In 2014, startups took home nearly $1M in cash and prizes from the InvestMaryland Challenge. For 2015 we have new categories and are racking up partner prizes like cash grants, incubator space, legal advice and consulting services.

Start your application today! Applications are due December 12th.

$100,000 Grand Prize Categories

• IT HARDWARE/SOFTWARE
  Enterprise Software, Data Analytics, Social Media & Apps, E-Commerce and Marketing/ADTECH.
• DEFENSE & SECURITY
  Cybersecurity, Unmanned Systems, Defense, Communications Infrastructure, Public Infrastructure and Grid Security.
• LIFE SCIENCES
  Biopharmaceuticals, Medical Devices & Diagnostics, Nutraceuticals, Agriculture Bio & Aquaculture and Healthcare IT.
• SUSTAINABILTY & EXPLORATION
  EdTech, Energy, Solar Power, Space & Satellite Technologies, Climate Change/Weather, Water Management and Materials Science.

To attend a NICE/UKTI Scientific Advice Seminar for developers of devices and diagnostics.

Learn how to prepare for an evaluation by NICE, the UK’s health technology assessment body.

The seminar will cover:

• "Value" from the perspective of NICE
• How value propositions link to the need for specific evidence
• The types of evidence considered by NICE
• The general principles of health technology assessment (HTA)
• Advantages of doing business in the UK

Who should attend?

• Developers of medical technologies, in particular SMEs
• Investors in the field of medical technologies
• Anyone new to the world of health technology assessment
• Academics, scientists, or clinicians who want to know more about how NICE assesses the value of innovative products

The seminar program is funded by UKTI to allow you free event registration (standard event rate - $550)

It has been said that there is no money for start-ups here. NOT TRUE! Montgomery County is proud to shine the spotlight on local success stories from our business community.

During 2013 and through this year, Montgomery County businesses from targeted growth sectors have received local and state investments to support their ongoing growth and success. From grants, loans and tax credit incentives, to targeted funding programs and competitive investment awards, local companies are proving they have what it takes and continue to contribute to the growth of the innovative economy in Montgomery County.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and University of Maryland, College Park will work with MITRE Corp. on a new cyber security research and development center in Montgomery County.

McLean, Va.-based MITRE was selected by the National Institute of Standards and Technology for a $29 million award to operate a new federally funded research and development center dedicated to cyber security. The center will be housed at the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence in Montgomery County.

The University of Maryland is building a new computing network intended to provide local scientists with high-speed access to data centers, the university announced last week.

Mid-Atlantic Crossroads, a network operated by the state’s flagship university, plans to partner with Bytegrid, a McLean-based data center company.

The University Economic Development Association (UEDA) announced its 2014 Awards of Excellence winners during its Annual Summit held this week in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Awards of Excellence Program recognizes UEDA members who are transforming their campuses into engines of economic prosperity through leading edge initiatives in five categories:

1. Community Connected Campus: initiatives that promote the physical development of quality connected campuses and their surrounding communities;
2. Research and Analysis: initiatives that enhance the capacity of colleges and universities to provide new forms of research and tools for community, economic and workforce development practitioners;
3. Leadership and Collaboration: initiatives that support the development of collaborative economic development strategies and the leaders required to implement them;
4. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: initiatives designed to support startups, high-growth companies and clusters within a region; and
5. Talent Development: initiatives that promote the development of 21st-century skills.

Rich Overmoyer, UEDA’s Executive Director and President & CEO of Fourth Economy Consulting stated, “As we benchmark cities of regional transformation across North America, there is a noticeable trend in the impact that quality institutions of higher education have on regions of growth.” Overmoyer continued, “these Awards of Excellence category winners and finalists represent regions where universities are playing a role to create sustainable economic growth.”

Biotech companies are looking for ways to speed up drug discovery and pharmaceutical companies need an easier way to find accurate drug pricing information to make their businesses more competitive. So two big data analytics companies graduating from Blueprint Health’s accelerator have taken a cue from Maverick and Goose. One offers a way to shrink the amount of time genome analysis takes and another developed a way to make it easier for drug companies to find global drug price data in real time.

Medical equipment supplier Becton Dickinson & Co (BDX.N) has agreed to buy CareFusion Corp (CFN.N), a maker of infusion pumps and other medical devices, for $12.2 billion in cash and stock, marking the latest multibillion-dollar healthcare sector deal.

Becton said on Sunday it would pay a total of $58.00 a share - $49.00 in cash and 0.0777 of a share of Becton Dickinson - for each share of CareFusion, representing a premium of 26 percent to the closing price on Oct. 3.

The US pharmaceutical company Baxter International is to establish a new global innovation and R&D center for biopharmacetucals in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. This follows Baxter's decision to hive off its biopharmaceutical business as an independent company called Baxalta in mid-2015.

The new R&D center will house 400 R&D staff, who will relocate from current sites in California and Europe, although Baxalta will retain certain R&D operations at its site in Vienna, Austria. In addition, the new center will house Baxalta's business development, oncology and biosimilars teams.

Health officials are now monitoring 50 people in Texas for signs of Ebola, via twice-daily temperature checks, and in recent days, there have been reports that people in other areas of the country — most recently, Washington, D.C. — may be infected with the virus.

But why can't all these people just be tested for Ebola as soon as possible?

DPOB's new program, TechConnect, provides up to $10,000 per tech company (with at least 4 employees) for locating for at least one year within Downtown Baltimore. Partner perks, including discounted design, legal and internet service and free zipcar hours are available as well. DPOB will also help companies through site selection, mitigate any move/set up issues, distribution of permits, etc. and they have two partner brokers on board to provide full brokerage service. Read more about their new program here: http://www.godowntownbaltimore.com/work/TechConnect/index.aspx

Pipeline updates are highly awaited events in the pharma/biotech sector as they play an important role in deciding whether or not to invest in a particular company. These updates provide information on experimental drugs and at times give an insight into the commercial potential of the candidate once it is successfully developed and commercialized.

Roche (RHHBY - Analyst Report) specializes in cancer drugs. Immunotherapy has received a lot of attention in recent times as pharmaceuticals majors focus their research and development efforts on the same.

The three-story brick building at the corner of Main and Osborn streets in Cambridge, on the edge of Kendall Square and the MIT campus, captures three distinct eras in the city’s innovation history. In the early 1800s, it was the site of Kimball & Davenport, the first builder of passenger railroad cars in America.

After World War II, it was the epicenter of the Massachusetts tech boom, home to the office and private lab of Edwin Land, Polaroid’s founder. In between, Thomas A. Watson strung a wire from Boston to Cambridge, and set up the equipment to receive the first “long distance” phone call, in 1876.

Lecture 1: The Importance of Commercializing Research Tuesday, October 7, 2014, 1:00 to 2:30 pm ET

Now on its seventh run, the Research Commercialization Introductory Course is a very popular online course designed to help science and engineering researchers better understand how research commercialization works. Over 5000 students, faculty and researchers from across the US have taken this course since it's been offered.

Research commercialization involves taking articles, documentation, know-how, patents, and copyrights, which are created during research activities and getting them to users and patients for real societal impacts. In some cases, commercialization involved taking patents based on the research and licensing them to a company. This usually involves also having the researchers consult to the company. In other cases, commercialization involves forming of creating a startup and applying to federally funded commercialization programs. In all cases, though, research commercialization typically involves defining the nature of the research being commercialized (e.g., in a patent or intellectual property agreement), establishing a commercial relationship with another party (e.g., employment, a sale or license), and negotiating a contract (e.g., compensation).

Areas covered in the course include intellectual property, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, trademarks, licensing agreements, employment agreements, consulting agreements, tech transfer, creating and funding companies, and federally funded Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) programs

Each lecture is a live 90-minute online class with Q&A.

Tasly Pharmaceuticals, Inc. made its official debut at the Natural Products Expo East 2014, held from September 17-20, 2014 in Baltimore, MD. As the leading East Cost trade show in the natural, healthy and organic products industry, attracting 22,000 professionals and representing 33% of the natural products industry, Expo East 2014 was a perfect opportunity for Tasly to introduce Deepure, its inaugural line of nutraceuticals. The line includes three condition-specific, whole-food and herb-based formulas, namely, ProHeart PLUS, ImmunoPower PLUS, and Re-Memory PLUS. All Deepure nutraceuticals are gluten-free and made without chemicals, preservatives, artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, or gelatin. Deepure will be available in stores nationwide later this Fall.

Tasly also participated in two very attractive marketing and sponsorship opportunities located in New Products Pavilion, including Best of East Press Showcase and New Products Showcase.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has selected The MITRE Corporation to operate the first federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) solely dedicated to enhancing cybersecurity and protecting national information systems. MITRE will partner with the University System of Maryland (USM) to support the center.

The new FFRDC will support the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), which NIST, the state of Maryland, and Montgomery County, Md., established in 2012 to help businesses secure their data and digital infrastructure by bringing together information security experts from industry, government and academia. MITRE will further the NCCoE’s goal to foster public-private collaborations to identify and solve today’s most pressing cybersecurity challenges. Working with the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), two leading research institutions within the USM, MITRE will carry out the goals of the new FFRDC in research, development, engineering and technical support as well as operations and facilities planning.

In the U.S., North America, and around the Globe, education innovation clusters are popping up across the landscape to solve the 21st century’s toughest learning challenges. Some of these economic development clusters, moreover entrepreneurship hubs, will lead in ways that others cannot. Maryland is one of them.

New research by scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) and the Ottawa Heart Institute has uncovered a new pathway by which the brain uses an unusual steroid to control blood pressure. The study, which also suggests new approaches for treating high blood pressure and heart failure, appears today in the journal Public Library of Science (PLOS) One.

"This research gives us an entirely new way of understanding how the brain and the cardiovascular system work together," said Dr. John Hamlyn, professor of physiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, one of the principal authors. "It opens a new and exciting way for us to work on innovative treatment approaches that could one day help patients."

If you think the term “government invention” is an oxymoron—well, think again. You may be surprised to learn that many of the breakthrough technologies that shape our lives today are the brainchildren of government researchers—including those at FDA.

Alice WelchTake the Internet and that GPS in your car or on your cell phone. Both technologies were developed by the U.S. Department of Defense —as were the turbine engines that power the wind farms generating some 6% of our nation’s electrical energy. Those long-lasting radial tires on your vehicle? They’re reinforced with a material five times tougher than steel that was developed by a NASA partnership. And you can thank the government for your flu shot and the development of many other life-saving vaccines such as those for hepatitis A and B and HPV.

The cash keeps flowing in digital health.

Venture funding invested into the digital health realm has surpassed $3 billion through the first three quarters of 2014, up from $2 billion through midyear and up 100 percent over the year, according to the latest report from Rock Health.

New information technologies and innovative business models are transforming the health care industry in several ways. The industry is beginning to focus on creating seamless interoperability among organizations, greater efficiencies in the delivery of care and increased consumer engagement through access to electronic health records and use of mobile health devices and apps. “While creating forward movement and excitement in the industry, the very innovations that are driving growth and system improvement may also expose organizations to potentially more threats to security and privacy,” says Russ Rudish, Global Health Care Leader, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.

Odds are good you’ve seen your doctors using computers a lot more in the past three years. During appointments or while at the hospital, they’ve stopped at a desktop computer or taken a tablet out of their pocket. It’s not because technology lets them provide better care, it’s because federal legislation is changing the way health care providers and insurers use computers.

Juan Montesinos is a doctor who has a passion for mobile and web applications.

Daniel Gil Castillejo is an electronics engineer proficient in the technical aspects of software.

Both moved from Mexico to Rockville in August to pursue their graduate degrees at Johns Hopkins University’s Montgomery County Campus, where they are studying in the Master’s in Biotechnology, Enterprise and Entrepreneurship program.  They both are on full scholarships from the Mexican government and supplementing their coursework with internships at TruBios, a biotechnology services company located on the JHU Montgomery County Campus. TruBios is led by Roberto Trujillo, a native of Mexico who teaches in JHU’s biotechnology program.

The next generation of the nation's only anthrax vaccine will be made in Lansing, an executive for Emergent BioSolutions Inc. said Tuesday.

There won't be any new jobs as a direct result of the $29 million federal contract Emergent received earlier this month for production of the new drug, Adam Havey, president of the company's biodefense division, said. But the new version of the vaccine will help keep current employees working.

The Tech Council of Maryland presents a Lifetime Achievement Award each year to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the success of the community. This year, we are expanding our award categories and will be recognizing three outstanding individuals in the fields of technology, life science, and education. The 2015 honorees will be:

• Norman Augustine, retired chairman and chief executive officer of the Lockheed Martin Corporation
• Wayne Hockmeyer, Ph.D., founder of MedImmune, Inc.
• William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland

Please mark your calendar to honor these individuals at a celebratory dinner on February 19, 2015 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center.

GlaxoSmithKline has just launched a $5 million Innovation Challenge Fund to advance open-access technology in the bioelectronics space.

The funding’s aimed toward biz-savvy academics and startups that are working to create a new class of treatments that aren’t necessarily pills or injections, but rather are mini implantable devices. GSK says:”The hope is that these devices could be programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves of the body, to treat disorders as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension and diabetes.”

For the majority of drugs, end-of-lifecycle planning usually involves a reining-in of marketing costs. But Sucampo CEO Peter Greenleaf is doing the exact opposite. In the firm's second-quarter earnings call, he announced the company is “doubling-down” on Amitiza, the constipation treatment which has been on the market for eight years and which will soon face the threat of generic competition.

Amitiza owns just 1% of the overall constipation market, which includes a number of OTC options, a representative for the drugmaker told MM&M. Sucampo co-markets Amitiza with Takeda.

The University of Central Florida’s Business Incubation Program has pumped nearly $2.5 billion into the economy over the last 15 years.

The program — which turns 15 years old on Oct. 1 — has created 250 early-stage companies, according to a press release sent out Sept. 30. Those companies have added 3,600 total jobs, sales of $1.51 billion and $2.48 billion in regional economic output.

The White House said that President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative is generating interest from companies and philanthropies in a sign of what it calls a wider partnership developing around the U.S. administration’s most prominent science initiative, first unveiled in 2013.

The White House had committed to spending $100 million this year on the project, which seeks to develop new technologies for studying the brain. As part of that, today the U.S. National Institutes of Health announced $46 million in awards to 58 research groups.

Baxter International Inc. (NYSE:BAX) today announced plans to form a new global innovation and research and development (R&D) center in Cambridge, Mass., for Baxter's biopharmaceuticals business, which is expected to become a separate, independent global company known as Baxalta Incorporated in mid-2015.

The business selected the Cambridge biotech community as the primary location for its global innovation and R&D operations after a global search. The new location will position the company to enhance patient care by advancing and building its robust innovation pipeline, which is centered on core areas of expertise in hematology, immunology, and through technology platforms like gene therapy and biosimilars.

Limited partners are actively returning to venture capital and many are looking beyond the industry’s giants. “I think this is the first year that LPs have realized that you can make a lot of money in small venture funds as well,” said Hans Swildens, founder and CEO of Industry Ventures.

The firm has closed on $170 million, more than twice the size of its previous fund, for a fund of funds targeting venture capital funds of less than $250 million. That’s another sign of rising investor interest in these smaller pools, Russ Garland reports for Dow Jones VentureWire.

The year 2014 has not just started out on a good note for the digital health and health IT market, but it seems to be all set to be the best year ever. The top 20 venture capital firms have been busy right from the start of the year investing in this arena and giving a massive boost to deal activity here. A CB Insights data report indicates that funding to the tune of $2.65 billion has come into this sector over the past four quarters. What is even more significant is that the highest quarterly funding amount came about in Q1 of this year. With investors deploying $1,108.6 million over the first three months of 2014, this quarter has witnessed a whopping 210% increase in funding when compared with the same period last year.

As the Obama administration tries to stop companies from avoiding taxes by moving their headquarters overseas, the makers of some of the world’s most lucrative and expensive medicines are using another tactic to reduce their payments to the government.

Take the case of Gilead Sciences, which has come under severe criticism for the high cost of its in-demand new hepatitis C drug, Sovaldi, which sells for $1,000 a pill, or $84,000 for a typical course of treatment.

Henry Ford kept lowering the price of cars, and more people kept buying them. The San Diego–based gene sequencing company Illumina has been doing something similar with the tools needed to interpret the human genetic code.

A record 228,000 human genomes will be completely sequenced this year by researchers around the globe, said Francis de Souza, president of Illumina, the maker of machines for DNA sequencing, during MIT Technology Review’s EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

For more than ten years, the LIVESTRONG Foundation’s iconic yellow wristband has symbolized the struggle against cancer.  While many charities and foundations are focused on only the medical aspects of cancer research, LIVESTRONG emphasizes advocacy and assistance for the millions of people living with cancer.

These people will face countless issues outside of their medical care, such as fertility concerns, emotional wellbeing, practical challenges, financial issues, clinical trial matching, etc.  Addressing all of those concerns are elements of what they call “patient-centered care”.  They aim to make this approach the care standard around the world and recently announced a partnership agreement with the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin to create the LIVESTRONG Cancer Institute.  LIVESTRONG will invest $50M over 10 years to help create a new model of patient-centered care.