Sensassure, a Canadian aging-tech startup, has temporarily relocated to Columbia, MD to work with Maryland-based aged-care services provider Lorien Health Systems to continue developing Sensassure's hardware/software solution for managing urinary incontinence in the elderly. Sensassure's product utilizes a sensor to detect urination events, which alerts nursing staff when changes are required. Sensassure offers a substantial upgrade from the current manual care processes employed by nursing staff, which lead to missed incontinence events that develop into expensive secondary conditions such as rashes and bed-sores, as well as reducing the time spent checking patients who have not had an event. While in Maryland, Sensassure's co-founding team is physically living at one of Lorien's assisted living communities as they begin their pilot program. You can check out their video blog here.

A new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) identifies new immune molecules that protect against deadly Marburg virus, a relative of Ebola virus. The research provides ingredients needed to develop treatments for future Marburg outbreaks.

“These antibodies attack a new site on Marburg virus we had not seen before,” said Erica Ollmann Saphire, senior author of the new study, professor at TSRI and director of the Viral Hemorrhagic Fever Immunotherapeutic Consortium.

Martine Rothblatt wants to transform the way we transplant organs and she doesn’t take no for an answer. When her daughter came down with a rare, life-threatening illness several decades ago, Rothblatt started researching the illness, and founded a company to develop a treatment for it.

In the mid-1990s, Rothblatt’s daughter Jenesis developed pulmonary arterial hypertension, a rare condition in which the arteries in the lungs and the heart become constricted, making it hard for blood to flow through them. Doctors gave her a grim prognosis: Without a lung transplant, she had roughly three-to-five years to live.

Get answers now from experienced entrepreneurs and legal/business professionals on how to build a successful startup company. Receive free and impartial advice, brainstorm business strategies, investigate funding opportunities and learn about the vast resources available to entrepreneurs in Maryland.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015 at 8:30 AM - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 at 12:30 PM

Enough talk about patient engagement. Take your insights and mold them into a mandate.

Are your ideas strong enough to develop a real patient engagement solution – and then present that idea to the likes of the chief technology officer of Health and Human Services?

Attendees of MedCity ENGAGE on July 14-15 in Bethesda will do just that. Teams will work on three issues critical to patient engagement – led by healthcare organizations already dedicated to the issue: Kindred Healthcare, Sharecare and Lumiata.

Each group will present their ideas to the full MedCity ENGAGE audience. The audience will vote, and MedCityNews.com will publish the winning idea. Our journalists will then continue to examine the concept throughout the rest of the year, writing stories that explore the ideas developed by the winning patient engagement solution.

Spaces are filling up fast. Sign up to attend MedCity ENGAGE and then register to join in the challenges.

When it comes to fostering innovation and the commercialisation of world class research, there is something the United States has that we lack. We ought to learn from the successes of the US in this area, and emulate one program they have pioneered to give our own innovative industries a much needed kick start.

For dozens of Australian researchers returning to the country after working in the US, the lack of an equivalent to the US’s Small Business Innovation Research SBIR scheme here reflects a major hole in our innovation ecosystem.

Thirty-six mentors from the schools of medicine, pharmacy, and nursing at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) will be paired with 30 Baltimore City high school students, ages 16 to 18, for a five-week-long Summer BioScience Internship Program. The goal of the program is to teach students about careers in biomedical research through hands-on learning, and to link the students to faculty members who can support, guide, and inspire them to pursue careers in science research.

The Universities at Shady Grove (USG) announces the addition of six new members to the USG Board of Advisors, a formally constituted body established under the auspices of the University System of Maryland Board of Regents.

The new USG board members include:

• Daniel Abdun-Nabi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Emergent BioSolutions Inc.
• Jay Clarke, Senior Vice President, Supply Chain Operations of Total Wine and More.
• John Kenyon, Senior Vice President of Engineering Staff for Hughes Network Systems.
• Roya Mohadjer, Senior Strategic Planner and IS&GS STEM Leader for Lockheed Martin.
• Michael O’Brien, Global Head of Corporate Communications for MedImmune.
• Larry E. Walker, Principal of The Walker Group.

Brooklyn Community Foundation has announced the inaugural cohort of its Incubator Project– one of several new programs within the Foundation’s Brooklyn Accelerator, which launched earlier this year as a capacity-building hub for local, emerging non profits.

Through the Incubator Project, three nonprofit organizations were selected to take advantage of one year of free co-working space in BCF’s new headquarters at 1000 Dean Street, as well as a $5,000 stipend for start-up costs, plus tailored ongoing technical assistance and training to support their development.

This is the second in a 3-part series about the use of crowdfunding in health and biotech start-ups. We started with the story of a tech start-up which set records for funding through a Kickstarter campaign, triggering the interest of entrepreneurs in capital- intensive industries (Part 1: The Beginning). Part 2 discusses the JOBS Act and the government’s attempt to overcome regulatory hurdles facing companies which want to use crowdfunding to raise equity investment capital. Part 3 will address some Potential Dangers inherent in the system of crowdfunding being devised.  We hope you find the series educational and invite you to contact the authors with questions. 

In a world exploding with new technologies and gadgets to fit the up and coming generations, it seems that the older generations are getting cast aside. Even though it seems like new healthcare entrepreneurs are always moving forward, some companies, like HomeHero, took a generational step back to work in the senior care industry. Kyle Hill is the CEO and co-founder of HomeHero, a website to find in-home, affordable care for seniors. He started the company in the hopes of making caring for loved ones easier, especially when distance separated them.

The motivation to work in senior care was inspired by Kyle’s grandmother. Since their family was so separated, it made it very difficult to ensure she was getting the in-home care she needed. After he observed the poor care his family received, especially witnessing his grandmother being left alone for almost a whole day, completely immobile, and the lack of screening caregivers received, Hill and co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Mike Townsend decided to create a company that provided the best caregivers for the senior community.

The buzz word was growth at this year's EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards on Thursday night in Baltimore as seven companies took home top honors in the annual competition that rewards innovation and financial performance.

The black-tie gala at the Marriott Waterfront showcased EY's 24 finalists for the Maryland region before the winners were announced.A common theme was that many started in their living room or basement before becoming companies that in some cases employ hundreds of people.

FlexEl LLC, a custom battery solutions company, will open a research, development and manufacturing facility in Prince George’s County, Md.  FlexEl was spun out of the University of Maryland based upon a thin film battery technology in 2008. The company, which won the Maryland Incubator Company of the Year award in 2010 and launched as a startup at the University of Maryland, will lease more than 10,000 square-feet from the university. FlexEl currently has 10 full-time employees and plans to add an additional 50 new jobs over the next five years.

“FlexEl is an innovative company with tremendous potential and we are excited to be working with Prince George’s County and the University of Maryland to help FlexEl move to the next level of development,” said Governor Larry Hogan. “It is critical that we support home-grown companies like FlexEl that are working to develop the next generation of technology.” 

The Institute of Human Virology at University of Maryland School of Medicine has received a five-year, $24.5 million grant to help fight AIDS in Africa.

Through the grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Baltimore researchers will focus on treatment programs that have long-term potential to address Botswana’s HIV/AIDS epidemic. The grant is part of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a $48 billion initiative launched in 2004 to target global infectious diseases.

While federal, state and local policies aim to support entrepreneurs through grants and tax breaks that make capital more easily attainable, the latest Entrepreneurship Policy Digest released by the Kauffman Foundation, America's leading entrepreneurship think-tank, says entrepreneurs most often turn to two forms of private external financing: debt and equity.

The Policy Digest says debt is the most common source of financing for new businesses, with about 40% of a business’ initial startup capital coming from bank-financed debt. Equity is a less common form of initial funding, according to the Digest, with less than 3% of new firms funded by angel investors and less than 1% funded by venture capitalists.

Chancellor Brit Kirwan reflects on the progress the University System of Maryland (USM) has made during his tenure as chancellor. He expresses gratitude to the USM community for the work it has done to elevate the quality of USM education, fuel the state’s economic development, and establish USM as a national model for higher education.

To this day, the CEO of Bethesda-based GetWellNetwork Inc. still can't stand the smell of Domino's pizza.

"It smells like chemo," Michael O'Neil said of what used to be his favorite meal, until he was treated for non-Hodgkin lymphoma more than 15 years ago.

In recent years, the applications for 3D printing in healthcare have been expanding into the limitless. Once reserved primarily for prototyping, the technology has quickly proliferated in the life sciences – with applications that range from personalized surgical implants, scaffolding and tissue generation.

The 3D printing market in healthcare will reach $4 billion by 2018, according to a report from British market research firm Visiongain. The most well-known use of 3D printing may be Organovo, the publicly traded San Diego company that likens cells to ink in a 3D printing process that builds live human tissue.

The University of Maryland has been named to the 2015 class of Innovation & Economic Prosperity Universities by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). The designation honors 18 universities working with public and private sector partners in their states and regions to support economic development through a variety of activities, including innovation and entrepreneurship, technology transfer, talent and workforce development, and community development.  

“Public universities serve as economic engines for their local communities and states by conducting cutting edge research to reach new breakthroughs and developing the talent to help existing businesses grow stronger and enabling new ones to develop and thrive,” said APLU President Peter McPherson. “The 18 institutions in the 2015 class of Innovation & Economic Prosperity Universities serve as wonderful models of how public research universities extend beyond their campuses to engage their communities in economic development that create jobs and improve lives.” 

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell today announced the seven winners of the 2015 HHS Innovates Awards. This annual award program, in its eighth round, recognizes creative solutions developed by HHS employees in response to some of the nation’s most challenging problems in health, health care and government. Winners this year reflected a number of collaborative innovation projects representing seven different operating divisions (winners listed below).

For many sea creatures, regrowing a lost limb is routine. But when a young jellyfish loses a tentacle or two to the jaws of a sea turtle, for example, it rearranges its remaining limbs to ensure it can still eat and swim properly, according to a new study published June 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery should excite marine enthusiasts and roboteers alike, the authors say, because the jellyfish’s strategy for self-repair may teach investigators how to build robots that can heal themselves. “It’s another example of nature having solved a problem that we engineers have been trying to figure out for a long time,” says John Dabiri, a biophysicist at Stanford University who had discussed the project with the study investigators but was not involved with the research.

GlycoMimetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: GLYC) announced today that Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) has dosed the first patient in the RESET (Rivipansel: Evaluating Safety, Efficacy and Time to Discharge) study - a Phase 3 clinical trial assessing the efficacy and safety of rivipansel for the treatment of vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) in patients hospitalized with sickle cell disease who are six years of age or older. The start of this trial triggered the second of two milestone payments from Pfizer to GlycoMimetics totaling $35 million for Phase 3 initiation. GlycoMimetics received a $15 million milestone payment from Pfizer in May 2014.

The global population is aging as life expectancy increases. That means not only is demand for healthcare rising, but the very nature of that care is changing. In this interview, the CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, Joseph Jimenez, discusses with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland issues including the emerging need for regenerative medicine, how digitization is driving innovation, and why Novartis is shifting to an outcomes-based approach for patient treatments. An extended and edited transcript of Jimenez’s remarks follows.

The Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville, Florida unit and Silver Spring, Maryland-based biotechnology company United Therapeutics Corporation have announced that they will collaborate on construction and operation of a lung restoration center to be located on Mayo’s Jacksonville campus. The project’s goal is to significantly increase the volume of lungs available for transplants for a range of patients with various lung diseases, including those with PAH, by preserving and restoring selected marginal donor lungs, thereby making them viable for transplantation.

Confucius says “To Get Bigger Sometimes You Must Be Smaller.” Alright, so I made that up but that seems to be the thinking behind GlaxoSmithKlein’s (GSK - Analyst Report)  move to sell two meningitis vaccines to rival Pfizer (PFE - Analyst Report), in order to satisfy antitrust concerns after GSK’s recent acquisition of the vaccine business from Novartis. Sound confusing? Well it is.

In a cooperation between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) scientists have developed microscopic “nanoswimmers” that can penetrate  blood and even thicker liquids that exist within the body, something that corkscrews modeled on bacterial flagella have been disappointingly bad at. The tiny devices are made of three connected chains, one made of a polymer and two consisting of nanowires that can be influenced by an external magnetic field to flap in a given direction. This allows the system to control the direction in which the nanoswimmers are moving, so any on-board cargo such as drugs or some sort of nanoparticles can be precisely placed inside a tumor, for example.

Johns Hopkins is expanding its commitment to Baltimore on a number of fronts as the city faces "a time in need of new thinking and of urgent action," Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels said Monday night at a gathering of community, political, and faith leaders in West Baltimore.

Daniels discussed efforts to support city schools, including new partnerships with Barclay Elementary/Middle School and Margaret Brent Elementary/Middle School, and the previously announced hiring of up to 300 Baltimore youth as part of the institution-wide summer jobs program. He pointed to Johns Hopkins' current ex-offender hiring program and work that is under way to develop more job training resources. He also previewed the roll-out of an expanded program to increase local hiring, purchasing, and contracting.

For those healthcare providers still resistant to technology, you've got a problem on your hands: You're going to be left behind. This is where healthcare it going – with or without you.

That's according to a new Accenture report, Healthcare Technology Vision 2015, which lays out five key trends in the industry that show adaptation might be the best business model.

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:

• Applicant Responsibilities in Maintaining the Integrity of NIH Peer Review
• (NOT-OD-15-106) National Institutes of Health
• Deadline for Final Reports Required for Grant Closeout
• (NOT-OD-15-111) National Institutes of Health
• Registration Open for the 2nd NIH Regional Seminar on Program Funding & Grants Administration - San Diego, CA - October 14-16, 2015
• (NOT-OD-15-113) National Institutes of Health

Program Announcements:

• Strategies to Increase Delivery of Guideline-Based Care to Populations with Health Disparities (R01)
• (PAR-15-279) 
• Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): October 21, 2015; June 21, 2016; October 21, 2016; June 21, 2017; October 20, 2017; and June 21, 2018, by 5:00 PM local time of applicant organization.
• Multidisciplinary Studies of HIV/AIDS and Aging (R01)
• (PAR-15-280) 
• Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.
• Multidisciplinary Studies of HIV/AIDS and Aging (R21)
• (PAR-15-282) 
• Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.

Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.

Come to this information breakfast to learn about Relevant Health, the new accelerator now accepting applications from health tech startups for its Fall 2015 class!

Relevant Health's five-month program involves an intensive product-focused curriculum that gives founders of health tech startups the skills to define, develop, position and launch a viable health tech product. Companies admitted to the accelerator will have access to a cowork facility along with other support that includes up to $50,000 in funding, mentorship, development support from a pool of software engineers, and access to the local health tech ecosystem. The accelerator will be located in the Rockville Innovation Center.

The Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine has received a five-year $24.5 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) through the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to partner with the Government of Botswana and impact the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Botswana, and to demonstrate that comprehensive HIV/AIDS treatment programs can stop the epidemic. PEPFAR is a $48 billion initiative launched in 2004 by former President George W. Bush, and continued by President Barack Obama, to combat major infectious diseases around the world, including HIV. The announcement was made on the heels of two recent IHV milestones including surpassing more than 1 million in patients in overseas care and treatment and a $50 million grant to combat HIV/AIDS in Zambia.

Victor and Lynne Brick, owners of Brick Bodies Fitness Services, Inc., a chain of coed and women-only health clubs, established the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation (501c3) to support research and education in mental health. Honoring Victor’s brother John, who suffered from schizophrenia and eventually succumbed to complications from the disease, the John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation is dedicated to advancing research towards a comprehensive scientific understanding of relationships between exercise and mental health. The John W. Brick Mental Health Foundation will support a program of studies for that purpose, and the dissemination and application of results.

From SBIR Gateway:

There are a number of items I want to discuss with you but tonight there is only time for a few very time sensitive items that may be of interest to you.  Item #1 is the DoD SBIR submission site because Tuesday is your last full day to submit for the DoD 15.2 SBIR and 15.B STTR, (submission closes Wednesday June 24, at 6:00am edt).  Item # 2 is all important patent legislation which is supposed to be voted on this week in the House (H.R. 9 "Innovation Act") and the Senate's version (S. 1137 "Protecting American Talent and Entrepreneurship" [PATENT] Act).  Both of these items have the potential for causing small businesses plenty of grief. 

The Washington DC/Baltimore chapter of Women In Bio invites you to our July 8, 2015, networking happy hour, hosted by our newest sponsor BioHealth Innovation Inc. in Rockville, Maryland. We will be welcomed by Mr. Richard Bendis, Founder, President and CEO of BioHealth Innovation, Inc., followed by an evening of networking. Please come out and meet our new and exciting professionals from the DC/MD/VA area and learn more about the burgeoning biohealthcare industry in Maryland. Numbers are limited – register early!

Medical care today is episodic. We’re assessed by our doctors at our annual physical exams, and we’re treated by our doctors when symptoms of ill-health become manifest. In the periods in between, we’re unmoored and untended, perhaps engaging in behaviors that will sabotage our health. And because medical care today is driven by data derived from physician encounters, it becomes an explicitly physician-focused dynamic. If health care data were to be continually collected and assessed independent of physician encounters, medical care might finally be transformed to become a patient-focused dynamic instead, yielding efficiencies, improved outcomes, and lower costs.