BHI Weekly Newsletter Archives

Sweden’s eHealth Agency (eHälsomyndigheten) selected woman-owned Get Real Health’s electronic personal health patient engagement platform to help its citizens access and manage their own health data.

Get Real Health, a Montgomery County, Maryland health IT pioneer, is partnering with Swedish technology consulting company Capgemini Sverige AB to bring a complete patient engagement solution, called HälsaFörMig, to Sweden’s publicly owned Swedish eHealth Agency. Capgemini will run the service, while Get Real Health’s two core products, InstantPHR® and CHBase™ (Connected Health Base), will provide the consumer health data platform.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures and Pataigin, LLC, announced today that the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has granted Pataigin worldwide, exclusive licensing rights to UMB patents and technology to develop a method to quickly and accurately identify dangerous pathogens. Robert Ernst, Ph.D., professor of microbial pathogenesis at University of Maryland School of Dentistry, and David Goodlett, Ph.D., professor of pharmaceutical sciences at University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, are patent inventors. The University of Washington is also a co-owner on one of the patents Pataigin (the Irish word for pathogen) is licensing. Erik Nilsson, who has headed software and mass spectrometry companies for nearly 20 years, will serve as Pataigin’s CEO and President.

Infectious diseases remain a major global killer, responsible for 18 million deaths worldwide every year. And yet, detecting potential infectious agents remains hampered by current technological methods that are slow, require cell culture and are expensive and labor-intensive. The licensed technology exploits the presence of lipids in the outer membranes of pathogens that are unique to each pathogen strain. A “barcode” for each lipid coating is created that allows laboratory staff to quickly use available mass spectrometry methods to identify specific strains of bacteria, fungi and yeast that cause disease. The technology will allow pathogen identification directly from tissues like blood, urine, and wounds, without the need for cell culture. And importantly, the technology can differentiate between drug-susceptible and drug-resistant variants; thereby allowing for quicker medical treatment decisions as well as containment of dangerous pathogens.

GlycoMimetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: GLYC) announced that preclinical data on its novel E-selectin antagonist drug candidate GMI-1271, shared via an oral presentation at the 57th American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting, showed the compound could be used in combination with G-CSF (filgrastim) to mobilize and enrich progenitor T cells known as T memory stem (Tscm) and T central memory (Tcm) cells, which provide improved reconstitution and persistence. The company also announced that the first healthy participant has been treated with an intravenous (IV) formulation of GMI-1271 in a Phase 1, multiple-dose clinical study to evaluate the investigational drug’s ability to mobilize and enrich Tscm or Tcm cells. In addition, the trial will evaluate safety and tolerability of the drug, alone and in combination with filgrastim, a treatment for neutropenia that is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

AstraZeneca and its global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune, today announced a three-year collaboration with the newly established Wallenberg Centre for Protein Research (WCPR). The collaboration aims to develop new technologies for biologics production and to identify new targets for disease research in the ground-breaking area of the Secretome – research into all proteins that are secreted by a cell or that are exposed to the outside of the cell from within the cell membrane.

Roche, a leader in research-focused healthcare, announced regulatory clearance to finalise acquisition of Kapa Biosystems, Inc. (Kapa), a privately-held company headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts. Kapa Biosystems is a provider of genomic tools in the life sciences sector that employs proprietary technologies to optimize enzymes for next-generation sequencing (NGS), as well as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and real-time PCR applications.

U.S. health regulators on Friday said they have granted accelerated approval to Roche Holding’s drug for advanced lung cancer in patients with a specific genetic mutation.

The drug, alectinib, to be sold under the brand name Alecensa, was approved to treat patients with advanced ALK-positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose disease has worsened after, or who could not tolerate, treatment with Pfizer’s Xalkori.

In a tiny office in a high-rise building in the Rockville Towncenter that houses the Innovation Center, two Montgomery County men toil to unlock what they believe will be the future of the way all of us will consume entertainment.

“This is the next revolution, absolutely,” says Sergio Reyes.

Roche will join Pieris Pharmaceuticals in an up-to-CHF 415 million ($409 million) cancer immunotherapy collaboration designed to develop new drug candidates based on Pieris’ Anticalin® technology platform against an undisclosed target.

Under its first partnered immune-oncology program, Pieris will discover, characterize and optimize Anticalin-based drug candidates. Pieris will then work with Roche to assess various drug formats against the target, and advance them through preclinical development.

Johns Hopkins University spent more on research and development than any other high education institution for the 36th year in a row.

The Baltimore institution spent a total of $2.2 billion in fiscal 2014 on research and development — nearly twice the amount as the second highest spender, University of Michigan, which spent $1.3 billion, according to an annual report by the National Science Foundation.

Biopharmas come and go, but the places to find jobs remain largely the same 10 regions highlighted by GEN last year and in 2013. The cornerstones of their success are hardly secrets: they include strong research universities, anchor biopharmas, younger startups, and networks that connect those budding businesses to expertise and, especially, capital.

Paris-based venture capital firm, Sofinnova Partners, has closed its Sofinnova Capital VIII fund with €300 million ($324 million) that will be dedicated toward adding 15 to 20 more biotech companies to its portfolio, two thirds of which will reportedly be in Europe, the rest in North America.

Back in 2012, the firm raised €240m, and with this new fund it brings the current amount under management at Sofinnova Partners to €1.5 billion ($1.6 billion). The company’s focus will remain in the biopharmaceutical and medical device sectors.

AstraZeneca confirmed Monday morning that it is “exploring potential strategic options” with Acerta Pharma BV.

Acerta is a privately held biopharmaceutical company with offices in California and The Netherlands. Its lead product is an experimental blood cancer drug, called acalabrutinib, which is in late-stage clinical testing.

Amidst the rhetoric of Campaign 2016, the reality of escalating health costs, and the acceleration of consolidation across the industry, healthcare headlines in 2016 will highlight major changes that will reshape the future for the next decade and beyond.

Here’s the top 10 you can expect to read next year:

Dr Martine Rothblatt and Cyndi Lauper were the recipients of this year’s Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative (BJKLI) awards on Wednesday night.

The tennis legend launched the non-profit BJKLI in 2014 with her partner, Ilana Kloss, to promote and celebrate inclusive leadership. This year’s awards gala, in partnership with Teneo, took place Wednesday night at World Trade Center 4 in New York.

Although the University System of Maryland, at its core, is a collection of 12 colleges, new Chancellor Bob Caret says he sees it as a business — a business that the state needs to invest in. Caret said that for every $1 the state spends on USM, he can bring the state back $6.

Springboard’s Health Innovation Hub is a year-long program for women-led healthcare and life science companies seeking seed and growth funding to fuel expansion and product development. Companies selected for one of the program’s two tracks – Pharma and Health IT/Devices – will be matched with a team of relevant, targeted advisors and participate in several in-person and virtual workshops and presentation sessions throughout the year that provide exposure to influencers, active investors, and potential strategic partners.

Becton, Dickinson and Company (BDX), or BD, operated under three business segments until 2014. It then underwent organizational restructuring, effective October 1, 2015, to better align its business model to the strategic vision and goals of the company. Consequently, the company operates under two business segments: BD Medical and BD Life Sciences.

If you are interested in submitting a NSF Innovation Corps Sites Program (I-Corps Sites) proposal, send an abstract no more than three pages in length to esoto2@iit.edu by the internal deadline of Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at noon. Follow Illinois Tech’s guidelines for internal competitions available here.

Institutional Limit: One Internal Deadline: Tuesday, May 10, 2016 at noon Full Proposal Deadline Date: Tuesday, June 14, 2016

The digital revolution continues to transform healthcare fundamentally, and many people believe that a tipping point is finally within reach. In 2014, digital health investments topped $6.5 billion, compared with $2.9 billion a year earlier.

The critical question now for pharmaceutical companies is how to stay ahead of these changes. To answer it, we sought to learn the trends and implications of digital health by interviewing 20 thought leaders across a variety of segments, including analytics, biotech, data, pharma, providers, technology, and venture capital.

Baltimore will be well-represented at a “Shark Tank”-inspired event focusing on teacher professional development this week.

The virtual competition, organized by Edsurge and the Gates Foundation, is set for 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 8. Three companies will pitch four educators. But it’s the audience who decides the winner.

Physician entrepreneurs come in several basic flavors and medicine needs to change to make room for them.

The young and the restless These are the millenials and others who are medical students, residents, fellows and those who have been in practice less than 5 years. While I think stereotyping generations is stupid , work-life balance, debt repayment and lack of loyalty to an employer or career seems to figure into the psychographic calculus

Google Life Sciences got a rebrand today: It’s now called Verily. A new site is up as well to illustrate the company’s emphasis on wielding technology “to create a true picture of human health” – and “effecting prevention.”

Just as Google formed parent company “Alphabet” earlier this year, it’s clearly sticking to a literary theme with “verily,” which is a florid, Shakespearean way to say “truth, truly, confidently.”

Standing in a virtual-reality lab at the University of Maryland here, Ramani Duraiswami passed around a standard pair of headphones.

Music played over them — but to the wearer, the source of the sound seemed to move around the room. As the music quieted down, it sounded as if it came from farther away. As it got louder on one side of the headset, it sounded as if it came from that side. “We’re able to perceive the world in all dimensions using our ears,” said Mr. Duraiswami, a computer-science professor and co-founder of the start-up company VisiSonics.

Prince William County is in a race to establish itself as the center of bioscience research and commercialization and it’s making progress. The county’s science accelerator, established two years ago, now has three companies and will add two more in the next few months. Prince William’s head of economic development, Jeff Kaczmarek, says the accelerator is aiming to be at full capacity by the end of next year, as more companies take up its 9,100 SF, which is the only commercially available wet lab space in the region.

Illumina, Inc. (NASDAQ:ILMN) announced today that Illumina Accelerator—the world’s first business accelerator focused solely on creating an innovation ecosystem for the genomics industry—has selected four new investments from a competitive pool of highly qualified applicants to be a part of its third funding cycle.

“Illumina Accelerator is pleased to have such a promising group of startups join our growing genomics community,” said Mostafa Ronaghi, Ph.D., Illumina’s Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Illumina Accelerator. “We’re here to provide access to our best-in-class sequencers, a support team of genomics professionals and entrepreneurial coaches, and the tools each of these startups need to advance breakthrough applications in genomics.”

The selected startups for the third funding cycle are:

Virginia’s Mach37 cybersecurity accelerator gained an important endorsement this week with a four-year platinum sponsorship from General Dynamics Mission Systems.

The agreement will help further Mach37’s public-private partnerships that leverage Virginia’s university, industry and government cybersecurity assets to produce new innovative products and companies.

Holiday Celebration Time is Coming! Join us as we remember this amazing year of WIB-DC/Baltimore on December 15, 2015, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., at Paladar Latin Kitchen & Rum Bar in Rockville. Food, drinks, and music will be provided – and of course networking opportunities with all our members and guests. Also the WIB scholarship award winner sponsored from our chapter will be announced!

Not only are we thankful for all you members’ support and engagement, we are also looking forward to hearing your feedback for what we can do better in 2016!

Rockville-based Sucampo Pharmaceuticals Inc. finalized its acquisition of the Japanese biotech R-Tech Ueno for $275 million, officials said Monday.

In August, Sucampo (NASDAQ: SCMP) made a $278 million all-cash offer to acquire R-Tech Ueno, a Japanese pharmaceutical company that manufactures Amitiza, Sucampo’s flagship drug that eases drug-related constipation using fatty acid-derived compounds known as prostones.

Care Progress, LLC announced today that it was awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (“SBIR”) grant from the National Science Foundation (“NSF”). The Phase II award will fund the further development of the company’s CarePrompter© software platform, which improves outcomes for cancer patients as well as workflow and profitability for oncology departments and practices.

“It provides support for further development of our critical technology. With this award, we will accelerate our plans to develop additional functionality for cancer providers and patients within a large and growing market.” Tweet this “This Phase II SBIR award is a significant milestone for us,” said Howard Isenstein, Founder of Care Progress. “It provides support for further development of our critical technology. With this award, we will accelerate our plans to develop additional functionality for cancer providers and patients within a large and growing market.”

With payers increasingly rewarding value and expectations of the customer experience on the rise among all stakeholders, one of the key ways pharmas will differentiate their products is through understanding their customers’ pain points and providing tools and services that address them. For today’s physician, EHRs are a real pain, and prior authorizations are another. So we were interested to learn of a Avhana Health, a startup that is currently piloting a cloud-based clinical decision support system that sits on top of four of the big EHR systems – Epic, Allscripts, AthenaHealth and Greenway.

Supports K@W’s Innovation Content Pfizer Inc. raked in more than $12.4 billion in revenue in both 2007 and 2008 from just one drug, Lipitor. The cholesterol-lowering mega-blockbuster accounted for more than a quarter of the pharmaceutical giant’s total revenue in those years.

But those golden days couldn’t last.

DATE: Wednesday, December 9, 2015LOCATION: Montgomery County Department of Economic Development, 111 Rockville Pike, Suite 800, Rockville, MD 20850

The FDA Technology Transfer program seeks to advance the development and commercialization of inventions that result from regulatory science research and development conducted at the FDA. Regulatory Science can be defined as the science of developing new tools and technologies to assess the safety, efficacy, quality, and performance of FDA-regulated products. Technology Transfer tools used by the FDA Technology Transfer Program are the same tools used by Federal Agencies and FDA technology transfer-related policies are similar to the policies of the NIH and CDC. However, the range of technologies developed at the FDA is more diverse- a reflection of the FDA’s role in ensuring the safety of food, drugs, biologics, medical devices, tobacco, and veterinary medicines.

The Maryland Technology Development Corp. (TEDCO) is bringing in an industry veteran to turn its $106 million Maryland Venture Fund into a regional leader in venture funding.

Andy Jones, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, joined TEDCO on Monday as managing director of the Maryland Venture Fund. Jones’ prime task will be to elevate the fund from a supporting investor to a leader in venture capital that drives more money to local companies.

PharmaCyte Biotech, Inc. (PMCB), a clinical stage biotechnology company focused on developing targeted treatments for cancer and diabetes using its signature live-cell encapsulation technology, Cell-in-a-Box®, announced today that, upon the recommendation of the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the European Commission has granted the Orphan Drug designation to PharmaCyte’s subsidiary, PharmaCyte Biotech Europe Limited, for PharmaCyte’s pancreatic cancer treatment. Receiving Orphan Drug designation for PharmaCyte’s pancreatic cancer treatment carries with it 10 years of marketing exclusivity in countries in the European Union. In addition, the EMA provides special assistance in the development of PharmaCyte’s treatment for pancreatic cancer.

The Orphan Drug designation in the European Union is given to drugs for life-threatening diseases with low prevalence, or that make it unlikely an investment in a drug to treat a life-threatening disease would be cost justified, and that demonstrate there is a significant benefit to patients being treated with the drug.

Arlington cybersecurity start-up ThreatConnect said Tuesday that it has raised $16 million from investors, led by the corporate venture capital arm of SAP’s North American subsidiary in Rockville. The next morning just down the road in Sterling, Va., a similarly-named start-up called ThreatQuotient said it raised $10.2 million, led by prolific technology investor New Enterprise Associates. A few weeks ago Arlington-based Trustar announced a $2 million in seed funding.

The D.C.-based venture capital firm Revolution Growth is bringing on additional talent.

The firm, founded by AOL co-founder Steve Case, Monumental Sports & Entertainment’s CEO and owner Ted Leonsis, and Donn Davis, announced the hiring of four new vice presidents Tuesday to help spur additional investments and push for a greater return on its portfolio.

Thursday, December 10, 2015 from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM, bwtech@UMBC

Senator Mikulski is retiring.

Governor Hogan is just getting started.

Who’s the next champion of Maryland’s life sciences sector?

Please join We Work For Health (WWFH) Maryland and the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) as we explore how to develop Maryland’s next generation of elected leaders to foster medical innovation and grow our regional bio-economy.

Over breakfast, members of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, government, labor, and academic community will discuss the importance of identifying and cultivating medical innovation leaders to help address our challenges and make the most of our

In the past couple of years there has been a rise in sovereign wealth funds’ investments in healthcare. These cover a wide range of areas from hospital chains to pharmaceutical companies, but it also includes direct investments in digital health startups. China Broadband Capital invested in smartphone diagnostic developer Scanadu and French Groupe Arnault includes Clue, a maker of female health apps, among its investments. Alaska Permanent Fund is one of the founding investors in Denali Therapeutics, a biotech business targeting neurodegenerative disorders.

Two years ago, life science startups were only six percent of the Google Ventures portfolio. 



As 2015 draws to a close, that industry now is nearly one third of Google Ventures investments and is only going to grow larger, says the president and CEO of Google’s venture arm, Bill Maris.

We’re another step closer to extending the life span of human beings.

Researchers in Switzerland have been studying the effect of genes on the aging process and have published their results in the journal Nature Communications. Of the 40,000 genes they studied, they found 30 that allow a variety of animals, including roundworms, zebrafish, and mice, to stay healthier and live longer. But these scientists focused specifically on genes that are also found in human beings, so the next step in their project is to see if these genes also have an impact on us as well.

Jeff Carroll inherited the DNA mutation that causes Huntington’s disease. It means that in a decade or two, he’ll lose control over his body and slowly go mad, just like his mother.

That’s the reason Carroll, 38, says he’d be in favor of gene editing embryos. He says the idea of correcting DNA errors in the next generation has no “ick factor” for him at all. “I have no compunctions about it,” says Carroll, who is a neuroscientist at Western Washington University, in Bellingham. “I am saying, please, please do mess with our DNA.”

Is Google about to take a huge dive into the health industry?

The search engine giant has just filed a patent for a “needle-free blood draw” system that could be worn on your wrist and help people who need regular draws to get blood quickly and painlessly, according to a The Verge report.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ vision to turn a mostly undeveloped property in Research Triangle Park into its latest life science cluster is moving forward with a first phase intended to boost offerings for early-stage startups.

Pasadena, CA-based Alexandria (NYSE: ARE), which operates science and technology campuses across the country, announced the RTP plans today. Alexandria will start by refurbishing an existing building and laying the groundwork for development expected to reach 1 million square feet of space. Those RTP plans put the property shy of similar Alexandria science campuses in San Francisco; Cambridge, MA, and New York. But Alexandria CEO Joel Marcus says each site reflects its market.

The Food and Drug Administration late Monday broadened the use of an already available anthrax drug from Emergent Biosolutions Inc. EBS, -0.57% to a larger treatment population. The agency approved Emergent’s BioThrax for use in people 18 to 65 years old who have had suspected or confirmed exposure to anthrax. Previously, the indication for the drug was for people who were at a high risk of exposure to the bacteria. Emergent Biosolutions shares rose 1% to $38.10 after hours.

The Maryland Technology Development Corp. (TEDCO) is bringing in an industry veteran to turn its $106 million Maryland Venture Fund into a regional leader in venture funding.

Andy Jones, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, joined TEDCO on Monday as managing director of the Maryland Venture Fund. Jones’ prime task will be to elevate the fund from a supporting investor to a leader in venture capital that drives more money to local companies.

A collaboration between the University of Cambridge and MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, has led researchers to identify a potentially significant new application for a well-known human enzyme, which may have implications for treating respiratory diseases such as asthma.

Enzymes are biological catalysts – molecules that speed up chemical reactions within living materials. Many enzymes are already well characterized and their functions fairly well understood. For example, the enzyme known as MMP8 is present in the connective tissue of most mammals, where it breaks the chemical bonds found in collagen.

Construction is complete on a new 700-spot parking garage at Universities at Shady Grove, clearing the way to begin moving dirt on a planned $162 million biomedical sciences building on its Rockville campus.

Work will start on that facility in June, said Stewart Edelstein, associate vice chancellor of the University System of Maryland, the state’s public university network that includes USG. The full project, which included the $20 million garage and a new entrance onto campus, will be completed by fall 2018, said Edelstein, who is also USG’s executive director.

DATE: Wednesday, December 9, 2015LOCATION: Montgomery County Department of Economic Development, 111 Rockville Pike, Suite 800, Rockville, MD 20850

The FDA Technology Transfer program seeks to advance the development and commercialization of inventions that result from regulatory science research and development conducted at the FDA. Regulatory Science can be defined as the science of developing new tools and technologies to assess the safety, efficacy, quality, and performance of FDA-regulated products. Technology Transfer tools used by the FDA Technology Transfer Program are the same tools used by Federal Agencies and FDA technology transfer-related policies are similar to the policies of the NIH and CDC. However, the range of technologies developed at the FDA is more diverse- a reflection of the FDA’s role in ensuring the safety of food, drugs, biologics, medical devices, tobacco, and veterinary medicines.

Join Us on Dec 2nd for BioBuzz MoCo

We are excited to be returning to Growlers in Gaithersburg on December 2nd for BioBuzz MoCo

BioBuzz is an ongoing monthly networking group of professionals from all sectors of the Bioscience industry. Each month we host a FREE event for like-minded people to come to gether and network, reconnect with past coworkers, build stonger relationships and share stimulating conversations in a welcoming atmosphere.

Thursday, December 10, 2015 from 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM, bwtech@UMBC

Senator Mikulski is retiring.

Governor Hogan is just getting started.

Who’s the next champion of Maryland’s life sciences sector?

Please join We Work For Health (WWFH) Maryland and the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) as we explore how to develop Maryland’s next generation of elected leaders to foster medical innovation and grow our regional bio-economy.

Over breakfast, members of the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry, government, labor, and academic community will discuss the importance of identifying and cultivating medical innovation leaders to help address our challenges and make the most of our

Thursday, December 10, 2015 | 6:30pm-8:30pm, Johns Hopkins East, 1101 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 | 3rd Floor Conference

Learn how to secure National Institutes of Health SBIR/STTRs for your high-tech bio-innovation.

Dr. Doswell lead JUICE Money wins for high-tech minority companies and HBCUs such as:

• 3 NIH SBIR/STTR grant awards in 2015.
• 1 DOD RIF grant award in 2015.
• 1 CASIS grant award for testing innovation onboard the International Space Station in 2015.
• 1 Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) Phase II award for Morgan State University in 2015.
• 1 Maryland Space Grant Consortium Award for Morgan State University in 2015.
• Secured Maryland TEDO awards.
• Secured a Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) award
• Secured NSF STTR Phase I/II awards.
• Helped fund the Robotics Technician Program at Baltimore City Community College.

Virginia Beach has long been an expert at luring visitors with its sun and sand.

But now, there’s a serious effort under way to attract men and women who will spend the majority of their days indoors.

Earlier this month, the Virginia Beach Department of Economic Development launched VABeachBio (vabeachbio.com), an initiative to attract biomedical and life science businesses to the city.

In this day and age, you can easily share photos through Dropbox, notes in Evernote, or spreadsheets via Google Drive with anyone. But good luck helping two doctors at two different hospitals to see the same patient records online. Instead, when a patient goes to a medical center for the first time, they often have to repeat tests they’ve undergone before—such as a computerized tomography (CT) scan, which uses X-ray technology to produce cross-sectional images of the body.

No one wants to be the flavor of the month – except during that month.

That’s the danger for today’s healthcare startups and their leadership as they look to find the right investors and partners. Our prediction: Alternative investing paths such as venture philanthropy and corporate venture capital will become even more prominent than they are today (and that’s pretty big, considering the results of the survey Lake Whillans commissioned from MedCity News).

When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz founded their namesake venture firm in 2009, they laid out a clear-but-narrow vision for investing in a new wave of Web-based innovation.

Andreessen, in particular, espoused a net-centric view that was absolute. “No clean tech, no rocket ships, no electric cars. No China or India,” he told Fortune magazine at the time. Biotech likewise was out of the question. In the six years since then, Andreessen Horowitz has grown into a $4 billion VC, and established itself as a leading tech investor. Andreessen’s observation that “software is eating the world” has become an industry axiom, as Web-based services have invaded and taken over financial services, education, and a host of other sectors.

How would you engineer a baby? I mean really, actually do it.

Last April, Chinese researchers reported that they had tried genetically editing human embryos for the first time to correct a disease gene. Out of more than 80 embryos, however, only a handful came out correctly. In the rest, the gene didn’t get fixed properly, or they ended up with unintended alterations to their DNA (see “Chinese Team Reports Gene-Editing Human Embryos”).

With the cost to sequence a human genome dropping by the day and medical records finally going digital, public health experts are excited for a new era of personalized, or “precision,” medicine—a big data future in which there is no “average” patient, only individual patients with unique genes, environments, and lifestyles. As a measure of this excitement, this year, President Obama launched a $215 million initiative that will create a health database from 1 million volunteers that is unprecedented in detail. Breakthroughs in prevention, understanding, and treatment of disease are hoped.

emocha Mobile Health received a Small Business Innovation Research grant to further development of its mobile app that provides video-based healthcare observations in some cases where visits were previously required.

The NIH grant, which is for about $200,000 over two years, will allow the Johns Hopkins-based startup to gather data on its miDOT app from Tuberculosis patients in four health departments around the state, said cofounder Morad Elmi. The system is already in use at Baltimore’s health department.

OpGen, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPGN) and the District of Columbia Hospital Association (DCHA) today announced that Washington DC’s public health departments will oversee a comprehensive citywide evaluation, HARP-DC (Healthcare facility Antibiotic Resistance Prevalence-District of Columbia), to gauge the prevalence of the multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) in healthcare facilities throughout the District of Columbia. The DC Department of Health (DOH)-led study is being funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) Funding program for tracking healthcare-associated infections (HAI). The Department, in turn, has contracted OpGen to perform related laboratory services. The DC Department of Forensic Sciences-Public Health Laboratory (DFS-PHL) is also participating in the study by providing logistical support and by sequencing and banking isolates recovered from cultures.

Smartphones are getting smarter thanks to Agewell Biometrics and their Equilibrium app! More specifically, Equilibrium is a “mobile software balance assessment application that allows healthcare professionals to quickly evaluate postural stability”. In turn, this can help detect signs of musculoskeletal, neurological and vestibular dysfunction in the elderly. So, in short, AgeWell Biometrics is improving senior care and quality of life by providing objective, precise and predictive fall risk assessment.

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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.

PHARMACEUTICAL majors AstraZeneca and Sanofi have agreed to swap 210,000 compounds from their proprietary libraries as part of efforts to encourage open innovation in drug development. No money will change hands between the two companies, in what is a relatively new collaborative approach. Both companies will be able to increase the diversity of their compound libraries. AstraZeneca and Sanofi have chosen compounds from each others’ libraries which plug gaps in their own, and will share chemical structures and the procedures to make them.

On November 4 more than 400 regional business and government leaders joined us for our Annual Meeting to celebrate the people and companies that make this region great. Attendees heard from 20 individuals who share their stories about their connection to Baltimore.

In 2016, The University System of Maryland will break ground on a new Biomedical Science and Engineering Education Facility at the Universities at Shady Grove. The facility has been designed to meet the specific economic needs of this region, while expanding degree opportunities in healthcare, biosciences, engineering and computational sciences and STEM education. This facility will provide state-of-the-art teaching laboratories, active learning classrooms, clinical training facilities, academic offices, and an expanded level of student services necessary to support program and enrollment growth.

The University of Maryland was honored at the 2015 Innovation & Economic Prosperity (IEP) University Awards by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). UMD took home the top honor, the Connections Award, which recognizes an institution working to build connections between innovation and entrepreneurship, talent development, and social, community and cultural development. The award winners were announced today at APLU’s annual meeting in Indianapolis.

UMD won the Connections Award in part for its partnership with Northrop Grumman to create the Advanced Cybersecurity Experiences for Students (ACES), a program which helps to supply trained workers to serve the cyber community. In addition, UMD announced earlier this year its plans for Greater College Park, an initiative which ties together many efforts supporting the university’s goal of becoming a premier college town. It focuses on dynamic academic spaces, a vibrant downtown community and a public-private research hub that brings together businesses and the university’s academic community.

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.”

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.

Dr. Robert L. Caret was inaugurated as chancellor of the University System (USM) of Maryland on November 19, 2015 at the Christopher Columbus Center in Baltimore, Md. The event featured remarks by several Maryland dignitaries and members of the USM community; musical performances by current USM students; as well as the following video tribute.

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.

Thu, Dec 3, 2015 4:30 PM – 8:00 PM MedImmune, Gaithersburg, MD

It is an unprecedented time in science and healthcare filled with equal parts cavernous challenge and unrivaled opportunity. Competitive job markets, extended trainee timelines and increasing demand for endurance coupled with uncertain career paths to pose serious questions to early, mid and late career professionals in our fields. Nowhere is this more apparent than here at the heart of our nation’s capital – a microcosm representing nearly every sector of science, medicine and healthcare along with the institutions that govern them.

Join us for an impactful evening as four extraordinary women leaders from across our community come together to discuss the career and life lessons that guide them as they define success and shape the future of science, medicine and healthcare today.

Accelerators have been nurturing young companies since startups became as hip as garage bands. (This was 2005ish… about the same time I was in my garage tuning my guitar.) Founders consume the wisdom of elders in a sleepless boot camp designed to spin up incredible value quickly. For the startup, the ticket to ride is somewhere around 6 percent of their seedling company in exchange for $20K and the opportunity to immerse themselves in the three-month program, usually concluding with a rockstar-like demo day event.

Join Us on Dec 2nd for BioBuzz MoCo

We are excited to be returning to Growlers in Gaithersburg on December 2nd for BioBuzz MoCo

BioBuzz is an ongoing monthly networking group of professionals from all sectors of the Bioscience industry. Each month we host a FREE event for like-minded people to come to gether and network, reconnect with past coworkers, build stonger relationships and share stimulating conversations in a welcoming atmosphere.

ONLY TWO BRAND NEW LABORATORY/OFFICE SUITES AVAILABLE 3,596 SF AND 3,796 SF

• Lab casework with epoxy tops, shelving, and sinks
• Fume hood(s)
• Open/closed office space, kitchen, conference room, etc.
• Common autoclave and glasswash
• Newly renovated lobby and restrooms
• Complimentary access to the Alexandria ‘FitLab’ fitness center

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 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.

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.

Pfizer has clinched a blockbuster merger with a fellow drug maker, one worth more than $150 billion, that can best be described in superlatives.

When it is announced — most likely on Monday, people briefed on the matter said — the deal to buy Allergan, the maker of Botox, would be one of the biggest ever takeovers in the health care industry. And it would be the largest acquisition yet in a banner year for mergers.

Most companies make a conscious and deliberate decision to embrace digitization and the information revolution. Yet the role of big data in medicine seems almost to compel organizations to become involved. In this interview, Dr. Eric Schadt, the founding director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, tells McKinsey’s Sastry Chilukuri how data-driven approaches to research can help patients, in what ways technology has the potential to transform medicine and the healthcare system, and how the Icahn Institute is building its talent base. An edited transcript of Schadt’s remarks follows.

This week, Andreessen Horowitz said it’s launching a fund dedicated to investments in bioinformatics and “beyond the pill” technology. The venture capital firm had already gotten its feet wet with investments in these areas, but a dedicated fund is something new and indicates an interest in ramping up its strategy. With its fund, the firm could make a big impact. Here are some insights on some challenges and opportunities in these areas and some companies the firm should consider.

First of all, it’s worth noting some of the health and life science IT companies that Andreessen Horowitz have invested in so far. It’s only a handful to date:

The new president and chief executive officer of Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology has roots in high flight and high finance and every intention to bring skills from both sectors to his new job. Ed Albrigo, appointed Nov. 2 by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to succeed Peter Jobse, who has returned to the private sector after 13 years with the nonprofit CIT, says his goals are lofty — maybe seeding Virginia companies to remotely mine for minerals on the moon and bring them back for use in fusion energy.

This week, PricewaterhouseCoopers came out with a report on remaking primary care for what the consulting form called “the New Health Economy.” We would have covered it straight up on Wednesday, but a certain provider-focused health IT reporter at MedCity News was busy at the American Medical Informatics Association conference.

Since it’s not breaking news anymore, we have to take a different angle. A major component of the future of primary care, according to PwC, will be digital health.

Virtual reality is here, and brands of all stripes are embracing the tech. The New York Times and Google newly partnered to send more than 1 million cardboard VR viewers to Times subscribers at the beginning of November so they could watch the paper’s first VR documentaries on a smartphone. Magic Leap published video of its augmented reality system online in October, causing more buzz around VR’s potential. Even Tommy Hilfiger now offers VR sets to its in-store customers so they can watch its recent New York Fashion Week show.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• Notice of NIOSH/CDC Participation in PA-16-019 “Innovation Corps (I-Corps) at NIH Program for NIH and CDC Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Grantees (Admin Supp)”
  • (NOT-CD-16-001) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• NHLBI Announces Small Business Topics of Special Interest (TOSI)
  • (NOT-HL-15-282) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
• Notice of Correction to Award Budget in PAR-16-026 “SBIR/STTR Commercialization Readiness Pilot (CRP) Program: Technical Assistance (SB1)”
  • (NOT-HL-15-283) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Requests for Applications:

• NHLBI Progenitor Cell Translational Consortium (U01)
  • (RFA-HL-16-021) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
  • Application Receipt Date(s): February 08, 2016
• NHLBI Progenitor Cell Translational Consortium Coordinating Center (U24)
  • (RFA-HL-16-022) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
  • Application Receipt Date(s): February 08, 2016

Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 08:00am – 05:00pm

You’ve read the books. You’ve watched the presentations. You’ve even done many presentations on your own. Now, you’re at that last step — the war stories. Join Rick Kohr of Evergreen Advisors and Jason Tagler of Camden Partners to hear first-hand about the best and worst pitches. Jen Meyer of Betamore will moderate a discussion that focuses on the softer side of raising money, based on real-life experiences of Rick and Jason, so you can put yourself and your company on the institutional “Most Wanted” list.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 08:30am – 10:00pm

Don’t miss this Good Morning Rockville.  It is the first in a series of 4 events over the next year focusing on Systematizing Your Workplace:

Part 1 ~ Systematizing & Automating your Workplace

Part 2 ~ Coordinating Your Gadgets (Laptop -Tablet – Phone) ~ March 16th

Part 3 ~ Furniture Systems ~ June 2016

Part 4 ~ Office Technology Security ~ September 2016

Speakers are still TBD.

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.

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.

AstraZeneca entered into a definitive agreement Friday to buy ZS Pharma, a California biotechnology company, for $2.7 billion.

ZS Pharma (NASDAQ: ZSPH) of San Mateo, Calif., has an application seeking approval for ZS-9, its experimental treatment for hyperkalaemia, under review with the Food and Drug Administration. A European marketing application is expected before the end of the year.

The new venture is expected to make its first investments in the first quarter of 2016.

A new business entity will invest $30 million in Israeli digital medicine ventures, sources inform “Globes.” Collaborating with the venture will be US hospital Johns Hopkins, one of the world’s largest medical institutions,and Luminox-Health, an Israeli group dealing in digital medicine.

Johns Hopkins’s annual budget is more than $7 billion, and the new venture is expected to make its first investments already in the first quarter of 2016.

QIAGEN N.V. has announced the start of commercialization activities for its GeneReader NGS System, the first complete Sample to Insight next-generation sequencing (NGS) solution designed for any laboratory to deliver actionable results.

With the introduction of the GeneReader NGS System, QIAGEN is offering the world’s first truly end-to-end NGS workflow from primary sample to a final report that provides a simpler, more cost-effective way for clinical testing to take advantage of NGS technology and improve outcomes.

The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) announced today that it is hosting a local competition in the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) 2016 InnovateHER: Innovating for Women Challenge. InnovateHER provides an opportunity for entrepreneurs throughout Maryland to compete for $70,000 in cash prizes by showcasing products and services that have a measurable impact on the lives of women and families, have the potential for commercialization, and fill a need in the marketplace.

“57% of working age women participate in the labor force, 74% of employed women work full-time, and 70% of working women have children under the age of 18,” said Rob Rosenbaum, President and Executive Director of TEDCO. “As demands on women and families grow, the need for products and services that address these unique challenges increases – we are hopeful that InnovateHER will identify some high potential solutions.”

A pair of SMU psychology professors working with University of Maryland engineers have been awarded a National Institutes of Health grant in October that will bring nearly $2 million to their joint project to create a wearable device for pediatric asthma patients that helps them avoid asthma triggers.

The asthma device will monitor air quality (including pollen levels and temperature), carbon dioxide levels in the blood, physical activity, breathing, emotional states and other stimuli to identify each patient’s individual asthma triggers and alert them when conditions are ripe for an attack. The concept is similar to the glucose monitor that alerts diabetes patients when their blood sugar is low, but it also includes much more complex monitoring of the patients’ environment.

GlaxoSmithKline could file up to 20 new drugs for regulatory approval before 2020 as it seeks to revitalize a portfolio hit by falling sales of best-selling inhaled lung treatment Advair, the company said on Tuesday.

Seven of them may reach the market before the end of decade, it added.

The Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) announced today that six new Maryland companies received funding from its Cybersecurity Investment Fund (CIF). Jedvice, Point 3 Security, Topaz Research, Efflux Systems, Bricata and QI Solutions were each awarded $100,000 through CIF. The Fund supports Maryland companies looking to develop and commercialize new cybersecurity products or services by providing investments of up to $225,000.

“As the State’s first dedicated cybersecurity fund, we have seen an increase in momentum around Maryland’s information security ecosystem,” said Rob Rosenbaum, president and executive director of TEDCO. “CIF’s goal is to support innovative cybersecurity companies and accelerate their product development to help them get to commercial launch faster. With our funding and support, we are confident these six startups will successfully grow and create more jobs in Maryland. ”

PITCH. NETWORK. LEARN. BE INSPIRED.

The 2015 Entrepreneur Expo will be held on Tuesday, November 17th at the BWI Marriott in Linthicum, MD. This 5th Annual event is hosted by TEDCO and is the only large-scale event dedicated to promoting the key to Maryland’s innovation economy, its entrepreneurs. The 2015 Entrepreneur Expo is expected to draw the region’s top entrepreneurs, business owners, investors, legislators and researchers. This year’s keynote speakers are Rent the Runway Co-Founder Jennifer Fleiss and Maryland-born NASA Astronaut & USAF Col Terry Virts. www.innovatemd.com.

The Baltimore Angels recently surpassed $5 million in overall investment, according to numbers released by the six-year-old early-stage investment group

The milestone comes as members of the group invested $4 million in startups over the last two and a half years. Since 2012, investor membership has grown from 30 to 50 members. The group meets once a month to hear pitches. Companies are usually after the “friends and family” round, and pre-seed stage.

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.

Neurology research is one of those rare topics that immediately fascinates people outside the field. Any technology that makes healing brain ailments easier is a relief for people of all ages who fear what the future might bring for their health. But it’s also fascinating to see what new developments could do not just to protect our brains, but also augment them.

The new Tel Aviv accelerator Brainnovations will foster the very companies that will lead that development. It’s the brainchild of Israel Brain Technologies (IBT), a local non-profit that former President Shimon Peres launched in 2011. IBT is dedicated to “making Israel a leader in the international market” for braintech and has hosted two conferences and several industry meetups since 2013. But those events were only the beginning, according to Dr. Yael Fuchs Shlomai, Program Manager at Brainnovations.

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.

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.

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

The SEC has finally released rules for Title III of the JOBS Act, the equity crowdfunding law. Nearly three years and seven months after the potentially game-changing bill was first signed into law, equity crowdfunding will be available to startups and small companies in 180 days. Yes, we get to wait another half a year before anyone can actually use equity crowdfunding, but at least now we know it will happen.

For those who have run out of Ambien, the hundreds of pages of new rules will provide a welcome sleep aid. But for professionals who plan to use these rules to help companies raise new capital, it is required reading. Bring on the Red Bull.

Thursday, November 12, 2015 from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM (EST)

Interested in pursuing a career in technology transfer? Looking to expand your horizons in small business and commercialization? Register to receive course credit for TECH 505 – Contemporary Topics in Tech Transfer through the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences at NIH (FAES) or learn about other courses open to the general public.

Relevant Health, a health-tech accelerator based in Rockville, announced and welcomed its inaugural cohort Tuesday.

The seven selected startups will begin their five-month program this week. According to the press release, the program will involve “intensive product development focus,” with the aim of “enabling [the startups] to improve their skills to define, develop, position and launch a viable health tech product.”

Rockville-based health-tech incubator Relevant Health is out with its first seven companies that will begin co-working in the facility over the next five months.

“We didn’t want to just attract the best and brightest from around the region, we wanted the best and brightest from around the United States and elsewhere,” managing partner Rich Bendis told The Washington Post. “We have resources and assets that are one of a kind in our backyard that really aren’t present elsewhere.”

Relevant Health, a health tech accelerator in Rockvillle, Maryland, has picked seven companies for its inaugural class. Among the participants in the five-month program are a wearables developer seeking to help people avoid injuries from heavy lifting and a speech therapy tool to make learning seem more like a game.

The accelerator got started this year through a partnership between BioHealth Innovation, Montgomery County’s Economic Development department and Product Savvy, which is managing day-to-day operations. Here’s a summary of the members.

Baltimore-based AgeWell Biometrics has been selected a member of the inaugural startup class with Relevant Health, a health technology startup accelerator in Rockville, officials of the accelerator said Tuesday. “Relevant Health chose candidates who have a vision and business model for a product that promises significant positive impacts in the health sector,” stated Rich Bendis, BioHealth Innovation…

Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett has named the 11 local business leaders who will be charged with steering the county’s nascent economic development corporation.

The nonprofit Montgomery County Economic Development Corp. will replace the county’s Department of Economic Development when it launches in the spring. Change happens fast: Leggett first suggested the idea in February, formally proposed it in May and earned County Council approval in July.

Global venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) today announced the promotion of Sara Nayeem, M.D., to Partner. Dr. Nayeem joined NEA’s healthcare team in 2009 and is focused on investments in biopharma.

“This promotion recognizes Sara’s acumen as an investor and her deep commitment to the entrepreneurs and founders with whom she partners,” said David Mott, General Partner and head of NEA’s healthcare investing practice. “We are pleased to acknowledge her many contributions to NEA’s biopharma practice and to our firm, and look forward to her continued success in this new role.”

Efforts to fight antibiotic-resistant infections — often dubbed superbugs — typically involve strategies of curbing overuse of the antibiotics we already have or finding alternatives.

But what if those pesky superbug infections could simply be prevented in the first place? It’s the strategy Gaithersburg-based MedImmune is taking with two of its vaccine candidates aimed at bacterial infections.

GlycoMimetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: GLYC) announced today that the first healthy participant has been dosed with a subcutaneous (SC) formulation of rivipansel in a Phase 1, single ascending-dose clinical study to evaluate its safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics. Rivipansel (GMI-1070) is an investigational compound being studied as a potential therapy for the treatment of vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) in sickle cell disease and is being developed by Pfizer Inc. under a worldwide licensing agreement the two companies entered into in 2011.

The SC formulation of rivipansel utilizes Enhanze™ Technology, licensed by Pfizer from Halozyme Therapeutics, Inc. This technology is based on a proprietary recombinant human hyaluronidase enzyme (rHuPH20) that temporarily modifies components of the extracellular matrix in order to aid in the dispersion and absorption of other SC injected therapeutic drugs.

The booming biotech sector is putting a premium on lab space, and fund managers are buying in.

One of their favorite targets is Pasadena, California-based Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc, which owns the largest collection of high-end lab space in such research clusters as San Diego, San Francisco and Cambridge, Massachusetts. A total of 64 mutual funds and hedge funds have reported adding shares of the company to their portfolios in the current quarter, a 56 percent jump from the quarter ending in September, according to Morningstar data.

MacroGenics said today it has regained full global rights to the Phase I cancer compound enoblituzumab (MGA271), after Servier opted not to exercise its option to develop and commercialize the B7-H3-targeting monoclonal antibody in Europe and other countries under a four-year-old collaboration.

That collaboration generated a $20 million upfront payment from Servier and could have resulted in up to $450 million for MacroGenics.

Personal Genome Diagnostics, a Baltimore company that analyzes cancer patients’ genes to improve treatment and diagnosis, has received a $21.4 million venture capital investment led by New Enterprise Associates.

The company plans to use the money to sell more of its technology to sequence and analyze genes in biopsy samples.

ClearPath Development Company (ClearPath) announced today the launch of its second vaccine company, NVC (Nosocomial Vaccine Corporation), with the support of its partner, Astellas Pharma Inc. The partnership between ClearPath and Astellas was established to support the goal of building a global vaccine franchise and launched its first company, RSV Corporation (RSVC), in December 2013. NVC has initiated research collaborations with two partners to develop a nosocomial vaccine; Affinivax Inc. (Cambridge, Mass.); and the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (Baltimore). The research collaboration will utilize Affinivax’s proprietary vaccine platform, Multiple Antigen Presentation System (MAPS), to develop vaccines that prevent bacterial nosocomial infections, also referred to as healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).

Mid-Atlantic Bio Angels (MABA) announces today that Sisu Global Health (http://www.sisuglobalhealth.com) was voted as “Best in Show” at MABA’s 1st Pitch Life Science event, which took place at the Cira Center on September 30, 2015. Sisu is a medical device developer with a pipeline of products designed to address challenges unique to emerging markets. Hemafuse, the Company’s first product, is an alternative to donor blood and could benefit 20 million cases in Africa ($600 million) each year.

According to Carolyn Yarina, CEO of Sisu, Healthcare systems in emerging markets struggle because 80% of medical technology is designed for 10% of the world’s population. Our products solve that problem by commercializing surgical devices that can effectively lower costs and can be used in countries where both urban and rural medicine must be supported by effective design, logistics and available medical infrastructure.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures and Glycocept, Inc. announced today that the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has granted Glycocept worldwide, exclusive licensing rights to a UMB patent and technology to modify monoclonal antibodies to alter their effector functions. Eric J. Sundberg, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), and Co-Director, Division of Basic Science, Institute of Human Virology (IHV), and Beatriz Trastoy, Ph.D., post-doctoral fellow at Dr. Sundberg’s laboratory at the IHV/UMSOM are the patent inventors. Biopharmaceutical industry veteran Ronald P. Dudek, who most recently served as Vice President of Commercial Strategy at Juno Therapeutics, Inc., is Glycocept’s President and Chief Executive Officer.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures and Educational and Scientific LLC (ESL), announced today that the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) granted ESL exclusive licensing rights to its interest in the commercial development of a molecule whose anticancer properties were jointly discovered by ESL and UMB. The molecule has consistently demonstrated its potential for the treatment of a variety of cancers, particularly lung, Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, pancreatic and prostate cancer.

Henry Lowe, Ph.D., D.Sc., F.R.S.H., an Adjunct Professor of Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM) is the Founder of ESL. Dr. Lowe collaborated with Dr. Joseph Bryant, DVM, Associate Professor of Pathology and Director, Animal Models Division, at the UM SOM Institute of Human Virology (IHV) in the realization of this discovery.

Northwest Biotherapeutics (NASDAQ: NWBO) (“NW Bio”), a U.S. biotechnology company developing DCVax® personalized immune therapies for solid tumor cancers, announced today that the Company has entered into agreement for funding of $30 million from Woodford Investment Management in the UK (“Woodford”).

Woodford will purchase $30 million of the Company’s common stock at $5.50 per share, for a total of 5,454,545 shares, raising Woodford’s total holdings to 25,915,937 shares, or about 28.1% of the Company. The purchase will take place in a closing on or before October 22, 2015.

Tuesday November 3, 2 pm ET

Congratulations – you just got a Notice of Award for an NIH SBIR/STTR grant – now what? How do you actually use those funds? This educational webinar about the Payment Management System will help you figure that out, with plenty of time for Q&A. This is highly recommended for new awardees.

Learn more about the Payment Management System: http://bit.ly/HHSpms

Presenter: Nicole Dunning Chief, University and Non-Profit Payment Section Payment Management Services Program Support Center U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

ATCC, the premier global biological materials resource and standards organization, announces today that it has been selected by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to provide vital cell lines to academic, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology organizations committed to speed a cure for Parkinson’s disease.

Parkinson’s disease is a chronic, degenerative neurological disorder that affects one in 100 people over age 60. While the average age at onset is 60, people have been diagnosed as young as 18. Recent research indicates that at least 1 million people in the United States, and more than 5 million worldwide, have Parkinson’s disease.

When the demand for hospital beds exceeds the supply, doctors might have to turn patients away. But a computer model developed by University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University researchers might help doctors better determine how many patients will be discharged and how many beds will be available on any given day.

“Hospitals tend to be highly utilized,” said Sean Barnes, an operations management professor involved with the model, “which means it can be hard to bring in new patients.”

Are you planning your career path or currently transitioning between careers? If you attended last January’s webinar on “Career Development,” and would like to have in-person insights from career coaches and recruiters perspective, join us at the Montgomery College (Germantown Campus) where we will host:

• Rosemary Sisco, Principal Recruiter at Kelly Government Solutions
• Ashley Bowman Clouser, Executive Recruiter at Search Solution Group
• Cecilia Matthews, Director of Human Resources at MedImmune

These professionals will provide career advice on such skills as elevator pitches and making successful presentations. They will also present tips, methods, and resources for conducting a job search.

This year’s FLC Mid-Atlantic regional meeting will take place in conjunction with the Innovation 2 Commercialization (I2C) Conference November 2 – 3 at the Universities at Shady Grove Conference Center in Rockville, Maryland. Attendees will have the opportunity to attend a variety of technology transfer (T2) sessions and network with regional entrepreneurs.

Centering on the theme of “Innovation Through Collaboration,” this year’s meeting highlights will include:

• Strategic T2 training sessions
• Technology industry needs panels
• FLC Mid-Atlantic regional awards presentation.

Onevest, a New York based investment crowdfunding platform focused on funding start-up entities, has announced the launching today of its new “1,000 Angles” crowdfunding vehicle. Touted as the “world’s largest digital-first, invitation-only investor network,” Onevest seeks to modernize the way venture capital funds are formed and how they invest.

1000 Angels will include OneVest co-founders Tanya Prive and Alejandro Cremades but the new spin on VC investing has added Erica Duignan Minnihan as Managing Partner, Barry Shereck as CFO and Dasha Sukovatitsyn as Membership Co-ordinator.

More than 770 health care innovation companies are operating in Washington state, representing 6 percent of jobs in the state’s health-care industry, but producing more than 13 percent of the industry’s overall output, as measured by the value of the goods and services they produce.

By next summer, startups and small businesses will be able to raise up to $1 million in capital a year by using Internet portals to sell shares to anyone, not just accredited investors.

That’s because the Securities and Exchange Commission Friday finally adopted rules for securities-based crowdfunding. The rules implement a provision of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, which was signed into law more than three years ago.

Maybe healthcare is thinking about data from wearable devices in all the wrong ways.

Speaking Thursday at the 12th annual Connected Health Symposium in Boston, Dr. Robert Pearl, CEO of Kaiser Permanente‘s Permanente Medical Group, said that, from a physician’s perspective, Fitbits and other fitness trackers are good for one thing: “December.” In other words, they make great Christmas gifts, but don’t serve much purpose in medical practice.

Recently, at the annual Dreamforce Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella declared a new era in computing defined by wearable devices. “People keep asking the question what’s next after the smartphone? There are early signs of it, things you wear on your wrists, in your ear and on your eyes,” he said.

D.C. tech accelerator 1776’s new Crystal City location is designed to be a mixture of old and new — everything from the reclaimed wooden furniture and reused light fixtures to the brand new industrial kitchen and tech-heavy collaboration spaces.

Even the 27,000-square-foot space was recycled, thanks to 1776’s acquisition of the Disruption Corp. incubator, but the space has since undergone significant renovations. Co-founder Donna Harris took me on a tour of the new spot, which she said has been reimagined and rebuilt since June to foster a sense of community among 1776’s nearly 300 members in the D.C. area.

Rockville’s MacroGenics Inc. is moving deeper into the cancer immunotherapy space with a new big pharma partnership.

The clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, which focuses on antibody-based therapies for cancer treatment and other diseases, announced it will work with Merck to study one of its molecules to treat stomach cancer. The companies will evaluate the antibody created by MarcoGenics in combination with Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda in a Phase 1b/2 clinical trial, officials said.

Vtesse, Inc. announced today the addition of Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Neurological Sciences and Biochemistry at Rush University Medical Center to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and that Michael Massaro has joined the company as Vice President, Clinical Operations. Today’s news comes on the heels of Vtesse’s recent announcement that Rush University Medical Center has enrolled three patients in its pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial with VTS-270 for treatment of Niemann-Pick Type C1 Disease (NPC). Vtesse expects up to 20 sites (across the United States and the European Union) to participate in this clinical trial.

“We seek SAB members who are both experienced clinicians and diligent researchers, and who also possess a strong passion to develop new treatment options and compassion for patients and their safety,” said Ben Machielse, Drs., President and Chief Executive Officer of Vtesse, Inc. “Dr. Berry-Kravis brings this unique combination to our SAB, which will support the clinical development of VTS-270. Her clinical research experience in rare diseases, such as Fragile X Syndrome, will help us advance our efforts with VTS-270. Dr. Berry-Kravis is serving as a co-lead principal investigator in our Phase 2b/3 clinical study of VTS-270 in addition to joining our SAB.”

MedImmune, a Greater Washington biotechnology cornerstone, is racing to fill the pipeline for parent AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) with drug candidates that harness the power of the immune system, even against cancer. And it’s using precision medicine to do it.

GlaxoSmithKline and five other major drugmakers have teamed up with the UK government to launch the world’s first venture capital fund dedicated to finding new ways to prevent and treat dementia.

The Department of Health, the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK and the six pharmaceutical firms have raised $100m (£65m) to invest in early-stage, novel treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other forms of dementia. GSK’s boss, Sir Andrew Witty, has been one of the main driving forces behind the initiative, in which the company is joined by the US drugmakers Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, and Japan’s Takeda.

Rockville-based health care IT provider DrFirst has secured $25 million in equity financing from Goldman Sachs, elevating its raise in the last year to $42 million.

DrFirst, which specializes in electronic prescription software services, said in a news release it will use the new investment to expand sales and marketing resources. It will also develop resources for new and existing products.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) announced today that it has received FDA approval for the cobas® HBV and cobas® HCV viral load tests, the first assays approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on the cobas® 6800 and cobas® 8800 Systems. The fully automated systems offer the fastest time to results, the highest throughput and the longest walk-away time available among automated molecular platforms, providing laboratories both improved operating efficiency and flexibility to adapt to changing testing needs. The new tests are the next generation of Roche’s viral load tests, which clinicians use to manage the treatment of patients chronically infected with hepatitis B or hepatitis C virus.

UC San Francisco (UCSF) has launched a collaboration with international pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) to promote early-stage research with the potential to translate into new therapies for cancer, obesity and antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Through the collaboration, researchers from UCSF will work alongside GSK scientists to identify and jointly expedite promising basic research. In a shift from traditional sponsored-research agreements, the program will provide early-stage funding for validating academic discoveries that are not otherwise supported by traditional grant mechanisms.

Enthusiastic, animated, and innovative, Christopher Meenan left no doubt why he was among UMB’s 2015 Founders Week award winners with an insightful and entertaining Entrepreneur of the Year presentation “Health Informatics: A New Frontier for Innovation in Medicine” on Oct. 21.

Meenan, a faculty research associate in the School of Medicine’s Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, recalled tales of his early career in the finance industry when Y2K was feared to be an “apocalyptic event” and later when he worked at America Online, which was striving “to be innovative” by putting 30 million people on the Internet.

138 Startups Now Compete for Fan Favorite and Finalist Designations Until Midday on Friday, November 6

Startup Maryland™ unveils the 138 video pitches from the participants in the 2015 Pitch Across Maryland competition. After posting the video pitches from Maryland entrepreneurs that were captured during the three-week Pitch Across Maryland bus tour, Startup Maryland is proud to announce that the two Video Pitch Competitions are now underway. You can find the various Playlists for each tour stop location where companies pitched on the Startup Maryland YouTube Channel.

The Startup Maryland bus rolled around the state for three weeks last month.

Mike Binko and company cruised through Baltimore with Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest tour, and made it over the Bay Bridge to Eastern Shore coworking space hotDesks.

One day featured a stop at Spark in Baltimore’s Power Plant Live! and the University of Baltimore. The bus was in Montgomery County, before heading back up to Charm City for Baltimore Innovation Week’s Beta City.

Georgetown University Biotechnology MS students seek unpaid internship in business or lab-related project in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Students will spend minimum 280 hours (20hrs/week), Jan. 13 – Apr 22, 2016, and present a poster. For more info: contact Vasna Nontanovan, Associate Director, Biotechnology Masters Program, vn5@georgetown.edu, www.biotechnology.georgetown.edu.

The Seattle-based Microsoft Ventures Accelerator is a four-month program that connects startup founders with mentors and gives them the tools to help grow their business. The accelerator has 24 graduates to date, and is looking for its next class.

Specifically, Microsoft Ventures is looking for companies that focus on machine learning.

Free tasty food, brightly coloured bicycles and high salaries are well-known hallmarks of the Googleplex—Google’s famed headquarters in Mountain View, California. But it was not these perks that led cardiologist Jessica Mega to pause her thriving academic career at Harvard Medical School to become the chief medical officer of the company’s life-sciences team. She was lured by the ambitions of the effort, soon to be incorporated under Google’s parent firm Alphabet. Nurtured by Google’s expertise in data analytics and engineering, the biology team is expected to create miniaturized electronic devices and to use these and other means to collect and analyse more health data, more continuously, than is possible today.

Doctors have just discovered a previously unknown relationship between the long-term recovery of spinal cord injury victims and high blood pressure during their initial surgeries. This may seem like a small bit of medical news—though it will have immediate clinical implications—but what’s important is how it was discovered in the first place.

This wasn’t the result of a new, long-term study, but a meta-analysis of $60 million worth of basic research written off as useless 20 years ago by a team of neuroscientists and statisticians led by the University of California San Francisco and partnering with the software firm Ayasdi, using mathematical and machine learning techniques that hadn’t been invented yet when the trials took place.

It’s part of a a new program called Imprimis Cares that will make over 7,800 FDA-approved generic drugs available at an affordable price.

A pharmaceutical company announced Thursday that it plans to introduce a significantly lower-cost version of Daraprim, the drug that made headlines last month after jumping from $13.50 per pill to $750.

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2016 FLC awards. One of the most coveted honors in the technology transfer field, the FLC awards have been presented to over 200 federal laboratories since their inception in 1984. To reflect the diversity in scope and number of technology transfer efforts undertaken by federal laboratories and their partners, seven categories of awards will be presented.

Has venture capital always been a bad model for the life sciences?

Andrew Lo, director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, dismissed the sector outright on stage Sunday at the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit. His rationale:

Like Disney and the Dodgers before it, Cedars-Sinai is partnering on an industry-specific technology accelerator in Los Angeles. The nonprofit hospital in the Beverly Grove neighborhood has teamed on the first-ever Techstars Healthcare Accelerator.

The program will offer 10 entrepreneurs and startups in the global healthcare industry $120,000 in funding plus mentorship and guidance from senior leadership at Cedars-Sinai and access to Techstars’ network of more than 7,000 founders, mentors, investors and corporate partners. At the end of three months, the participating companies will participate in a demo day, presenting their work to investors, mentors, company executives and the community at large.

When Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes agreed to be interviewed at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.D Live conference here in Laguna Beach, California, she didn’t know that the event would end up taking place a week after the Journal published an in-depth exposé charging that the company’s blood-testing system had serious problems and that it was actually using commercially available devices for much of its work.

In the process of raising money? Looking to refine your pitch for institutional investors? Join members of Camden Partners, Evergreen Advisors, and the Baltimore Angels to work on your presentation. We’ll give you direct feedback on your presentation so that you’re better positioned for both your elevator pitch, as well as formal pitches for investment.

The Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) was created as a partnership between the State of Maryland and five Maryland academic research institutions (Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University, University of Maryland College Park, University of Maryland Baltimore and University of Maryland Baltimore County.) The program is designed to promote commercialization of research conducted in the partnership universities and leverage each institution’s strengths.