8:00 a.m. for our monthly WIB Meet-Up at the Institute for Genome Sciences, 801 West Baltimore St. Room 602. Drs. Linda Yaswen-Corkery and Julie Wu will continue our “Lean In” discussion using the “What Works for Women at Work” series.
Anyone is welcome – there is no charge and you don’t have to be a member of Women In Bio to attend. Please also feel free to circulate to friends & colleagues. For those off UMB campus, there is on street parking and a garage at Poppleton & Baltimore Streets.
Each year the Tech Council of Maryland recognizes three outstanding individuals in the fields of technology, life science, and education. These individuals have made outstanding contributions to the success of the community. Please mark your calendar and join us on March 21, 2016 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center for a celebratory dinner. The 2016 honorees are:
STEVE CASE Chairman and CEO, Revolution LLC; Co-Founder, America Online and Chairman, The Case Foundation
ROBERT FISCHELL Inventor/Physicist; Professor of Practice, Fischell Department of Bioengineering
MARTINE ROTHBLATT Chairman and Co‐CEO of United Therapeutics Corporation (UTHR); President and CEO of its Lung Biotechnology public benefit company
Mast Therapeutics, Inc. (NYSE MKT: MSTX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company leveraging its molecular adhesion and sealant technology (MAST) platform to develop novel therapies for sickle cell disease, heart failure, and stroke, today announced that Peter Greenleaf has been appointed to the Company's Board of Directors, effective immediately.
Mr. Greenleaf brings to Mast Therapeutics' Board of Directors over 20 years of experience in the biopharmaceutical industry, including a track record of effective leadership through periods of significant growth and extensive global commercial operations, strategic planning, and product development expertise.
An international drug giant and a La Jolla venture capital firm are expanding their partnership to create local biotech companies, a sign that the partnership -- and the promise of new disease therapies -- is progressing.
GSK will increase potential milestone payments to Avalon Ventures from $40 million to $50 million for each biotech formed. In return, the venture capital firm is assuming more risk by increasing its proportion of funding by an undisclosed amount.
Johns Hopkins University and Luminox-Health, an Israeli healthcare startup specializing in digital medicine, will collaborate with a new entity that will invest $30 million into Israeli digital medicine ventures, according to Globes. The cooperative agreement will be officially announced next Wednesday at the Peres Peace Center, at an event titled “Israel Launches its New Innovation Frontier.” Former Israeli Prime Minister and President Shimon Peres, Chief Scientist Hasson, and representatives of Johns Hopkins and Luminox-Health are expected to take part in the event. This agreement comes after the university signed a multi-year agreement with Israeli health startup Luminox in September to establish an accelerator for Israeli digital health startups.
ZS Pharma, a biotech firm that was launched out of the Tech Fort Worth business incubator, has agreed to be acquired by AstraZeneca Plc for $2.7 billion in cash.
ZS Pharma investors will get $90 per share, London-based AstraZeneca said in a statement. That’s a 42 percent premium to Thursday’s close. The board of San Mateo, California-based ZS Pharma agreed to the transaction.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s new rules for equity investing in crowdfunding sites are chock full o’ good and bad news for you.
In short, this could be a very good thing for investors—just know what you’re doing.