Biohealth Innovation
When Apple announced, last year, that it was developing a watch that had the functions of a medical device, it became clear that the company was eyeing the $3 trillion health care industry; that the tech industry sees medicine as the next frontier for exponential growth. Apple’s recent announcement of ResearchKit shows that it has an even greater ambition: It wants to also transform the pharmaceutical industry by changing the way clinical trials are done.
University of Maryland students might pay for an Uber ride home after a night out in College Park. Now, Uber's about to pay them.
The company will invest $25,000 over the next two years in student-run startups at the University of Maryland, College Park, one of only three college partnerships for the San Francisco-based ride-share company, the university announced Sunday.
Just because startup incubators don’t employ dozens of people directly, that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be eligible for the same economic development tax credit other spaces get.
That’s the argument two Baltimore-based state lawmakers are making with a pair of bills that were heard in Annapolis during the current legislative session.
Photo by Flickr user Maryland GovPics, used under a Creative Commons license
A new diet known by the acronym MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) could significantly lower a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease (AD) — even if the diet is not meticulously followed, according to a paper published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.
This finding comes from a longitudinal study by Rush University Medical Center and Harvard School of Public Health of 923 volunteers (144 of them developed AD) shows that the MIND diet lowered the risk of AD by as much as 53 percent in participants who adhered to the diet rigorously, and by about 35 percent in those who followed it moderately well.
The NCI Technology Transfer Center offers fellowships under the Cancer Research Training Award (CRTA) program. These fellowships provide people having advanced degrees with training and mentored work experience in technology transfer. For more information on the TTC Fellowship:
Oak Investment Partners, New Enterprise Associates and Revolution should be familiar players now to those companies in Maryland looking to get venture capital funding.
All three were in the top 10 in terms of firms that invested in Maryland companies in 2013; this year, all three made the top five, along with two newcomers. The information comes from our List of Venture Capital Firms that invested in Maryland companies in 2014.
MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, today announced that it has entered into a new five year Scientific and Technological Cooperation Agreement with the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), an independent public foundation with the mission to foster research and the scientific and technological development of the State of São Paulo in Brazil. This collaboration, which is the result of a cross-functional effort among MedImmune, AstraZeneca Brazil, and the State of São Paulo, will focus on identifying and accessing the best science and scientists in the cardiovascular and metabolic disease areas at São Paulo’s public and private research institutions.
Nimbus Therapeutics will have $43 million to progress clinical trials of its non-alcoholic liver disease drug after the company successfully completed a financing round.
The Series B investment was led by Pfizer Venture Investments and Lightstone Ventures. Previous investors, including Atlas Venture, SR One, Lilly Ventures and Bill Gates, also participated.
Juan González sees one glaring difference between Spain and the U.S.
Just like America, Spain has plenty of ideas, entrepreneurs, investors and even accelerators to support startups.
MdBio Foundation is hosting ATLAS College + Career STEM Symposium. This event targets high school upperclassmen and college undergraduates from backgrounds typically underrepresented in STEM.
ATLAS needs STEM professionals and graduate students to participate in upcoming events. Please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you would like to volunteer or for additional details.
Limited sponsorship packages are still available to support this highly successful program and other MdBio Foundation initiatives. Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to learn more.
The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) announced today that three Maryland companies received funding from its Cybersecurity Investment Fund (CIF). Strajillion, Protenus, and Ridgeback are the first three companies, each receiving $100,000, through CIF. The Fund supports Maryland companies develop and commercialize new cybersecurity products or services by providing investments of up to $100,000.
“CIF is the first dedicated cybersecurity fund created in the State to help establish Maryland as the innovation hub of information security,” said Rob Rosenbaum, president and executive director of TEDCO. “We are extremely pleased to have funded these companies and believe they have created very unique products and with the financial support from CIF, are confident they can accelerate their development and commercial launch.”
A newly released independent study, commissioned by the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), documents the significant impact academia-industry technology transfer makes to the U.S. economy.
The report, entitled, “The Economic Contribution of University/Nonprofit Inventions in the United States: 1996- 2013,” estimates that, during this 18-year time period, academia-industry patent licensing bolstered U.S. gross industry output by up to $1.18 trillion, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by up to $518 billion, and supported up to 3,824,000 U.S. jobs.
The world's first venture capital fund dedicated to finding new ways to prevent and treat dementia has raised more than $100 million with the backing of the British government and several of the world's leading drugmakers.
The global Dementia Discovery Fund is unique in focusing on a single difficult to treat disorder and in bringing together industry and government.
Qiagen acquired AdnaGen’s circulating tumor cell (CTC) enrichment technology to boost its capabilities in liquid biopsies. Separately, the company formed a partnership with Tokai Pharmaceuticals to combine its new CTC technology with a molecular assay to co-develop and commercialize a companion diagnostic for Tokai’s galeterone, which is in late-stage clinical trials for treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). The noninvasive test will determine the expression of the AR-V7 biomarker, which in recent studies has demonstrated potential utility to guide therapy choice in CRPC patients, according to Qiagen officials.
GSK today announced it will be a key partner, with an investment of $25m (approx £17m), in a pioneering new global fund for dementia research. The Dementia Discovery Fund, which is being established by the UK government with initial commitments totalling $100m, brings together leading pharmaceutical companies, the UK government and Alzheimer’s Research UK to address the rising threat posed by dementia by supporting research into future treatments.
The fund aims to identify and nurture promising new avenues of research from around the world in the field of dementia and supports GSK’s commitment to explore novel, collaborative approaches in challenging areas of research. It is hoped that by providing critical financial support and expert advice during the early stages of research, the development of innovative new treatments for this disease could be accelerated.
For the second consecutive year, Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Medicine are co-sponsors of DreamIt Health Baltimore, a four-month boot camp for entrepreneurs that prepares health information technology startups to present their innovative ideas to the world. is a four-month intensive boot camp for entrepreneurs,
The program, designed to accelerate new product development for health IT startup companies, provides six new startups with access to top-tier legal and accounting services, along with opportunities to meet and pitch their ideas to angel investors and venture capitalists. Each startup also receives seed capital of up to $50,000.
THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2015 | 4:30 – 7:00 PM
ALEXANDRIA CENTER® FOR LIFE SCIENCE – NEW YORK CITY
Converge at Alexandria is a quarterly series of panel discussions, presented by the Alexandria Center for Life Science – NYC and the Roche Innovation Center – NY, exploring the most highly debated topics currently facing the life science community. Featuring a panel of experts representing key stakeholders from the R&D continuum, including researchers, clinicians, patients, funders, and non-profits, Converge at Alexandria will engage NYC’s life science community in discussions around current critical issues and provide the regular touch points necessary for ongoing connectivity and collaboration among NYC’s broad and diverse life science community.
Wednesday, April 1st, 2015--6:00PM to 8:00PM
With all of the focus on patient engagement, physician adoption, increased accessibility, lowering costs, improving outcomes and the millions of dollars pouring into the burgeoning Health IT space, this is an important discussion to have in terms of the sustainability and economic viability of these ventures.
At its growing East Baltimore facility, Emergent BioSolutions has produced a booster shot to go with a leading Ebola vaccine candidate, joining a competitive race to make a safe and effective tool to stop the spread of an outbreak that continues in West Africa and to prevent future outbreaks.
US-based Emergent BioSolutions has completed proof-of concept manufacturing of a modified vaccinia Ankara (MVA) Ebola Zaire vaccine candidate (MVA EBOZ).
The MVA Ebola Zaire vaccine candidate is expected to be used in a Phase I clinical trial being supported by a grant from the Wellcome Trust and the UK Department for International Development.
Peter Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal, the investor who discovered Facebook, and the author of Zero to One, a short account of the counterintuitive thinking that’s made him a godfather figure in Silicon Valley (see “The Contrarian’s Guide to Changing the World.”)+
But what’s less well known about Thiel is his affinity for biotechnology. By now he has invested in more than 25 startups, one of which has already turned into a $1 billion success story.+
Welcome to the fourth annual Inside Higher Ed academic bracket for the National Collegiate Athletic Association women's basketball tournament. With this bracket, how teams perform in the classroom is what determines the victor.
Here's how it works: to determine the winners, we first look to the Academic Progress Rate, the N.C.A.A.'s multiyear measure of a team's classroom performance. When two teams tie, we turn to the N.C.A.A.'s Graduation Success Rate, which measures the proportion of athletes on track to graduate within six years. In the event of a G.S.R. tie, we then turn to the Federal Graduation Rate, a slightly different formula that the government uses to track graduation rates.
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. has manufactured a possible Ebola vaccine that could serve as the booster for GlaxoSmithKline's frontrunner candidate in the international race to create an effective treatment for the deadly virus.
Gaithersburg-based Emergent (NYSE: EBS) produced a vaccine batch that will be used by Oxford University researchers in a Phase 1 clinical trial with GlaxoSmithKline's Ebola candidate. GSK's candidate uses a type of chimpanzee virus to deliver safe genetic material from the Zaire strain of Ebola, the strain responsible for the epidemic in West Africa. That drug candidate began clinical trials in Africa in January, Reuters reported.
Commercially available unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, have gotten pretty amazing and quite cheap over the last few years, thanks to new brushless motors, lithium polymer batteries, and sensors already found in today’s smartphones. They’re already being used by farmers to survey fields, real estate agents to survey properties, and by rescue teams to look for people in difficult to reach places. Lately there have been attempts to use drones for medical applications, such as ferrying automatic external defibrillators and emergency medicines faster than ambulances. In the latest Air Medical Journal, three researchers from Mayo Clinic’s Department of Surgery investigate the potential for drones to be used to deliver things such as drugs and blood derivatives to clinics, disaster areas, and to remote places that are expensive to reach such as ships and offshore oil platforms.
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:
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.
It's time once again to fill out those March Madness brackets, and what better way to predict the winner of this year's National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball tournament than to compare how the teams succeed in the classroom?
Here's how Inside Higher Ed's bracket works: to determine the winners, we first look to the Academic Progress Rate, the N.C.A.A.'s multiyear measure of a team's classroom performance. When two teams tie, we turn to the N.C.A.A.'s Graduation Success Rate, which measures the proportion of athletes on track to graduate within six years. In the event of a G.S.R. tie, we then turn to the Federal Graduation Rate, a slightly different formula that the government uses to track graduation rates.
MacroGenics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MGNX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing innovative monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, as well as autoimmune disorders and infectious diseases, today announced the initiation of a Phase 1 study with MGD010, its first Dual-Affinity Re-Targeting (DART®) molecule being developed for patients with autoimmune disorders. MGD010 is a bi-specific molecule that simultaneously targets CD32B and CD79B, two B-cell surface proteins, for the treatment of autoimmune disorders. MGD010 is designed to inhibit B-cell activation by exploiting the inhibitory function of CD32B, a checkpoint molecule expressed by B cells. As a result of the study initiation, MacroGenics will receive a $3 million milestone payment from its partner, Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited.
Johns Hopkins University is making its move.
The institution has been promising — threatening — to be a bigger player in technology commercialization, the process of turning millions of dollars of federal research funding into startup companies, patents and licenses.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2014-2015 list was released Friday, effectively depicting the best universities from across the globe. The D.C. area made a good showing this year with Johns Hopkins University once again landing the No. 15 spot, but most local schools named to Times Higher Education's ranking in the past ended up losing some ground this time around.
A total of five colleges and universities from across the region were included in the 2014-2015 ranking. Four of the five ended up with lower rankings than they received on the 2013-2014 list, falling down more than a few notches.
Learning from Each Other: U.S. and European Perspectives on Small Business Innovation Programs
March 19, 2015
Lecture Room National Academy of Sciences 2100 C Street, NW Washington, DC
The Maryland Senate confirmed R. Michael Gill on Friday as Gov. Larry Hogan's secretary of business and economic development.
lRelated POLITICS Hogan transportation nomination delayed SEE ALL RELATED 8
The vote was 44 to 1, with Sen. Joan Carter Conway, a Baltimore city Democrat, dissenting.
Compete for $500 and earn credibility by winning a prestigious competition from one of the top entrepreneurship schools in the country. The University of Maryland is ranked No. 21 among universities for entrepreneurship by The Princeton Review and Entrepreneur Magazine.
Connect with award-winning faculty, staff, and students in entrepreneurship who are passionate about helping students fulfill their entrepreneurial dreams. The University of Maryland has helped hundreds of students launch successful companies.
It’s not exactly news that the San Francisco Bay Area is a hot spot for tech startups, but let’s say you’re ambitious, talented and armed with a great idea but you don’t want to move there. What other places should you consider?
Or let’s say you’re ambitious, talented and looking to land a job at a tech startup. Where, outside San Francisco and Silicon Valley, are prospective tech employers?
Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology is teaming up with the Department of Homeland Security to create a new business accelerator programfor creating wearable technology for first responders.
The EMERGE! program is designed to help business accelerators find entrepreneurs with ideas for wearable technology useful to first responders, whether federal law enforcement or local police, EMTs and firefighters. Putting advanced sensors, communication and other electronics into equipment that they can wear on the job could be a major boon for them.
Austria-based diabetes app company mySugr has raised $4.8 million from Roche Ventures and iSeed Ventures. Existing investor XLHealth also contributed to the round, which will help mySugr scale up its user base in the US and other other countries. iSeed Ventures is a new fund that has only made a half dozen investments so far, and it is led by former iHealth Lab head Adam Lin.
MySugr offers a handful of apps, but its flagship is called Diabetes Logbook, which is designed for people with type 1 or type 2 diabetes and includes logging, graphing, analysis, “exciting challenges”, “smile-inducing feedback”, and Apple Health integration. If users sign up for a month-to-month or annual subscription, pro features include additional challenges, automatic blood glucose logging from connected devices, reminders, and more report formats. Its Logbook app is registered as a class 1 device with the FDA and has similar status in Europe.