In a recent visit with The Chronicle, t he director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis S. Collins, spoke of brighter days ahead for his agency and medical researchers after a decade of tough budgetary constraints.

Inova Health System has leased Exxon Mobil's Merrifield campus and plans to develop a multimillion-dollar Inova Center for Personalized Health, a major step toward becoming one of the world's foremost institutions in the fledgling field.

The Fairfax health system wrapped up negotiations Friday morning to lease the 117-acre campus across from its flagship hospital for the next 99 years with the right of first refusal to acquire the property. The deal comes roughly two years after Exxon Mobil retained real estate brokerage Cassidy Turley, now DTZ, to position the four-building, 1.2 million-square-foot property for a potential sale or redevelopment.

The NFL, GE, and Under Armour officials announced that they have joined with the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to launch Head Health Challenge III, an open innovation competition to advance materials that better absorb or dissipate energy. These new materials could improve the performance of protective equipment for athletes, military personnel and those in dangerous occupations.

University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, and  Jeffrey A. Rivest, MS, President and Chief Executive Officer of University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), today announced the official launch of a new "Program in Lung Healing," that will further the School's position as a national leader in research, education and clinical innovation for acute ailments of the lung and respiratory system.

Johns Hopkins University led the U.S. in higher education research spending for the 35th consecutive year in fiscal 2013, with $2.2 billion for medical, science, and engineering research, according to the National Science Foundation.

The university also once again ranked first on the NSF's separate list of federally funded research and development, spending $1.89 billion in fiscal year 2013 on research supported by NSF, NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Defense.

The Mid-Atlantic Life Sciences Showcase is the new name for the ISPE-CBA Vendor Night. ISPE is continuing to improve the event and this year will not disappoint! Table selections will be made by the order in which you register. Register early to ensure your pick of locations.

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Under Armour is doubling down on a big bet it made on fitness apps a year and a half ago.

On Wednesday, the company best known as an athletic apparel brand announced it was spending $475 million to buy MyFitnessPal and $85 million on Endomondo, two apps that rivaled the offerings of Under Armour's Connected Fitness unit.

In tracking life science investors worldwide, LSN’s research team has noticed that there are a growing number of Asia-based investors seeking global opportunities as well as investments in the U.S. and Asia.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) set out a roadmap for a potential 2016 flotation of its HIV medicines business on Wednesday as it hired three leading banks to advise on what would be the drug industry's largest ever initial public share sale.

Chief Executive Andrew Witty said his company would take the next two to three months to analyze the pros and cons of an initial public offering (IPO), as well as deciding how much of ViiV to sell and where to list the shares.

Yanev Suissa, formerly a venture capitalist with New Enterprise Associates and a senior investment officer in the Bush and Obama administrations, is launching a new venture firm with a focus on companies doing business with the public sector.

The company's debut fund has raised around $100 million and will focus primarily on Series A and B investments with the occasional Series C, which will likely include local companies. The firm, to be named SineWave Ventures, will officially launch in the region in the second half of the year.

UMD start-up SD Nanosciences has developed technology for creating targeted drug and vaccine delivery vehicles

When University of Maryland Professors Philip DeShong and Daniel Stein began tagging soap bubbles with biomolecules, they had no idea this technology would one day be poised to change the way drugs and vaccines fight against bacteria, viruses and cancer.

Notice is hereby given that the Office of Intramural Research (OIR), National Institutes of Health (NIH), will host two webinars to enable public discussion of its proposal to reorganize the OIR Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). The proposal seeks to align authority and responsibility for the implementation and execution of patenting and licensing (P&L) functions within the NIH Institutes and Centers.

MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, and The University of Manchester have entered into a new research collaboration to generate cutting-edge protein formulation science.

As part of the collaboration, MedImmune will work with researchers at Manchester’s Centre of Excellence in Biopharmaceuticals (COEBP) on testing and understanding the fundamental principles of protein solution behavior in order to find better ways to administer breakthrough medicines to patients.

Rockville-based Emergent BioSolutions will expand its Baltimore manufacturing facility and add 158 new jobs over the next four years. Emergent will potentially double its 58,000-square-foot space on Lombard Street to include additional manufacturing, labs and warehouse space.

After growing up on Cleveland’s east side, Bill Fuller headed for North Carolina in 1990. He returned briefly in the 2000s, but he didn’t think he’d ever come back. But when BioEnterprise asked him in 2013 to become its newest CEO-in-Residence, he couldn’t resist the opportunity.

In Palo Alto in the heart of Silicon Valley, hedge fund manager Joon Yun is doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation. According to US social security data, he says, the probability of a 25-year-old dying before their 26th birthday is 0.1%. If we could keep that risk constant throughout life instead of it rising due to age-related disease, the average person would – statistically speaking – live 1,000 years. Yun finds the prospect tantalising and even believable. Late last year he launched a $1m prize challenging scientists to “hack the code of life” and push human lifespan past its apparent maximum of about 120 years (the longest known/confirmed lifespan was 122 years).

Maryland is giving biotech firm Emergent BioSolutions a $2 million loan to double its footprint and staff in East Baltimore.

Emergent BioSolutions, which develops vaccines and other pharmaceuticals, will double its 58,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on Lombard Street to include more space for manufacturing, quality control cabs and warehouse space. Emergent expects to break ground on the expansion in the second quarter of 2015.

A new 30,000-square-foot business incubator planned for Johns Hopkins University's East Baltimore campus will more than double the university's capacity for startup companies and is a major step toward its goal of being a bigger player in technology commercialization.

The new incubator, called FastForward East, will be housed at 1812 Ashland Ave., a 170,000-square-foot building by Forest City Enterprises, Inc. The building will be the next to go up in Hopkins' Science + Technology Park, which is part of the 88 acre East Baltimore Development, Inc. project, for which Forest City is the master developer. Construction is expected to be complete in 2016.

The six startups that make up the new class of DreamIt Health Baltimore got to work Friday, Jan. 30. Along with offering the first chance for founders to get to know each other through icebreaker games, the orientation marked the first work session at a new coworking space in Power Plant Live.

States with robust innovation economies have assets in common: a corps of research-intensive universities, a highly educated workforce and a government supportive of their science and technology industries. Maryland has all of these things. What the state needs to strengthen is its entrepreneurial culture, so that it becomes a top destination for scientists serious about ushering their ideas out of the lab and into the marketplac

The 3rd annual Ag Biotech Entrepreneurial Showcase is on May 19, 2015 in Research Triangle Park, NC. Ten to twelve entrepreneurs from across the greater eastern U.S. will be selected, and cash prizes for the best presentations will be awarded.

The deadline to submit an Application to present is February 12.

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., and Harold Varmus, M.D.

President Obama has long expressed a strong conviction that science offers great potential for improving health. Now, the President has announced a research initiative that aims to accelerate progress toward a new era of precision medicine (www.whitehouse.gov/precisionmedicine). We believe that the time is right for this visionary initiative, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other partners will work to achieve this vision.

Perceptive Navigation, a medical device start-up company whose chief executive is Johns Hopkins cardiologist Dr. Ted Abraham, won a highly competitive Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 grant. Perceptive Navigation, located at the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus, works to commercialize the Vu-Cath, an image-guided catheter that can be used in complex surgeries. The device, which is on a needle, is used while doing medical procedures on small areas of the body.

President Obama’s settled the score on this one: It’s precision medicine. Not personalized medicine.

The life sciences community has been throwing around both terms, but there’s actually a keen distinction between the two.

Biotechnology companies in the Washington region attracted less money from investors in 2014 than any other year since 1999, recent data show, even as the sector saw a significant increase in venture capital dollars in other parts of the country.

Local industry observers aren’t sounding alarms just yet. They say one down year, no matter how down it may be, doesn’t necessarily mean the region has fallen out of favor with life sciences investors.

DreamIt Health Baltimore is leasing 4,500 square feet of space at Power Plant Live!, a space Executive Director Jason Hardebeck envisions as a future hub for health care technology startups.

DreamIt's lease runs through May when the business accelerator wraps up its 16-week program. Hardebeck said he has been in talks with Cordish Cos., the property's developer, to re-purpose the office as a co-working space for graduate companies once the accelerator program ends. DreamIt would also maintain a presence there.

February 10th at 2pm ET

Every Phase II NIH SBIR/STTR application requires a commercialization plan, which essentially describes how the company plans bring its innovative technology to market.  In this Hangout, we will discuss the key elements of a successful commercialization plan.

Position Summary

GenVec is seeking a highly motivated professional who is able to make strong contributions in supporting all business and corporate development activities. The successful candidate will work directly with the Chief Executive Officer and will interact extensively with the scientific, legal, and financial personnel of the company to review and evaluate the scientific and commercial aspects of potential transactions. The Business Development Analyst will be responsible for supporting a portfolio of business development projects which address in-licensing, out-licensing, and acquisition opportunities for GenVec.

Roche has become the latest pharmaceutical company to join the connected health party at Qualcomm Life — in this case to do remote patient monitoring. The goal of the strategic collaboration is to generate big data insights on patients’ condition to reduce complications from chronic conditions, according to a company statement.

Vaccinations are obviously a hot topic for debate – it’s exhausting. But with the recent measles outbreak at Disneyland, it’s even more clear that this is getting just a bit ridiculous.

Parents really want to know who’s vaccinated and who’s not. And families in some states should be a little more concerned than others, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control.

Qiagen NV  (NASDAQ: QGEN  ) solutions are used every day by healthcare providers to analyze patient DNA and RNA in order to guide treatment and by researchers pursuing next generation medicine. The opportunity for Qiagen to help the industry deliver the right drug to the right patient at the right dose at the right time is big, but a significant drop-off in revenue from a legacy product meant that potential didn't translate into significant sales growth last year.

LSN researchers recently decided to take a deep dive into interviews we have held with venture philanthropy groups from around the world to see what the future likely has in store. After analyzing data gathered over the past three years from more than 150 investors, we uncovered a few notable trends.

Every startup wants to change the world, but DC-based incubator and seed fund 1776 fosters the type of early stage companies that just might have a chance.

The incubator is focused specifically on startups for the public good and you won’t find any benign photo sharing apps in 1776’s portfolio.

MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, is probably best known for its work in discovering and developing therapeutics based on antibodies -protein molecules produced by the body as a primary immune response. However, for a number of reasons, including the large size of the molecule, antibodies may not always offer the most appropriate solution for treating some diseases. In those cases there may be alternative, innovative approaches which can be explored in parallel with our usual work with antibodies.