Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (EBS) announced today that it has signed a contract with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to develop a dry formulation of NuThraxTM (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed with CPG 7909 Adjuvant), also known as AV7909, the companys next generation anthrax vaccine candidate. This five-year contract, valued at up to $29 million, provides funding for manufacturing and non-clinical activities through the preparation of an Investigational New Drug application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The dry formulation of NuThrax is intended to increase stability of the vaccine candidate at ambient and higher temperatures, with the objective of eliminating the need for cold chain during shipping and storage.
MIMETAS, in a consortium with Radboudumc and FHNW, has received 1.6 million USD funding for development of a kidney-on-a-chip for toxicological applications. A panel of experts from GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Roche, NC3Rs and renowned academic institutions selected MIMETAS’ solution from a strong line-up of competing technologies.
The funding is awarded in the context of the NephroTube Crack-it Challenge to support development of a microfluidic renal model predicting renal toxicity during pre-clinical development. In collaboration with the Radboudumc Pharmacology-Toxicology Department and the Swiss FHNW, MIMETAS will use the funds to develop a high-throughput kidney-on-a-chip model by combining its OrganoPlate™ 3D-culturing technology with the human renal cell line ciPTEC™, analyzed and validated in three separate sites. The resulting model will be used to detect renal tubular injury observed in drug-induced nephrotoxicity. The model’s early prediction of nephrotoxicity will help to reduce animal experiments.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland is seeking a dynamic, innovative and accomplished biomedical/biotechnology executive with demonstrated scientific and entrepreneurial expertise to provide strategic vision and leadership for the Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC). The OTAC is charged with developing, implementing and leading translational research programs that create recognizable commercial value for discoveries and innovations during their gestational stages and facilitating their ultimate translation into new diagnostics, devices, therapeutics and tools. The Office is also charged with identifying emerging areas of translational opportunities, serving as a focal point for extramural researchers for information on NHLBI-wide small business technology development opportunities.
The OTAC Director is an expert in entrepreneurism and technology advancement with the vision and unique skill set required to recognize commercial value in very early stage technologies, guide their scientific and business oriented risk-mitigating development and the capital acquisition activities required for their ultimate customer/patient deployment. These skills, gained through experience in both the academic research and the start-up/small business or industry sector, will provide the OTAC Director the capability to oversee and effectively manage existing NHLBI translational research technology development programs and the development of new programs and initiatives required to identify and advance innovations and technology platforms for research, diagnosis, treatment, control and prevention of cardiovascular, lung, blood and sleep disorders.
WHEN: Thursday, Sept 25th, 2014 From 3:00 to 5:00 PM
WHERE: One MedImmune Way Gaithersburg MD 20878
BioBuzz Double Helix Sponsor MedImmune is hosting a special BioNetworking event for Post-Docs and Professional Scientists on September 25th at their headquarters in Gaithersburg.
This event will include music, lawn games, hors d’oeuvres, drinks and a scientific “Speed Networking” session and is open to Post-Docs & Professional Scientists who currently work in the Therapeutic Areas of:
To RSVP: email info to MedIPartneringStrategy@MedImmune.com Sign up by 9/12 and Provide your: Name Company Phone Therapeutic Area Let them know you learned about this event through BioBuzz! This event is for Post-Docs & Professional Scientists
The I2C Conference is a full-day event to help you get your technology-based small business on the fast-track! Three in-depth panels on Innovation, Commercialization and Financing Speakers include: GlycoMimetics, MedImmune, Johns Hopkins University, Naval Research Labs, Brain Sentry, Mindoula, SmartSenseCom, TEDCO, Maryland Venture Fund, and the exit strategy team from Amplimmune. Enjoy lunch…
Are you an entrepreneur ready to pitch your company? Register for your chance to film a three-minute video pitch to be seen online by VCs and angel investors and be voted on by fans around Maryland!
The Montgomery County Department of Economic Development and the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce have partnered to host Montgomery County’s Pitch Across Maryland stops on October 1, 2014. Applications for the Montgomery County Pitch stops are due September 15!
Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding AG said on Monday the European Union has approved the use of its drug RoActemra in patients with early-stage rheumatoid arthritis.
Roche said the European Commission has backed RoActemra as a treatment for patients with severe, active and progressive rheumatoid arthritis who have previously not been treated with methotrexate.
When British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline announced in October 2012 that it planned to make detailed data from its clinical trials widely available to researchers outside its own walls, the scientific community was stunned. For a company that spends $6.5 billion a year on research and development, it was a sharp turn away from the system of data secrecy that had made it one of the world’s largest drug companies, with 2013 sales of $43.6 billion.
The announcement came a few months after the company pled guilty to misdemeanor charges in the U.S. that it had marketed drugs for unapproved uses, based on improperly reported clinical trial data, and failed to report safety data on another drug later shown to raise the risk of heart attacks. Given the timing, many wondered if GSK’s move was more about rehabilitating its image than embracing data transparency.
The 2014 International Biotech Summit Committee invite BioHealth Innovation (BHI) and Montgomery County to attend the three co-located international conferences that will be held on Sep 9 -12 in Shenzhen, China:
2014 International Biotech Summit (September 10, 2014);
The 9th International Conference on Genomics (ICG-9) (September 11th-12th, 2014);
Shenzhen International Biotech & Health Industry Expo 2014 (SIBHIE, September 10th-12th, 2014).
Ms. Lily Qi, Director of Special Projects for Montgomery County Executive Office who was involved in establishing BHI and a native of Shanghai, is going to speak on behalf of the County and BHI for the forum, “Innovation in Policy and Regulation for Advancing Healthcare Industry.” BHI and the County are also invited as an exhibitor for the SIBHIE Expo.
The MCCC Business Awards Dinner Committee and Chair of the Board Lisa Cines, CPA of Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP invite you to join in the celebration of those who make our economy and community thrive. This annual sold-out event attracts 700+ guests including award winners, sponsors, business leaders, elected and government officials and the media. Join us for a great evening of Meaningful Connections, Commerce and Celebration.
A lot has been written lately about innovation, or the lack thereof, in the world of biopharma. One question that often gets asked: which countries lead the way in creating new medicines? Many people think that drugs originate in the nation where the companies that produce them are headquartered. The truth, however, is much more complicated. Given that multi-national firms market the majority of medicines, figuring out where each one of their drugs originated requires digging through some extensive data vaults. A proper analysis requires the examination of company histories, free market deal making, and in some cases government interventions. Consider the following examples:
This Monday September 1st marked the beginning of when investors with Angel Venture Forum D.C. started looking at submissions from companies for the Nov. Showcase.
AVF screeners do start reviewing plans as soon as submissions are made and some companies who have submitted to date have already received assistance and invitations to angel groups. Since we typically get a large number of applications and it does take the screeners a while to get through them all. Thus, the sooner an application the better.
The initial screening will occur through Sept. 15th. So you may still make submissions and corrections on applications up until Sept. 15th if needed. However, it is recommended that you complete your submission as soon as possible so that you get in the queue.
To submit an application – no later than Sept. 15th – visit www.angelventureforum.com. For any questions, please feel free to contact Mike Gildea, AVF COO at mgildea@braingainllc.com or 814-451-1151.
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first of an eagerly awaited new class of cancer drugs that unleashes the body’s immune system to fight tumors.
The drug, which Merck will sell under the name Keytruda, was approved for patients with advanced melanoma who have exhausted other therapies.
GETTING IDEAS TO PATIENTS: THE SOPE FOUNDATION CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT FOR EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS
To provide SoPE members with educational programs, events and more, we need your support. The SoPE Foundation has started a crowdfunding* campaign —Getting Ideas to Patients—to raise $250,000 by the end of 2014 for educational programs and events. The SoPE Foundation is the sole funder for these activities, such as the Blakely Visiting Lectureship Series named posthumously for one of our co-founders, and support for biomedical and health innovators applying for the Innovation Scholars Program. SoPE’s operates on a low-cost membership model to encourage enrollment. With your financial contribution, we will have the funding to do what we set out to do. Every little bit helps, and every larger bit moves us closer to our goal.
Dubbed as the most severe and deadly outbreak, the Ebola menace in West Africa has caught the attention of GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) (NYSE:GSK) and National institute of health. CNBC’s Meg Tirrell reports that NIH and GlaxoSmithKline have partnered to develop a vaccine that is said to have had immense success in primates, but yet to be tested in Humans.
The studies are to be used to ascertain whether the vaccine is safe and also its ability to prompt an immune response, able to combat the Ebola virus. No humans are to be infected’ with the Ebola virus during the course of the study.
Two Washington entrepreneurs with a history of building successful companies have teamed with a local businessman to start a venture capital fund focused on seed stage companies focused on applications that run on mobile devices.
The fund, called Kiwi Venture Partners I , has raised $2.5 million from 24 limited partners, including 12 from the Washington area. The LP investments range from $25,000 to $500,000.
According to CB Insights data, funding to digital health/health IT companies has already topped $2.2B in the first half of 2014.
With the space becoming increasingly crowded and well-funded, one effective way innovation trackers can understand which areas (and likely companies) will play a key role in future of the digital health space is by following the smart money.
Anne Arundel Medical Center is looking to get in on technology commercialization, a game more typically played at research hospitals and universities.
The James and Sylvia Earl Simulation to Advance Innovation and Learning (SAIL) Center is developing a plan to bring together doctors and the local business community to commercialize technology that would benefit the hospital.
Legal 500, considered one of the most comprehensive worldwide qualitative guides available on legal services providers, recently announced its 2014 rankings. Venable’s national Corporate Group continued to earn high marks in the latest edition leading the way with a Tier 1 ranking in the M&A: Middle-Market (Sub-$500m) category. The group also received high marks in the Technology: Outsourcing, Technology: Transactions and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) categories.
Corporate Practice Co-Chair Charles J. Morton, Jr. and partner William T. Russell received special recognition as Leading Lawyers for M&A: Middle Market (Sub $500m) Technology: Transactions respectively. Leading Lawyers are selected from all the nationally recommended attorneys in a particular category and represent those few individuals, who, in the view of their peers, represent the highest standards of their practice. This is Mr. Morton’s third year as a Leading Lawyer and Mr. Russell’s fourth. Mr. Morton was one of 23 attorneys nationwide named a Leading Lawyer in M&A: Middle Market (Sub $500m). Mr. Russell was one of only 12 attorneys nationwide named a Leading Lawyer in Technology: Transactions.
A group of UC Berkeley students launched what they call the first-ever student-run health tech incubator Thursday at the office of Downtown Berkeley’s Skydeck, which fosters campus startups.
The incubator, Catalyst@Berkeley, aims to provide a framework for students to bring viable prototypes to the market and open doors of entrepreneurship to undergraduate students interested in health care innovation.
The Life Sciences Discovery Fund (LSDF) today announced nearly $750,000 in Proof of Concept grants to Washington state for-profit and non-profit organizations to promote translation of health-related technologies from the laboratory to the commercial marketplace. Also announced was nearly $56,000 in supplemental funding to an existing grant to increase the commercial potential of a drug to protect hearing in patients taking certain antibiotics. (See Backgrounder Information.)
The LSDF Board of Trustees selected the awardees following review of proposals for scientific and technical merit, commercial potential, and health and economic benefits to Washington.
Encounter the hottest trends and innovations in Health IT as well as investment at the “eHealth Venture Summit”. This event at the MEDICA Health IT Forum showcases new companies, offers valuable insights and shall foster strategic partnerships and investment opportunities crucial to bringing innovative products to market. The event will feature seasoned industry experts from leading companies and funding specialists. The conference is jointly organized by Prof. Talya Miron-Shatz, CEO of CureMyWay, and a faculty member at the Ono Academic College, and Dr. Stefan Becker of the Institute for Drug Safety, University Hospital Essen.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
Legal 500, considered one of the most comprehensive worldwide qualitative guides available on legal services providers, recently announced its 2014 rankings. Venable’s national Corporate Group continued to earn high marks in the latest edition leading the way with a Tier 1 ranking in the M&A: Middle-Market (Sub-$500m) category. The group also received high marks in the Technology: Outsourcing, Technology: Transactions and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) categories.
Corporate Practice Co-Chair Charles J. Morton, Jr. and partner William T. Russell received special recognition as Leading Lawyers for M&A: Middle Market (Sub $500m) Technology: Transactions respectively. Leading Lawyers are selected from all the nationally recommended attorneys in a particular category and represent those few individuals, who, in the view of their peers, represent the highest standards of their practice. This is Mr. Morton’s third year as a Leading Lawyer and Mr. Russell’s fourth. Mr. Morton was one of 23 attorneys nationwide named a Leading Lawyer in M&A: Middle Market (Sub $500m). Mr. Russell was one of only 12 attorneys nationwide named a Leading Lawyer in Technology: Transactions.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, has announced that it will freeze the prices of its vaccines for five years for developing countries that graduate from GAVI Alliance support.
By committing to offer GAVI Alliance prices for vaccines against pneumonia, diarrhoea and cervical cancer, GSK will support developing country governments as they transition to financing the full cost of their local vaccination programmes.
The crossover round is alive and well. Just a few days after Dermira put out the word that a consortium of backers had come up with a $51 million C round, the company rolled out a $75 million IPO. And the news, along with a fresh, $86 million filing from Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, helps set the stage for a new round of fall biotech IPOs that will once again test investors’ appetite for risk.
First, let’s look at Redwood City, CA-based Dermira. Focused on skin ailments, the biotech is partnered with UCB on the development of Cimzia–already on the market–for psoriasis, a field that will soon be packed with a host of contenders from the likes of Novartis ($NVS) and Eli Lilly ($LLY). The biotech has laid plans for a Phase III psoriasis trial in 2015 as it pursues further work on a new therapy for “hyperhidrosis,” or excessive sweating, in the armpits. It’s in a Phase IIb study and a successful outcome would set the stage for a late-stage program. There’s also an acne treatment in early mid-stage studies.
The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development says its Maryland Venture Fund has made follow-on investments in two Maryland startups totaling $700,000.
Bethesda-based KoolSpan, a mobile security encryption company, received $400,000. BrainScope, also in Bethesda, got $300,000. BrainScope is developing neurotechnology for quickly assessing traumatic brain injury.
Emergent BioSolutions is looking to fill a position for a senior scientist position.
If hired, the senior scientist will be responsible for vaccine potency and assay development at Emergent BioSolutions.
Key responsibilities of the position include the design and execution of experimental protocols for developing and qualifying animal-based potency assays, conducting in vitro potency assay development and leading vaccine product stability studies with the company’s Potency Assay Group.
Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur, author and professor at Stanford University, developed the curriculum for the National Science foundation’s business boot camp for scientists before the NIH adopted it for scientists in the SBIR grant program. At a fireside chat at New York University Langone Medical Center hosted by NYC Bio this week, Blank talked about a new investment group called M34 Capital that will invest in technologies seeded by federally funded research, particularly graduates of I-Corps boot camps.
Led by CEO Errol Arkilic, founding and lead program director for the NSF I-Corps program, the Berkeley-based company was co-founded by Arkilic, Blank, Jim Hornthal, and Tom Baruch, according to its website. Its seed investment spans from $50,000 to $250,000. “We want to be the first external capital invested, and work closely with the founding team to help refine their business model and create the framework to systematically demonstrate its full potential,” according to the website. “We believe that the best entrepreneurs have the ability to blend technical insight with market-based feedback, allowing their innovations to mature into a successful company.”
Howard University Hospital will receive $11 million in federal grants toward developing new therapeutics for the Ebola virus, Howard officials said.
At least $2 million from the National Institutes of Health will go toward developing a new drug to target a particular protein of the Ebola virus. As well, $2 million will go toward work at the hospital researching HIV resistance in people with sickle cell disease, officials said.
BHC Center of Financial & Investment Business (“BHC”), an Atlanta based affiliate of Bao Hao Investment Management Co., Ltd. of Shanghai, has announced the first of what it expects to be several equity investments in 20/20 GeneSystems, Inc. (“20/20”). In making the investment BHC is seeking to help advance the introduction in China of 20/20’s blood test for the early detection of lung cancer (see www.BloodTestforLungCancer.com).
20/20 currently produces and markets this innovative blood test for the early detection of lung cancer in the United States. Primary care physicians employ the blood test to help detect lung cancer in patients who are smokers and former smokers. It is known as “PAULAs test.”
With a massive influx of new funding, Frederick pharmaceutical company Vaccinogen Inc. is preparing to make big moves that leaders hope will put it on the map.
Vaccinogen announced Aug. 25 it had secured $80 million in funding from Stockholm investors and closed the first $10 million tranche of the funding. The funding will support late-stage clinical studies needed to make Vaccinogen’s OncoVAX commercially available. The drug is designed to reduce recurrence of colon cancer.
ATCC, the premier global biological materials resource and standards organization, and bioMérieux, a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics, announced today their collaboration to expand and solidify the bioMérieux VITEK® MS microbial identification database for the industrial market. Recently, ATCC acquired the bioMérieux VITEK® MS system to make this innovative MALDI TOF technology a fundamental component of their authentication and quality control processes.
Strengthening the database with additional strains continues to increase the robustness of the VITEK® MS micro-organisms library while increasing the size and enhancing the utility for customers as a solid quality assurance tool.
Venture capital (VC) funding for the Life Sciences sector, which includes Biotechnology and Medical Devices, reached $2.5 billion in 195 deals for the second quarter of 2014, according to a new report, “Biotech soars to record high,” which includes data from the MoneyTree™ Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. While this quarter was the highest Life Sciences investment since the second quarter 2007, it was also the strongest second quarter since 1995, which is the earliest data recorded by the MoneyTree.
The National Institutes of Health is challenging science innovators to compete for prizes totaling up to $500,000, by developing new ways to track the health status of a single cell in complex tissue over time. The NIH Follow that Cell Challenge seeks tools that would, for example, monitor a cell in the process of becoming cancerous, detect changes due to a disease-causing virus, or track how a cell responds to treatment.
A lot has been written lately about innovation, or the lack thereof, in the world of biopharma. One question that often gets asked: which countries lead the way in creating new medicines? Many people think that drugs originate in the nation where the companies that produce them are headquartered. The truth, however, is much more complicated. Given that multi-national firms market the majority of medicines, figuring out where each one of their drugs originated requires digging through some extensive data vaults. A proper analysis requires the examination of company histories, free market deal making, and in some cases government interventions. Consider the following examples:
Student consultants at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business often find their target audience staring at them in the mirror when they do market research for nonprofit organizations.
ChangeTheWorld.org, a pro bono consulting program launched at the school’s Center for Social Value Creation in 2006, reports an increased interest among nonprofit organizations in the Millennial Generation as the population segment grows up and goes to college. “Nonprofit organizations want to unleash the potential of this generation, and they are coming straight to the source for insights at the Smith School and other partner universities,” said Pammi Bhullar, program manager at the Center for Social Value Creation and ChangeTheWorld.org. “Essentially, they are asking college students to gather market intelligence on themselves.”
A candidate Ebola vaccine could be given to healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom, The Gambia, and Mali as early as September, as part of a series of safety trials of potential vaccines aimed at preventing the disease that has killed more than 1,400 people in the current outbreak in West Africa.
Human trials of this candidate vaccine, being co-developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), are to be accelerated with funding from an international consortium in response to the Ebola epidemic, which the World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared a public health emergency of international concern.
GlaxoSmithKline’s experimental Ebola vaccine could be tested on humans in the UK, US, the Gambia and Mali in the next few weeks, in a race to contain the deadly virus that has claimed more than 1,500 lives in west Africa.
The news came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the Ebola epidemic could eventually exceed 20,000 cases. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s assistant director-general for emergency operations, said: “This far outstrips any historic Ebola outbreak in numbers. The largest outbreak in the past was about 400 cases.”
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Thursday appointed six new members to the Baltimore Development Corp. board, an announcement that comes as Councilman Bill Cole takes over as president of the agency.
The six new members are mostly long-standing vacancies on the 19-member board. One of the appointments fills a seat opened after city Finance Director Harry Black announced last month that he was leaving his job to become city manager in Cincinnati.
Scientists who use government money to conduct genomic research will now be required to quickly share the data they gather under a policy announced on Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health.
The data-sharing policy, which will take effect with grants awarded in January, will give agency-financed researchers six months to load any genomic data they collect—from human or nonhuman subjects—into a government-established database or a recognized alternative.
Baltimore is going to be OK, as long as it has its big name medical centers.
That’s the big takeaway from a new report by Moody’s Investors Service that looked at the economic impact large medical and education systems have on the cities where they are based.
Venture capital continued its love affair with biotechnology in the second quarter, with investment in biotech reaching record levels.
Venture capitalists invested $1.84 billion in 122 biotech deals in the period, according to a MoneyTree report released Monday by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, using Thomson Reuters data.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notices:
Notice to Extend the Expiration Date of PAR-11-315 “Systems Science and Health in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (R21)”
(NOT-OD-14-121) Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research
Notice to Extend the Expiration Date of PAR-11-314 “Systems Science and Health in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (R01)”
(NOT-OD-14-122) Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research
Notice to Extend the Response Date for NOT-HL-14-028 “Request for Information (RFI): Collaborative Translational Research Consortium to Develop T4 Translation of Evidence-based Interventions”
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
On September 14, 2007, Lorenz Diesbergen, age 44, stepped off a commuter train in downtown Chicago and began his daily walk to work in the Chicago Loop. As he crossed the bridge over the Chicago River, his heart’s normal rhythm suddenly deteriorated into an uncoordinated frenzy of useless fibrillations. He may have managed a few more steps—we don’t know—before he pitched forward and fell face-first onto the sidewalk. Paramedics were on the scene within minutes, but efforts at resuscitation proved futile. He left behind a wife and four children.
Bayer HealthCare appears to be the first pharmaceutical company that started its own accelerator. The company that made €18.924 million in turnover in 2013 “understands that innovation and healthcare cannot only be driven by the industry but also needs creativity.” This was announced by Christian Ullrich, Head of Marketing & Sales IT at Bayer HealthCare yesterday.
Bayer has partnered with universities and smaller companies before and started Grants4Apps, a crowdsourcing initiative last year. This year, it was turned into an accelerator.
In this Hangout, we will discuss the basic concepts of medical device regulation in the U.S., what is considered significant risk versus non-significant risk, and how the level of risk factors into the regulation of new product development.
Are you an entrepreneur ready to pitch your company? Register for your chance to film a 3-minute video pitch that will be seen online by VC, angel investors and voted on by fans around Maryland!
The Montgomery County Department of Economic Development and the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce are hosting two Pitch Across Maryland stops in Montgomery County on Wednesday, October 1. Learn More Want to get on the bus and film your pitch? Apply Here.
The Montgomery County application deadline is Monday, September 15.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014 from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM (EST)
The 7th Annual Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium, hosted by the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission and Montgomery County will be held on Tuesday, December 2, 2014 at the Silver Spring Civic Center, Silver Spring MD. The Symposium is the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund premier event that delivers comprehensive scientific talks, poster presentations, and networking time, enabling cell therapy basic research and technologies from the lab to pre-clinical and to commercialization. With a powerful line-up of speakers and many opportunities for you to present your work in concurrent or poster presentations, the Symposium will follow the format and style of previous meetings with additional networking time and an intimate environment.
Abstract Submission:
The Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (MSCRF) is now accepting abstract submissions for poster and oral presentations for the 7th Annual Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium. We encourage you to take full advantage of this opportunity to share your research results with our community. Multiple abstract submissions are welcomed.
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Wednesday, September 10, 2014
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today that it will provide a multi-million dollar grant to create a hub of innovation that unites public and private institutions throughout Southern California, headquartered at and administered by the University of Southern California, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of California Los Angeles.
The new center is part of the NSF Innovation Corps, or “I-Corps,” initiative, which is aimed at fostering innovation throughout the U.S. by encouraging the translation of ideas and research beyond the laboratory to create social and economic impact. The announcement cements the position of Southern California as a crucial focal point of technology entrepreneurship in the country.
Too much fat weighs down not just your body, but also your brain.
harms most organs in the body, and new research suggests the brain is no exception. What’s more, the researchers found that getting rid of excess fat actually improves brain function, reversing the ill effects of the extra weight. The new study, which focused on people who underwent bariatric surgery, found that the procedure had positive effects on the brain, but other research has shown that less invasive weight loss strategies, like exercise, can also reverse brain damage thought to be related to body fat.
Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi are using IBM Watson’s computer brain/big data cruncher to support research and development. It will be used to identify new applications for drugs that have already been developed and to leaf through scientific papers that detail clinical trial outcomes, according to a statement from IBM. The partnerships follow a new development in Watson’s evolution that help it visually uncover patterns and pinpoint connections in related data to accelerate the discovery process and advance science research.
“Watson now has the ability to understand the language of chemistry, biology, legal and intellectual property, giving scientists the ability to make connections with data that others don’t see, which can lead to rapid breakthrough in discoveries,” the statement said.
Every day our DNA breaks a little. Special enzymes keep our genome intact while we’re alive, but after death, once the oxygen runs out, there is no more repair. Chemical damage accumulates, and decomposition brings its own kind of collapse: membranes dissolve, enzymes leak, and bacteria multiply. How long until DNA disappears altogether? Since the delicate molecule was discovered, most scientists had assumed that the DNA of the dead was rapidly and irretrievably lost. When Svante Pääbo, now the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, first considered the question more than three decades ago, he dared to wonder if it might last beyond a few days or weeks. But Pääbo and other scientists have now shown that if only a few of the trillions of cells in a body escape destruction, a genome may survive for tens of thousands of years.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
The 2014 Steering Committee of the Montgomery County Executive Hispanic Gala (MCEHG) announces the first of three awards to be presented during the gala celebration on September 18, 2014 to take place at The Fillmore Silver Spring.
University of Maryland President, Dr. Wallace D. Loh, will be the 2014 recipient of the “Advocate of the Year Award”.
This will be a highly visible position dedicated to ensuring MedImmune further builds its collaboration efforts with governments, universities and non-profit organizations. The primary objective of this role will be to further entrench MedImmune in key biotech clusters to gain access to leading science and technology, enhance MedImmune’s reputation and create operational flexibility. The role will entail scouting for cross-therapeutic scientific collaboration opportunities, negotiating deals, working closely with internal scientists, event planning and strategic planning and analysis.
MorphoSys AG (MOR) MPSYY, and Emergent BioSolutions Inc. EBS, today announced an agreement for the joint development and commercialization of ES414. The compound, to be renamed MOR209/ES414, is an anti-PSMA/anti-CD3 bi-specific antibody targeting prostate cancer, which was developed by Emergent using its proprietary ADAPTIRTM (modular protein technology) platform. Preclinical in vitro and in vivo studies have shown that MOR209/ES414 redirects T-cell cytotoxicity towards prostate cancer cells expressing Prostate Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA), an antigen commonly found on such cells.
The 2014 International Biotech Summit Committee invite BioHealth Innovation (BHI) and Montgomery County to attend the three co-located international conferences that will be held on Sep 9 -12 in Shenzhen, China:
2014 International Biotech Summit (September 10, 2014);
The 9th International Conference on Genomics (ICG-9) (September 11th-12th, 2014);
Shenzhen International Biotech & Health Industry Expo 2014 (SIBHIE, September 10th-12th, 2014).
Ms. Lily Qi, Director of Special Projects for Montgomery County Executive Office who was involved in establishing BHI and a native of Shanghai, is going to speak on behalf of the County and BHI for the forum, “Innovation in Policy and Regulation for Advancing Healthcare Industry.” BHI and the County are also invited as an exhibitor for the SIBHIE Expo.
BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI), a Montgomery County innovation intermediary which translates market-relevant research into commercial success by bringing together among other things management, funding, and markets, is seeking an experienced life science professional with entrepreneurial experience to serve as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR).
The EIR will lead in the evaluation of early-stage technologies and corporations with a priority focus on those associated with Funding Partners and those that best fit with the strategic direction as set by BHI’s CEO and Director of EIR Programs. The EIR will perform any reasonable task which will forward the goals of BHI. Further specifics and responsibilities include:
A team of Biomedical Engineering undergraduate students from Johns Hopkins recently won the 2014 Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge for developing a device that aims to help surgeons safely and accurately place screws during spinal fusion procedures and surgeries for spinal abnormalities.
The AccuSpine pedicle probe was designed by eight undergraduates: Clay Andrews, Eric Xie, Adarsha Malla, Bradley Isaacs, Anvesh Annadanam, Erica Schwarz, Ravi Gaddipati, and Luis Herrera. Their project began in July 2013 as part of a Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design design team class. Their goal was to address a clinical need for an effective guidance system for the safe and accurate placement of screws.
As a federal agency, the Department of Energy is creative and innovative. Unlike other federal laboratories, each contractor-operated laboratory manages its own tech transfer agreements. Learn how to navigate these various opportunities and identify the best way to gain access to the technologies and partnerships to enhance your companies growth.
David E. Koegel David Koegel is the senior technoogy transfer advisor in the Office of Science (SC) at the Department of Energy. A member of the Department’s Technology Transfer Policy Board, his experience in technology transfer goes back to the early 90’s when he was the Office’s Program Manager for American Textile partnership in the Laboratory Technology Transfer Program, a technology transfer collaboration among members of the integrated textile industry, the DOE national laboratories, a number of universities, and several research/education/technology transfer organizations. A member of the National Advisory Council of the Federal Laboratory Consortium, David has been the Department’s representative to the FLC for many years, as well as their representative to the federal Interagency Working Group on Technology Transfer. One of his significant duties involves the annual appraisal of the ten Office of Science national laboratories and is the primary point of contact for the various programs and organizations that use the laboratories’ personnel and facilities. Previously, he had been the Department’s Senior Technology Analyst in the SBIR/STTR Program, the Office of Science Small Business Program Manager, as well as the Program Manager for the Advanced Energy Projects program.
David joined the Department after spending several years at the Pentagon in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research, Development, and Acquisition, most notably during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, acting as a liaison to the Army’s laboratory system. Prior to this, he conducted research at the Army’s Night Vision Laboratory using metal organic chemical vapor deposition for the development of advanced infrared imaging devices.
David earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Materials Science Engineering.
Roche Holding AG said Sunday it would pay $8.3 billion for a California biotech firm that has yet to turn a profit on a new drug to treat a deadly lung disease—the latest gamble by a pharmaceutical giant to buy its way into a lucrative corner of the industry.
The takeover would allow the Swiss company to expand its presence in the treatment of respiratory disorders, one of the world’s biggest drug markets. Roche’s offer of $74 a share represents a 38% premium over InterMune’s closing share price on Friday of $53.80, and a 63% premium before takeover speculation surrounding the biotech started circulating this month.
Roche has just announced the acquisition of the U.S. biotech company InterMune for $8.3 billion. The driver for Roche was to gain access to InterMune’s drug, pirfenidone (trade name, Esbriet), which is already approved in Canada and Europe for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). IPF is a deadly lung-scarring disease which affects 50,000 – 70,000 people in the U.S. and 80,000 to 110,000 in Europe. While still under review by U.S. regulatory authorities, Roche’s acquisition signals its belief that pirfenidone will also gain U.S. approval. How big a product can pirfenidone be? Consensus forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters Pharma peg annual sales at greater than $1 billion in 2019 – a nice addition to Roche’s stable of pulmonary compounds including Xolair (asthma) and Pulmozyme (cystic fibrosis).
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notice:
Updated Forms and Instruction Clarification for Re-entry (PA-12-150) and Diversity (PA-12-149) Administrative Supplements (NOT-OD-14-118) National Institutes of Health
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program Contract Solicitation (PHS 2015-1) Now Available (NOT-OD-14-120) Office of the Director, NIH
Notice of Participation of NLM in PAR-13-357 “Pre-application: Opportunities for Collaborative Research at the NIH Clinical Center (X02)” (NOT-LM-14-003) National Library of Medicine
Requests for Applications:
Multi-Site Clinical Trials for the Pulmonary Trials Cooperative (PTC) (U01) (RFA-HL-15-015) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Application Receipt Date(s): October 20, 2014
Network Management Core (NEMO) for the Pulmonary Trials Cooperative (PTC) (U01) (RFA-HL-15-016) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Application Receipt Date(s): October 20, 2014\
Program Announcements:
Administrative Supplements for Tobacco Regulatory Research on the Role and Impact of Flavors in Cigarettes, Cigars, E-Cigarettes and Smokeless Tobacco (Admin Supp) (PA-14-320) Office of the Director, NIH National Cancer Institute National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development National Institute on Drug Abuse Office of Disease Prevention Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
JMI Equity closed a $1 billion growth equity fund targeted at investing in software companies and services companies, it announced Wednesday.
The fund is the largest raised by JMI, a private equity firm operating out of offices in Baltimore and San Diego. The firm has raised more than $3.1 billion in committed capital since its founding in 1992. The largest fund JMI previously closed on was an $875 million fund completed in November 2010.
When you think of tech companies, incubators or startups, South Carolina is still probably one of the last places that comes to mind. But with its new Office of Economic Engagement, which launched in the summer of last year, and a steadily growing incubator program, the University of South Carolina is working to change any misconceptions about tech startups not meshing well with the Palmetto State.
Just last week, USC’s Technology incubator held a graduation ceremony for seven companies that were ready to transition into the larger business community.
An invasive species has been introduced into the U.S. health innovation ecosystem, with a growing danger of permanent damage to the development of specialty drugs. The relentless assault on the price of Sovaldi is becoming a threat to the 30-year political balance that has energized the biomedical revolution.
Sovaldi is the kind of medicine that the drug scolds claim to want—a true scientific advance with a near-perfect cure rate for Hepatitis C, the liver-destroying virus that infects one of every 100 Americans and some 150 million world-wide. The old critique was that pharmaceutical discovery had stalled and the industry produced only me-too drugs. Now they attack Sovaldi because its price is $84,000 a patient.
There are approximately 1,250 business incubators in the United States, including about 120 with some life science focus, according to the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA). These programs vary greatly in their structure and services.
Often associated with universities or medical centers, life science incubators frequently offer affordable office space attached to shared wet lab facilities. Others focus on accelerating companies’ progress by offering intensive coaching, networking and support services. Some programs include seed funding up to $250,000 at a stage when few others are willing to invest.
Digital health incubator Rock Health is investing in eight new startups and teaming up with three new corporate entities – Blue Shield of California, Deloitte and global healthcare firm Abbott.
The new startups being incubated span the healthcare spectrum, from HIPAA compliance to life sciences and biotech. Among them:
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded 36 Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) to enable new technologies to better understand how complex behaviors emerge from the activity of brain circuits.
These awards will contribute to NSF’s growing portfolio of investments in support of President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative, a multi-agency research effort that seeks to accelerate the development of new neurotechnologies that promise to help researchers answer fundamental questions about how the brain works.
In July, alongside the ÜberResearch team, we launched a Twitter competition open to PhD students. The task was to tweet how you would spend £10 million of science funding using the hashtag #uberresearchprize.
We had hundreds of tweets and the top three, as voted by our judging panel, were then invited to write a blog post, delving into their original tweet. Over the next few days we will publish the top three blog posts here on our blog, announcing the winner on Monday 25th August.
The interest in using health IT tools as a way to improve healthcare delivery and efficiency has produced many rapidly growing healthcare companies, many of which can trace their origins within one or two years of Obamacare’s passage. These companies have reached a stage of their development to accelerate growth and that has coincided with a readiness by healthcare providers and payers to adopt or ramp up their technology.
With a nod to the top healthcare company on Inc’s 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies, molecular diagnostic companies with smartphone-enabled technology have also become more attractive as investment and acquisition targets.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014 from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM (EST)
The 7th Annual Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium, hosted by the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission and Montgomery County will be held on Tuesday, December 2, 2014 at the Silver Spring Civic Center, Silver Spring MD. The Symposium is the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund premier event that delivers comprehensive scientific talks, poster presentations, and networking time, enabling cell therapy basic research and technologies from the lab to pre-clinical and to commercialization. With a powerful line-up of speakers and many opportunities for you to present your work in concurrent or poster presentations, the Symposium will follow the format and style of previous meetings with additional networking time and an intimate environment.
Abstract Submission:
The Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (MSCRF) is now accepting abstract submissions for poster and oral presentations for the 7th Annual Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium. We encourage you to take full advantage of this opportunity to share your research results with our community. Multiple abstract submissions are welcomed.
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Wednesday, September 10, 2014
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) announced the appointment of four new members to its Board of Directors. Dave Lemus, Chief Executive Officer, Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Joel S. Marcus, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Founder, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (Alexandria Venture Investments); and Beth Meagher, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, have joined the BHI Board of Directors, effective August 7, 2014, based upon their organizations’ newly committed support of BHI. Charles “Chuck” Morton now represents Venable LLP on the Board, as another new Board member, while Mike Baader, formerly with Venable, will continue to hold a seat on the Board, but now as a representative of Greenspring Associates. Cynthia L. Collins, CEO, Clarient, who had served on the BHI Board since early 2013, is stepping down from her Board position after relocating to the West Coast
“The expansion of and continued diversity within the BHI Board, based upon new key industry and service provider representatives who are all deeply involved in life sciences, is a testament to the positive impact BHI has made on the Central Maryland biohealth community to date,” said Richard Bendis, BHI President & CEO.
“We look forward to the contributions from the new Board members representing these organizations. We’re also pleased to welcome a new Venable representative to the Board and that Mike Baader will continue to add value to the organization now that he is on the Greenspring Associates team,” said Douglas Liu, Chair, BHI Board of Directors, and Senior Vice President of Global Operations for Qiagen. “And, on behalf of the BHI staff and Board, I would also like to offer gratitude to Cynthia Collins for her service and contributions to the BHI Board over the last year and half.”
BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI), a Montgomery County innovation intermediary which translates market-relevant research into commercial success by bringing together among other things management, funding, and markets, is seeking an experienced life science professional with entrepreneurial experience to serve as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR).
The EIR will lead in the evaluation of early-stage technologies and corporations with a priority focus on those associated with Funding Partners and those that best fit with the strategic direction as set by BHI’s CEO and Director of EIR Programs. The EIR will perform any reasonable task which will forward the goals of BHI. Further specifics and responsibilities include:
The 2014 International Biotech Summit Committee invite BioHealth Innovation (BHI) and Montgomery County to attend the three co-located international conferences that will be held on Sep 9 -12 in Shenzhen, China:
2014 International Biotech Summit (September 10, 2014);
The 9th International Conference on Genomics (ICG-9) (September 11th-12th, 2014);
Shenzhen International Biotech & Health Industry Expo 2014 (SIBHIE, September 10th-12th, 2014).
Ms. Lily Qi, Director of Special Projects for Montgomery County Executive Office who was involved in establishing BHI and a native of Shanghai, is going to speak on behalf of the County and BHI for the forum, “Innovation in Policy and Regulation for Advancing Healthcare Industry.” BHI and the County are also invited as an exhibitor for the SIBHIE Expo.
Montgomery County Department of Economic Development (DED) announces the addition of Valerie Fremont as Senior Business Development Specialist for the County’s life sciences and health IT sectors. Fremont brings 13 years of industry experience to the County along with experience in the international, national and regional biotech community.
”We are happy to welcome Valerie to the department and fortunate to be able to call upon her vast experience in the life sciences arena,” said DED Director Steve Silverman. “Not only does she bring a wealth of knowledge of two of our most important sectors—life sciences and health IT—but she also is already well known in that community. The County and our companies in those sectors will all benefit mutually from those important connections.”
MdBio Foundation welcomes you to an open house on the mobile laboratory MdBioLab. Tour the lab, meet the team, or just eat your ice cream – doors open 3 – 5 PM.
KICK OFF THE SCHOOL YEAR WITH AN ICE CREAM CONE AND TOUR OF MDBIOLAB.
MdBioLab will be parked at Howard Community College, 10901 Little Patuxent Pkwy, Columbia, MD 21044, Lot F – adjacent to Little Patuxent Parkway
Wrap up a great summer with one last BioBuzz networking event on August 27th from 5:00 – 7:30 p.m. at American Tap Room in Rockville, MD. This location is a short walk from the Metro located in the Rockville Town Center so there are no excuses not to come.
New this month, join us for Table Talks at BioBuzz.
This month’s featured Table Topics will be on Project Management & Navigating your Life Science Careers.
Life Science Career Talks with; Shira Harrington, President of Purposeful Hire Multiple corporate recruiters from local Biotech companies
Project Management discussions with; Tariq Allana, Project Manager at GlycoMimetics Allen Bolden, Experienced GMP Manufacturing Project Manager
Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals (Sigma-Tau) has signed an exclusive US license agreement with Ireland-based Crosscare, to market and distribute Colief Infant Drops for the treatment of colic.
As part of the deal, Sigma-Tau will be responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution of Colief in the US.
Sigma-Tau has planned a re-launch of Colief at healthcare professionals as well as consumers in August 2014.
The Rockville Science Center has found a temporary office home in the midst of an ongoing search for a permanent facility.
The science center’s administrative office, previously at the VisArts at Rockville center, moved this month to the Johns Hopkins University’s campus in Rockville.
A unique summer internship program established by the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) and funded in part by the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), has enabled 12 students to work across disciplines in a community setting.
Based at the Rockville, Md., campus where UMB offers a growing array of programs, the eight-week internship was conducted within the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Four graduate and eight undergraduate students experienced interdisciplinary teamwork by visiting several service agencies throughout Montgomery County.
Johns Hopkins University’s FastForward business accelerator is so popular the school is expanding it to a second location.
FastForward, which is part of Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering, launched last year and is already at capacity with a total of 33 startups and projects. Administrators plan to expand the program in January to accommodate the high demand among students and faculty.
The BioMaryland Center is partnering with Maryland’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) and the Center for Medical Technology Policy (CMTP) to incorporate improved health care quality and cost reduction criteria in the selection process for the BioMaryland Center’s annual Biotechnology Awards program. $1M will be awarded to projects, $50,000-200,000 each, advancing technologies toward commercialization–with preference given to projects which improve patient outcomes and reduce costs.
October 1st is the deadline to apply for the next round of Biotechnology Development Awards. More information regarding the program is available online.
How to Apply: Two application forms (the Non-confidential Applicant and Project Summary form and the Confidential Application Details form) and a business plan must be submitted electronically by 5 p.m. EST on October 1, 2014.
The Maryland Venture Fund (MVF), the equity investment arm of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED), has made follow-on investments totaling $700,000 in two of its portfolio companies. KoolSpan, developer of a suite of patented, hardware-based mobile security encryption solutions, received $400,000. BrainScope, which is pioneering sophisticated neurotechnology to quickly assess traumatic brain injury at the initial point of care, received $300,000. Both companies are located in Bethesda. The investments were made with funds raised by InvestMaryland, Governor Martin O’Malley’s key initiative designed to spur growth and development of small, high-tech companies in Maryland.
“KoolSpan and BrainScope have both made tremendous progress since the Maryland Venture Fund first invested in them, and we are excited to make these follow-on investments,” said Governor O’Malley. “In Maryland we are committed to supporting the growth of future leaders in industries that keep us safer, healthier and better connected than ever before. KoolSpan and BrainScope are perfect examples of the innovative, high-tech companies that set Maryland’s economy apart and provide the family-sustaining jobs of today and tomorrow.”
When four professors of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, decided to start Strand Life Sciences in 2000 to aid clinical research through genomic testing using DNA sequencing, the initiative hardly attracted attention. UTI Ventures pumped in $1.3 million a year later and, in 2002, WestBridge Capital Partners invested $1.9 million, but that did not create ripples either. However, things changed dramatically in 2013, when Strand got $10 million from San Francisco-based financial firm Burrill & Co.
It used the capital to roll out personalised genetic test services in collaboration with hospital chains and clinics across India, including Max Hospitals, Mazumdar-Shaw Cancer Center, St. John’s Medical College Hospital, Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology and HealthCare Global Enterprises.
GlaxoSmithKline, better known as GSK, has launched a new web effort aimed at providing both information and inspiration for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, in what the company says is arguably the most engaging platform in the marketplace.
The rollout of the new COPD.com goes beyond what was previously offered, certainly by GSK but possibly many others, according to Darielle Ruderman, senior director of repository consumer marketing for the North Carolina-based company.
The answers Bert Vogelstein needed and feared were in the blood sample.
Vogelstein is among the most highly cited scientists in the world. He was described, in the 1980s, as having broken into “the cockpit of cancer” after he and coworkers at Johns Hopkins University showed for the first time exactly how a series of DNA mutations, adding up silently over decades, turn cells cancerous. Damaged DNA, he helped prove, is the cause of cancer.
Now imagine you could see these mutations—see cancer itself—in a vial of blood. Nearly every type of cancer sheds DNA into the bloodstream, and Vogelstein’s laboratory at Johns Hopkins has developed a technique, called a “liquid biopsy,” that can find the telltale genetic material.
DC I-Corps, a new, NSF-supported program designed to foster, grow and nurture an innovation ecosystem in the Mid-Atlantic Region, is now accepting applications for its fall cohort, beginning on October 9. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis up until that date. Apply here.
Open to research teams and technology entrepreneurs from universities, federal laboratories, agencies and the general community, the free program guides researchers in exploring the commercial potential of their inventions.
Through DC I-Corps, you will:
Significantly improve your chances for SBIR and other grant funding, as well as early stage venture investment;
Work closely with six or more real-world advisors that have startup, venture capital, and technology commercialization experience over a six-week period; and
Come to a clear go or no-go decision regarding the commercial potential of your technology.
The program is geared towards innovations coming from engineering fields, medical/health/life sciences, and physical and computer sciences. DC I-Corps builds upon the successful National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program.
The program is jointly offered by the University of Maryland, George Washington University, Virginia Tech, and Johns Hopkins University. For more information and to apply, technology researchers and entrepreneurs are encouraged to visit www.dcicorps.org.
Are you a company in the fields of cloud computing, network security, interoperability, chemical and biological defense, infectious disease or vaccines? Then you’ll want to attend the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development’s Defense Labs Tech Transfer event which includes panel discussions and a tech transfer showcase. Hear from Federal Labs including NSA, DISA, RDECOM, Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC), and USAMRIID, see demonstrations, speak with inventors, discuss available patents, licenses, collaborations and commercialization of new technologies to add to your portfolio.
Featuring:
Tech Transfer Showcase 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. – Visit the exhibit floor and see the latest technologies being developed by NSA, DISA, RDECOM, USAMRIID, and the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center.
Innovative technologies and methodologies fuel progress in biomedical and behavioral research and represent an increasingly important area of the economy. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program provides support for research and development (R&D) of new or improved technologies and methodologies that have the potential to succeed as commercial products.
The purpose of this notice is to (1) announce the issuance of the Solicitation of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for Small Business Innovation Research Contract Proposals (PHS 2015-1) with a receipt date of November 5, 2014, 4:30 PM ET; and (2) inform the public about the opportunities that the SBIR program offers to small business concerns as well as to scientists at research institutions.
The SBIR legislation requires the Public Health Service (PHS), Department of Health and Human Services, and certain other Federal agencies to reserve 2.8 percent (for FY 2014) of their extramural research or R&D budgets for an SBIR program. (The NIH SBIR set-aside requirement for FY 2014 is $663 million.)
The National Institutes of Health is challenging science innovators to compete for prizes totaling up to $500,000, by developing new ways to track the health status of a single cell in complex tissue over time. The NIH Follow that Cell Challenge seeks tools that would, for example, monitor a cell in the process of becoming cancerous, detect changes due to a disease-causing virus, or track how a cell responds to treatment.
“Advances in cellular analysis promise earlier diagnosis and improved therapies for diseases, from cancer to Alzheimer’s,” said James Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIH’s Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI). “These prizes will also help to stimulate new businesses and economic growth in our biomedical communities.”
For the third year in a row, Johns Hopkins has been recognized as one of the nation’s best college campuses for dining.
Hopkins ranks second on the list of the “Best Colleges for Food in America” compiled by the website The Daily Meal, up from a No. 42 ranking a year ago. The site praised JHU’s commitment to sustainability, the diversity of food offerings, and its special programming, including on-campus cooking classes and food and wine pairings for seniors.
For an incubator set on changing perceptions of where startups need to be to succeed in regulated sectors such as healthcare, education and energy, the decision to set up 1776 in Washington D.C. was a smart move. Mentors abound in a city where lawmakers, think tanks, regulators and Fortune 500 companies come to do business. In a phone interview, co-founder Donna Harris talked to MedCity News about its approach to finding and working with startups.
Harris co-founded 1776 in 2012 with Evan Burfield. Harris had previously worked at Startup America Partnership (which later changed its name to UP America) as managing director, and before that she was Vice Chair of Interpoint. Burfield founded netDecide and Synteractive.
Luminal, a Frederick and D.C.-based cloud management startup, on Thursday announced a $10 million Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates.
Joining NEA are prior investors Core Capital Partners and the Maryland Venture Fund. The latest financing brings Luminal’s total funding to $13.8 million.
Revised Policy: Descriptions on the Use of Individual Development Plans (IDPs) for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers Required in Annual Progress Reports beginning October 1, 2014
Notice of NICHD’s Participation in PA-14-016 “Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Short-Term Institutional Research Training Grant (Parent T35)
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
The rich are getting richer when it comes to publicly traded biotechnology companies, judging by their ballooning market capitalization. It’s a product of the current Wall Street surge—some call it a bubble—that continued in the first half of 2013, with 52 companies going public and the overall market closing at record highs.
Following is a list of 25 biotechnology companies, ranked by their market cap as of July 24 as furnished by the exchanges on which they trade their shares, or by other publicly available sources, such as any of several free stock information websites. Figures of non-U.S. companies were converted to U.S. dollars from various currencies.
NHLBI’s Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC) hosts this semi-annual Regional Innovation Conference to connect small businesses, angel investors, venture capitalists, strategic partners, and business leaders from the biotech, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries. Attendees will see featured presentations from NHLBI-funded companies, and learn from staff about recent changes in the Federal SBIR/STTR program, and other funding opportunities and cost-free resources available to small businesses.
Previous conferences have been held in Boston, MA, San Francisco, CA, San Diego, CA, and Rockville, MD.
Highlights/ Features:
Company presentations
Hear about innovative technologies for heart, lung, blood and sleep disorder and disease indications from companies who have received (non-dilutive) SBIR/STTR funding
How to market your innovation
Our expert panel of investors, legal advisors, and successful entrepreneurs will talk about the highs and lows of early-stage life science investment
Networking
Ample opportunities to network with potential partners, investors, and NHLBI staff
Today, the American Heart Association has launched the Chicago Open Innovation Challenge, a crowdfunding competition to uncover new innovative digital health tools to prevent or manage heart disease and stroke. The top three finalists will receive grants from the American Heart Association totaling $25,000 and a chance to present at the Heart Innovation Forum in Chicago on November 14, 2014. Each award winner will be featured on healthcare crowdfunding platform MedStartr.
Who Can Apply? Early-stage healthcare technology and life sciences companies with novel ideas that seek to help patients, providers or medical facilities meet the American Heart Association’s 2020 Impact Goal—to improve the cardiovascular health of all Americans by 20 percent while reducing death from cardiovascular diseases and stroke by 20 percent by the year 2020—are encouraged to apply.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been used for thousands of years to prevent and treat disease and promote wellness. But, in many western countries, there had been historic resistance to its use because it “was not supported by rigorous scientific study.”
Digital health has a pretty erratic grade point average, or so says Dana Mead, a parter at venture firm Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers. He outlined and graded what he called the five most important elements of the digital health ecosystem at Qualcomm Life‘s Connect2014 conference this week in San Diego, and this is how he slices it:
1. Access to Capital – A
Looking at data over the last quarter, Mead said that about $700 million in funding has been raised in digital health. That’s more than medical device startups raise, about two-thirds of what pharma and biotech raise and about a third of what software/IT companies raised in the same time period. So, not a bad showing for digital health, Mead said.
The organizers of the 2nd Annual Symposium for Pediatric Surgical Innovation and Competition judges are seeking proposals from inventors in medical institutions, private practices, device companies, and academic researchers who have medical device concepts or ideas for use with pediatric patients.
Proposals should address a significant, yet unmet need within the pediatric population with a device idea that lends itself to commercialization. Following the competition process, two prizes will be given, each for up to $50,000.
Please follow this link http://www.pediatric-surgery-symposium.org/prizes/ to review the submission guidelines and to submit your application online by September 22, 2014 at 17:00 EST.
The mobile revolution was one of the most transformative events in IT. It set IT in a tailspin trying to secure so many different device types connecting to the network and moving outside of the organization.
After initial resistance, IT realized that by supporting mobility they were supporting user productivity. And thus an established industry of mobile device management solutions was born, allowing IT to create policies and strike a balance between data security and mobility.
Much of the discussion on big data has focused on claims information from insurers and EHRS from providers, but a collaborative effort underway at Stanford Medical School with SAP is hoping to tap into a different set – genomic data.
The possible benefits of sharing genetic data on a wide scale have great potential for both global population health and for drug makers alike, said Dr. Carlos Bustamante, who heads the Department of Genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine. Benefits range from possibly learning why certain drugs never make it out of clinical trials because of what population they are tested on to a more inclusive global snapshot at differing populations and what drives their health spending, among others.
The annual global confidence survey from the National Venture Capital Association produced an unusual apparent contradiction.
Investors around the world think the U.S. is the best place to back startups but confidence in our country’s government among domestic VCs is dropping.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
– Representatives from Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals Inc., Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc., and Deloitte Consulting LLP Take New Board Seats –
– Charles Morton Becomes New Venable LLP Representative on Board while Mike Baader Stays on as Board Member (Now as Greenspring Associates Representative) –
ROCKVILLE AND BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, August 11, 2014 – BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) announced today the appointment of four new members to its Board of Directors. Dave Lemus, Chief Executive Officer, Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Joel S. Marcus, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Founder, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (Alexandria Venture Investments); and Beth Meagher, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, have joined the BHI Board of Directors, effective August 7, 2014, based upon their organizations’ newly committed support of BHI. Charles “Chuck” Morton now represents Venable LLP on the Board, as another new Board member, while Mike Baader, formerly with Venable, will continue to hold a seat on the Board, but now as a representative of Greenspring Associates. Cynthia L. Collins, CEO, Clarient, who had served on the BHI Board since early 2013, is stepping down from her Board position after relocating to the West Coast
“The expansion of and continued diversity within the BHI Board, based upon new key industry and service provider representatives who are all deeply involved in life sciences, is a testament to the positive impact BHI has made on the Central Maryland biohealth community to date,” said Richard Bendis, BHI President & CEO.
“We look forward to the contributions from the new Board members representing these organizations. We’re also pleased to welcome a new Venable representative to the Board and that Mike Baader will continue to add value to the organization now that he is on the Greenspring Associates team,” said Douglas Liu, Chair, BHI Board of Directors, and Senior Vice President of Global Operations for Qiagen. “And, on behalf of the BHI staff and Board, I would also like to offer gratitude to Cynthia Collins for her service and contributions to the BHI Board over the last year and half.”
A few days after their state’s primary elections, Chinese-American community leaders in Maryland woke up to an email in their inboxes.
It was from Lily Qi – director of special projects for the government of Montgomery County, an affluent suburb of Washington – thanking them for their support in the reelection campaign of County Executive Ike Leggett, whose primary victory cleared the way for a third term.
“In a low turnout election like this one, every vote counts and the immigrant community holds great sway in tipping the balance,” Qi said in her note. Throughout the campaign, Qi had tirelessly reached out to the Chinese-American community, which accounts for 5 percent of
Rockville-based electronic prescription software service provider DrFirst on Wednesday announced $10 million in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank.
The health IT company has expanded its products over the years to include software in medication management, adherence and care coordination. The company said the financing will go toward product development and an anticipated international expansion in the next year.
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. EBS -1.39% today announced that it has submitted a Biologics License Application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Anthrax Immune Globulin Intravenous (Human) [AIGIV] as part of a development contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). AIGIV, which was acquired in the Cangene acquisition completed earlier this year, is being developed as an intravenous therapeutic treatment for inhalation anthrax.
“This accomplishment is a testament to the diligent work of our employees within the recently acquired Cangene operations and their years of successful collaboration and partnering with the U.S. government,” said Adam Havey, executive vice president and president biodefense division at Emergent BioSolutions. “We commend BARDA for their steadfast commitment to advancing this key anthrax countermeasure program and remain dedicated to supporting their mission to protect our civilian and military population.”
Getting a shot is only a few seconds of discomfort, but that’s the first line of defense against an infectious disease.
It’s a process Emergent Biosolutions in Lansing knows well, as the only company that produces a licensed anthrax vaccine.
“Phase one is safety, phase two is selection and dose ranging, phase three we try to evaluate does it really work do we get the immune response we want,” said President of the Biodefense Division at Emergent Adam Havey.
Public health officials have just one tactic to battle the unrelenting Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa — quarantine — but as the disease continues to spread, scientists in Maryland are among those close to discovering other weapons.
Baltimore companies Profectus BioSciences and Paragon Bioservices, as well as researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick in Frederick and the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, have been part of efforts that have shown a handful of Ebola vaccine candidates are effective in monkeys.
In the August 18, 2014 issue of Forbes Magazine, the University of Maryland, College Park was ranked as one of the nation’s most entrepreneurial research universities. These rankings are based off of the number of alumni and students who have identified themselves as founders and business owners on LinkedIn against the school’s total student body which includes undergraduates and graduate combined.
Aspiring entrepreneurs in Maryland have two great options for higher education, according to ranking website College Choice.
The University of Maryland, College Park snagged the No. 20 spot on website’s list of the 50 best U.S. colleges for entrepreneurs, while Johns Hopkins University came in a bit lower, at No. 36.
Johns Hopkins University is teaming up with Google on a project aimed at speeding up technology commercialization.
Under a new partnership agreement with Google, Hopkins will work on the search engine giant’s Advanced Technology and Projects (ATAP) group, which focuses on developing new technology and moving it quickly to the marketplace.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notices:
Notice on Annual Reporting Requirements and Revised Financial Closeout Requirements for NIH Administrative Supplements Awarded to Recover Losses Due to Hurricane Sandy under the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act (NOT-OD-14-112) National Institutes of Health
Notice of NHLBI Discontinuation of Grant Program “Ancillary Studies in Clinical Trials (R01)” (NOT-HL-14-232)National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Notice to Extend the Response Date for the NOT-HL-14-030 “Request for Information (RFI): NHLBI Whole Genome Sequencing Project (NHLBI-WGS)” (NOT-HL-14-233)National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Program Announcements (PA):
NHLBI Career Transition Award for Intramural Fellows (K22) (PAR-14-302) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.
Wrap up a great summer with one last BioBuzz networking event on August 27th from 5:00 – 7:30 p.m. at American Tap Room in Rockville, MD. This location is a short walk from the Metro located in the Rockville Town Center so there are no excuses not to come.
New this month, join us for Table Talks at BioBuzz.
For a new twist to the networking events, starting this month we will be hosting “Table Talks at BioBuzz”. We have enlisted industry experts on various topics who will be joining us to facilitate discussions around their industry related topics of choice. They will be strategically situated at a few tables at our venue so that you will be able to join which ever conversations interest you throughout the evening and participate in some stimulating discussions; while still enjoying the usual, casual atmosphere that BioBuzz offers each month.
This month’s Table Topics and discussion leaders will be announced later this week so keep an eye out.
At a laboratory in Baltimore, hairless mice kept in racks of plastic crates are labelled with yellow cards, each identifying a person fighting cancer. These mice are cancer “avatars”—the lumpy tumors visible under their skin come from actual patients.
The animals serve as personalized, living test tubes. Each mouse will eventually be treated with a different drug and its tumors measured. Results showing which medicine worked best will be sent back to a doctor trying to treat a difficult cancer case.
The Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche is set to pay $450 million for a Danish biotech company that develops drugs that silence microRNAs (something considered key to tackling certain diseases).
Roche is targeting the Danish biotech firm Santaris Pharma, according to The Wall Street Journal. Santaris Pharma A/S is a biopharmaceutical company founded in 2003 in Copenhagen. Santaris Pharma A/S has become a leading clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops RNA-targeted medicines. Santaris works on developing drugs for a wide range of diseases using microRNA and mRNA. Their research focuses on infectious disease and metabolic disorders.
The University of Maryland has launched an unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) test site in southern Maryland. With support from the University System of Maryland, the site will bring together leaders in academia, industry and government to accelerate UAS research.
Based in St. Mary’s County, a few miles from Naval Air Warfare Center Aviation Division at Patuxent River and the Naval Air Systems Command headquarters, the UMD UAS test site has been set up as a catalyst for research and development, according to its sponsors.
ATCC, the premier global biological materials resource and standards organization, announced today that it has received ISO 13485:2003 certification for the development, manufacture, and distribution of standards, controls, reagents and in vitro diagnostic test kits.
Every day researchers in life science, medical diagnostics, applied sciences, and clinical drug development leverage ATCC’s expansive collection of cell lines, microorganisms, cellular and microbial panels, genomic and synthetic nucleic acids, biological products, and associated derivatives to generate quality research and reproducible results. ISO 13485 enhances ATCC’s existing Quality Management Program as an ISO 9001:2008 certified and ISO 17025:2005 and ISO Guide 34:2009 accredited organization.
Wall Street may or may not be going through its long-awaited correction these days, but regardless, it still seems to have a hearty appetite for digital health initial public offerings. That appetite is provoking venture capitalists to fund ever-more startups. Through June of this year, $2.3 billion has been sunk into digital health offerings compared with $2 billion in all of 2013, reports digital healthcare accelerator Rock Health.
“We think there’s going to be four to five IPOs each year for the next five years.” said Steve Kraus, the lead healthcare partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, Cambridge, Mass.
As a small company, you have a number of things going for you because of your size: You’re agile. You can react quickly to market changes. You can still innovate on a whim.
Big businesses know this all too well, which helps explain what’s driving an increase in the number of corporate venture capital arms cropping up in the past few years. If the old chestnut is correct, a rising tide floats all boats. So as the economy recovers and some sectors like technology seem like they’re heading toward irrational exuberance, corporate VC firms are eager to get in on the action.
With an aging Baby Boomer population and broadband bandwidth improved a hundredfold from a decade ago, telemedicine is exploding as a convenient and less costly alternative to the traditional visit to the doctors’ office.
This year in the U.S. and Canada, 75 million of 600 million appointments with general practitioners will involve electronic visits, or eVisits, according to new research from Deloitte.
Linda Wittbrodt was perusing Michigan Technological University’s website when she stumbled across a faculty project seeking funds to teach senior citizens online skills.
Wittbrodt thought that was cool, so she donated $25 through a new approach the Upper Peninsula university is using: pitching of an idea online and asking people to make a donation, a strategy known as crowdfunding.
IT deal flow remained steady in 2Q. About $17 billion of PE capital was invested through 89 transactions, with both figures in line with previous quarters. The software segment of the industry is particularly active, with 2014 on pace to surpass the annual deal flow totals of any year following the financial crisis. Software has become industry-agnostic in some respects, as everything from colleges to hospitals to industrial conglomerates have incorporated software solutions into their operating models. For PE investors, software providers offer strong recurring revenue streams and also boast greater add-on potential for platforms.
A study conducted by the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore Foundation (EAGB) to estimate Baltimore Gas and Electric’s (BGE) economic contributions to the region in 2013 found that its operations generated a total economic impact of $3.81 billion of output and supported 8,686 jobs. This resulted from the company’s direct effect, the effect of companies that provide services to BGE and the effect of employees of both BGE and the service companies. BGE’s activities contribute more than 2 percent of the entire economic output of the BGE service area in central Maryland.
“We are proud to be able to support our partners in their goal of measuring and understanding their importance to the region’s workforce and economy,” said Tom Sadowski, President and CEO of the EAGB. “Our Chief Market Analyst, Patrick Dougherty, did a tremendous job of assessing and articulating the impact of BGE’s economic contributions to the region.”
A new collaboration between the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) and the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) encourages SBIR applicants to license ARS technologies and be considered for a SBIR grant.
The relevant language in the SBIR’s “Request for Application” states: “Additional factors that will be considered in the review process include whether an application involves a CRADA with a USDA laboratory, or a license to a USDA technology, or is a resubmission. In the event that two or more applications are of approximately equal merit, the existence of a CRADA with a USDA laboratory or a license to a USDA technology will be an important consideration. If one application is a resubmission, this will also be an important consideration.” The SBIR Website can be found at: http://www.nifa.usda.gov/fo/sbir.
Accelerator Corporation, a US-based biotech investment and management company, has attracted a total of $51.1m for its Accelerator IV fund. The three major investors’ cash, Eli Lilly, Pfizer Venture Investments and Johnson & Johnson Development Corporation, make up $50m of the investment.
The three pharmaceutical companies and other existing investors Alexandria Venture Investments, WRF Capital and Arch Venture Partners, are joined by two new strategic investors. These are Harris & Harris, a venture capital firm, and The Partnership Fund for New York City, an evergreen fund by the city’s business and finance leaders.
Orgenesis Inc. (OTCQB: ORGS), a leader in the emerging fields of cellular therapy and re-generative medicine, today announced the appointment of industry veteran Scott Carmer as CEO of the company’s North American subsidiary. Carmer has more than 25 years of diverse industry experience within both pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Orgenesis is a pioneer in the field of “cellular trans-differentiation,” a technology that has potential to regenerate glucose-responsive insulin production and restore glycemic homeostasis for patients suffering from various insulin-dependent disorders. By transforming a patient’s own liver cells into new insulin producing cells, Orgenesis hopes to develop a breakthrough therapy for people living with Type 1 Diabetes. In his new role, Carmer will oversee the Orgenesis drug development and commercialization strategy in North America, focusing on the near-term initiation of Phase I and Phase II clinical trials in the United States.
The National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter) is accepting proposals for its Pathways to Innovation Program.
The Pathways to Innovation Program is designed to help institutions fully incorporate innovation and entrepreneurship into undergraduate engineering education. The program is run by Epicenter, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and directed by Stanford University and the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA).
As the dust settles from this past week’s mammoth $1.3 billion merger, Siemens Health Services CEO John Glaser tells Healthcare IT News what led up to the Cerner deal, how his experience as a health system CIO could help smooth integration challenges and what to expect – from the two companies and electronic health records in general – over the months and years to come.
Dr. Marvin Malek has been yearning and advocating for a publicly financed, single-payer health care system for at least two decades. Now, as Vermont stands on the threshold of being the first state to launch such a plan, he’s confessing to trepidation.
“I am pretty damn nervous,” he confided before bounding off for rounds at the Vermont Central Medical Center, still clutching the bicycle helmet he wore on his ride to work.
Grand Challenges Canada, funded by the Government of Canada, has announced funding of seven projects implemented in ASEAN member countries. This funding, totalling $784,000, will support projects that combine scientific/technical, social and business innovation to solve pressing global health challenges.
The funding was announced by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird during a visit to Burma, where he is participating in the ASEAN-Canada Post Ministerial Conference. As one of ASEAN’s longest-standing dialogue partners, Canada has enjoyed positive and fruitful relations with the ASEAN region, cooperating on many issues, including regional integration, economic interests and innovation.
Anne Wojcicki bounds into a conference room in Mountain View, California, straight from a five-mile ride from home on an elliptical bike. The 40-year-old cofounder and CEO of the consumer genetic testing firm 23andMe is breathless, and not just because of the workout. On this warm day in mid-June, Wojcicki is “super-excited” about an announcement scheduled for two days hence: the Food and Drug Administration has agreed to review a health-related genetic report the company wants to make available to customers.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
The Montgomery County Council gave final approval Tuesday to an ambitious land-use plan designed to spur creation of a new science-focused town center in the county’s long-neglected eastern sector.
The White Oak Science Gateway Master Plan envisions housing, retail and a hub for medical and life-sciences research adjacent to the Food and Drug Administration headquarters at Route 29 and Industrial Parkway. The plan also adjusts zoning and land-use regulations with the goal of energizing new residential construction and commercial renewal in the White Oak and Hillandale communities.
What do you need to turn a brilliant idea into a business? “A good morale boost,” says Abhishek Motayed, Founder and President of N5 Sensors, Inc. of Rockville. Motayed had that boost this month when N5 Sensors received two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards totaling $250,000. The grants came from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) towards N5 Sensors work developing low-power, computer chip-size benzene, carbon monoxide, and ammonia sensors.
Johns Hopkins researchers Aleksander Popel and Jordan Green knew their research could serve a greater purpose outside their laboratory. But without any business experience, they knew they couldn’t do it alone.
With help from Hopkins’ tech transfer office and the Maryland Innovation Initiative, a state grant fund that invests in research projects with commercialization promise, the pair’s biomedical research is now a company — AsclepiX Therapeutics. The company is developing a better way to treat eye conditions caused by blood vessel abnormalities. Macular edema, which is common among people with diabetes and can lead to blindness, is an example.
Image: Jaclyn Borowski – At left, Niranjan Pandey, senior director of research and development, and Eric Bressler, research specialist, work in the lab at AsclepiX Therapeutics.
Qiagen has agreed to partner with AstraZeneca to develop a liquid biopsy-based companion diagnostic test to accompany one of the pharmaceutical company’s lung cancer drugs.
Building on a master framework agreement signed by both companies in 2013, the partnership will involve the creation of a diagnostic test that analyses plasma samples to assess EGFR mutation status in non-small cell lung cancer patients.
Opticul Diagnostics has won a BioMaryland Center grant to work on a medical device with a France-based company that would immediately identify microorganisms in a wound at a point-of-care setting, such as a hospital.
The device would be used on burn injuries and cutaneous wounds. The rapid identification of the bacteria in the wound would allow for quicker patient treatment.
Opitcul Diagnostics, based at Johns Hopkins University’s Montgomery County Campus, is collaborating with Diafir of Rennes, France. The two companies have received funding through a partnership between BioMaryland Center and Medicen Paris Region.
Innovators and startups pride themselves on being creators of disruptive technologies. We expect them to introduce game-changing solutions that improve our quality of life and enable administrations to govern better.
But the journey from innovative solution to government adoption is far from easy and can seem impossible for smaller companies with cutting-edge technologies.
Regardless of your stance on Obamacare and Maryland’s Medicare waiver, you can’t ignore that health reform and technology are creating many opportunities for innovation. The BBJ is looking for those innovators. Please click below for contest information.
SBA Awards Montgomery County Chamber Community Foundation grant to conduct veteran small business training course
ROCKVILLE, MD – The Montgomery County Chamber Community Foundation (MCCCF) is pleased to announce that the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) will support MCCCF in providing technical training to veteran-owned businesses seeking federal procurement opportunities. Through a Cooperative Agreement with SBA, the Foundation’s National Center for Veteran Institute for Procurement (VIP) will expand and host three training sessions a year (over a twelve month period) to support up to 150 service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) and veteran-owned small businesses (VOSB) to attend the program.
With plans to couple Johns Hopkins Medicine’s research cachet and Kaiser Permanente’s population health prowess, the two health giants announced a new “strategic collaboration” on Tuesday.
Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States and Hopkins officials say they will collaborate on patient care by sharing data from electronic medical records and developing better health care models based on evidence of what’s worked best. Kaiser will work closely with Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, which is part of the Johns Hopkins network.
A $10.7 million grant to the University of Maryland School of Dentistry and the University of Maryland School of Medicine will fund the collaborative study of biomarkers associated with sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, in hopes of finding new ways to predict the infection and developing new vaccines or treatments. The five-year grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is the renewal of a previous $12 million, five-year grant awarded in 2009, bringing the project’s total to $22.7 million.
In these times of tight budgets and rapidly evolving science, we must consider new ways to invest biomedical research dollars to achieve maximum impact—to turn scientific discoveries into better health as swiftly as possible. We do this by thinking strategically about the areas of research that we support, as well as the process by which we fund that research.
Millions of people make a living without ever setting foot in an office. Particularly in technology, companies are moving away from just outsourcing rote tasks to remote workers and toward building entirely distributed teams. One leader is Elance-oDesk, the largest online marketplace for freelance talent. In addition to providing a platform for distributed and part-time work, the company practices what it preaches. Telecommuting in the United States increased by as much as 79% (paywall) between 2005 and 2012.
The Global Innovation Index (GII) report, jointly produced by Cornell University, Insead and Wipo every year, has become a leading source of reference on innovation.
The theme of GII 2014, released on the 18th of July, is ‘Human factor in innovation’. The report covers 143 economies around the world and ranks them on a score of 0-100, using 81 different indicators to gauge innovation capabilities and results. Consistent with the rankings of the past GII reports, the top ten economies in the global innovation index 2014 are Switzerland, UK, Sweden, Finland, Netherland, USA, Singapore, Denmark, Luxemburg and Hong Kong (China), all high income countries, hence pointing towards a clear income-innovation link.
According to the latest research out of Johns Hopkins, a new blood test could predict a person’s risk for suicide through their DNA. The blood test would rely on genetics and offer many who are afflicted with mental illness and their doctors a new option in detecting suicidal behavior.
Genome scientist and entrepreneur J. Craig Venter is best known for being the first person to sequence his own genome, back in 2001.
This year, he started a new company, Human Longevity, which intends to sequence one million human genomes by 2020, and ultimately offer Web-based programs to help people store and understand their genetic data (see “Microbes and Metabolites Fuel an Ambitious Aging Project”).
Image: http://www.technologyreview.com – J. Craig Venter
Education technology, or ed-tech, is getting big in Baltimore and local experts think Maryland has a shot at being a leader in this technology niche.
But it won’t happen overnight.
“I think we have a unique opportunity to build an ecosystem,” said Frank Bonsal III, an ed-tech venture capitalist who leads Towson University’s business incubator. “An ecosystem takes 20 years to build. We’re on year three.”
Image: Jaclyn Borowski – Andrew Coy, executive director of the Digital Harbor Foundation, says students should play a bigger role in growing ed-tech.
When it comes to raising capital for a tech startup, savvy entrepreneurs know how important it is to hustle. From trying to attract the attention of VCs to appearing on television shows like ABC’s Shark Tank, these days when it comes to raising cash, everyone is out to get their share.
However, you may be surprised to learn that in this high-tech world, one very traditional institution is looking for smart entrepreneurs to give money to. Aspiring entrepreneur, meet the Small Business Administration (SBA).
Maryland Health Secretary Dr. Joshua Sharfstein will step down in January to join Johns Hopkins University.
Sharfstein’s move comes as Maryland is trying to revamp its failed health exchange in time for November open enrollment and as Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration winds down.
Image: Nicholas Griner Maryland Health Secretary Dr. Joshua Sharfstein is stepping down in January and will join Johns Hopkins University.
The FLC planner visually communicates the outstanding research and development efforts of the federal laboratory system. Images and captions tell the story of the technology’s scientific relevance and potential impact.
Printed annually, the planner is distributed to over 10,000 recipients, including members of Congress, scientists, researchers, agency representatives, laboratory directors, technology transfer professionals, students, academia, and members of industry.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notices:
Notice on Annual Reporting Requirements and Revised Financial Closeout Requirements for NIH Administrative Supplements Awarded to Recover Losses Due to Hurricane Sandy under the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act (NOT-OD-14-112) National Institutes of Health
Notice of NHLBI Discontinuation of Grant Program “Ancillary Studies in Clinical Trials (R01)” (NOT-HL-14-232)National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Notice to Extend the Response Date for the NOT-HL-14-030 “Request for Information (RFI): NHLBI Whole Genome Sequencing Project (NHLBI-WGS)” (NOT-HL-14-233)National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Program Announcements (PA):
NHLBI Career Transition Award for Intramural Fellows (K22) (PAR-14-302) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.
The 2014 UEDA Awards of Excellence finalists have been chosen and the competition this year is at an all time high. Each year, universities and organizations across North America submit nominations for innovative programs that focus on developing economic prosperity in their communities and beyond. A panel university and economic development professionals have chosen 19 finalists from the group of nominated projects.
The UEDA awards are designed to help accelerate these programs by recognizing cutting edge initiatives, and to promote their adoption by other universities and communities. Program categories include: Community Connected Campuses, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leadership and Collaboration, Research and Analysis, Talent Development.
The healthcare system in the U.S. is a slow-moving, slow-changing beast, but it’s also riddled with inefficient parts that beg for data-driven reinvention. That’s created huge opportunities for startups — and some of them are already seeing the payoff. The Affordable Care Act and accompanying legislation like the HITECH Act have lit a fire under the movement to rethink they way we deliver and pay for healthcare. Accordingly, investment in the digital health space has accelerated in 2014; at the end of June it totaled $2.2 billion, already exceeding 2013’s total funding just halfway through the year.
Report: “Safe Science: Promoting a Culture of Safety in Academic Chemical Research”
Author: Committee on Establishing and Promoting a Culture of Safety in Academic Laboratory Research
Organization: National Research Council
Summary: The National Research Council formed a panel of university lab-safety experts after a series of campus accidents, including several deaths, emphasized that academic labs have a far worse safety record than their corporate counterparts do.
For years the standard operating procedure for the medical device world has been: Bring good tech to patients and be rewarded by the market. Healthcare reform and particularly the consolidation of doctor practices is making this model obsolete. Now the challenge is more along the lines of “Justify your existence.”
Device companies have to revamp the traditional business model to show how their products save money and help patients in the long term.
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ditching handshakes in favor of more informal fist bumps could help cut down on the spread of bacteria and illnesses, according to a study released on Monday.
The study in the American Journal of Infection Control found that fist bumps, where two people briefly press the top of their closed fists together, transferred about 90 percent less bacteria than handshakes.
Image: By The U.S. Army (Fist bump) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
We all struggle for a moment of insight. Whether you’ve been banging your head against the wall for days or just woke up to a problem this morning, the desire for a creative boost is a powerful one. It’s the same feeling that plagues writers facing a blank page or advertisers developing a brand’s next campaign—and learning how to achieve it can have a profound impact. Here are some tips to avoid your next headache or create something the world has never seen before:
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
The implications of the world’s largest collaborative biological project in the year 2000—the Human Genome Project-combined with the Big Data revolution in the medical sciences holds out tremendous promise for human health. Recognizing the imminent need for the next generation of bioinformatics and genomics tools, four academic entrepreneurs from the prestigious Indian Institute of Science co-founded Strand Genomics Inc. (Strand). “Our focus is on personalized clinical genomics and molecular diagnostics. To address the grand challenge of the “$1000 genome and million dollar interpretation”, we have developed a clinical genomics interpretation and reporting platform, StrandOmics,” says Vijay Chandru, Ph.D, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO, Strand.
Qiagen has acquired an exclusive global license from the University of Tokyo for the biomarker SF3B1. The company said it sees potential for developing companion diagnostics to guide myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) treatment with new anticancer compounds under development that target the SF3B1 gene.
Inside sources reveal that Indian pharmaceutical generics firm Lupin, along with other U.S. pharma firms, is considering bidding for GlaxoSmithKline’s auctioned mature and generic drugs.
GSK seeks to divest its lineup of mature drugs in an effort to improve its growth profile by getting rid of its off-patent drugs in North America and Western Europe. The drugs are estimated to bring in annual sales of 1 billion pounds and are expected to fetch two to three times the price on the auction block.
GSK has submitted an application for the world’s first malaria vaccine to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
The vaccine candidate, RTS,S, is produced in yeast cells and targets the Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasite, most common in sub-Saharan Africa. It uses GSK’s proprietary AS01 adjuvant system, containing QS-21 Stimulon adjuvant licensed from Antigenics, a subsidiary of Agenus, as well as monophosphoryl lipid A (MPL) and liposomes.
Pfizer’s bid to get AstraZeneca has turned out to have a silver lining.
Dr Jane Osbourn, who runs MedImmune’s operations at Granta Park, told me: “It has gelled the team together at AstraZeneca and MedImmune (which is owned by AZ), and this is a silver lining to what has happened.
Out of the roughly 2 million Americans suffering from degenerative heart disease, only about 50,000 of them receive life-saving mitral valve surgery. This is primarily because the most common treatment, an open-heart procedure, can last between three and six hours and is extremely complex and high-risk.
Maryland-based Harpoon Medical plans to revolutionize that process with a new device that could reduce the procedure to just 60 minutes. Using their device, a patient’s chest would remain closed and the heart would continue beating during the procedure. It would cut recovery time from weeks to days and reduce risk factors significantly.
Advaxis, Inc. ADXS +2.08% , a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing cancer immunotherapies, has entered into a clinical trial collaboration with MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca. The Phase I/II immunotherapy study will evaluate the safety and efficacy of MedImmune’s investigational anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor, MEDI4736, in combination with Advaxis’ lead cancer immunotherapy vaccine, ADXS-HPV, as a treatment for patients with advanced, recurrent or refractory human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cervical cancer and HPV-associated head and neck cancer.
Both MEDI4736 and ADXS-HPV are cancer immunotherapies, a new class of treatments that use the body’s own immune system to help fight cancer. MEDI4736 is designed to counter the tumour’s immune-evading tactics by blocking a signal that helps tumours avoid detection, while ADXS-HPV enhances the ability of immune cells to combat the tumour. Preclinical evidence suggests that the combination of ADXS-HPV with a checkpoint inhibitor, such as MEDI4736, can enhance overall anti-tumour response.
Holy Cross Germantown Hospital is moving closer to opening, forming an inaugural medical staff and ramping up orientation for those new hires, officials said Tuesday.
When the hospital opens Oct. 1, it will have about 580 people working on site, said spokeswoman Yolanda Gaskins. Already, a few Holy Cross Germantown hospital senior managers have begun working at the location using on-site trailers as offices, she said. The $202 million, 93-bed hospital on the campus of Montgomery College in Germantown will be the first new Montgomery County hospital in 35 years.
Montgomery County plans to launch a major technology initiative in its public schools in August, providing 40,000 laptops and tablets to students as part of a project that will expand quickly in coming years, officials said Thursday.
Infectious diseases, pathogens and bioterrorism agents are all inside a new building downtown. Jessica Kartalija explains it’s great news for researchers at Johns Hopkins. It’s the newest addition to the Baltimore Science and Technology Park at Johns Hopkins. Inside, it’s a state-of-the-art lab that will keep Maryland on the cutting edge of public health and technology.
The Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) recently published a list of the top 100 universities worldwide granted U.S. patents in 2013, and among them were three local schools: Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia.
Apollo Hospitals today announced a partnership with Strand Life Sciences to launch the latter’s genomic tests across its hospitals.
The partnership in gene-based diagnostics with the Bangalore-based healthcare research company will help doctors at Apollo to develop personalised medicine for targeted treatments and better patient outcomes.
The Johns Hopkins University has joined the National Science Foundation’s National Innovation Network and becomes the fourth member university in the NSF Innovation Corps regional collaboration led by the University of Maryland, along with the George Washington University and Virginia Tech.
The NSF has approved a request from the three original universities to officially include Johns Hopkins in the I-Corps program’s “node” in the Mid-Atlantic called DC I-Corps, which was formed last year with $3.75 million in NSF funding.
PRESENTERS: Konstantina Manjoros Katcheves, Esq., Vice President and Global Head of Intellectual Property, Lonza Group, Ltd.
ABSTRACT:
Lonza Group Ltd., headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, is a worldwide leader in supplying the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries with biopharmaceuticals. Come to learn first-hand how you can partner and collaborate with this international firm and develop a win-win relationship with Lonza.
Biography:
Konstantina Manjoros Katcheves, Esq. As global head of the intellectual property department at Lonza, Tina is responsible for patent, trademark and licensing strategy as well as related litigation. She manages a worldwide team of professionals for the Basel, Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company. She is responsible for intellectual property strategy and business alignment including patent, trademark and licensing of Lonza IP for Lonza’s Biologics businesses, including cell therapy and antibody therapeutics.
Tina has past experience in private practice, as a USPTO examinerand registered patent attorney. She is an author and speaker on a wide variety of topics including intellectual property and commercialization.
Eight startup companies are among 67 recipients of Maryland Innovation Initiative awards in fiscal 2014.
The Maryland Innovation Initiative gave a total of $6.4 million to research projects and startups with ties to universities in the state. The innovation initiative is designed to spur commercialization of university research.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notice:
Request for Information: Shared Instrumentation Grant Program (S10) (NOT-OD-14-104) Division of Program Coordination, Planning and Strategic Initiatives, Office of Research Infrastructure Programs
Extramural Loan Repayment Program for Clinical Researchers (LRP-CR) (NOT-OD-14-105) National Institutes of Health
Extramural Clinical Research Loan Repayment Program for Clinical Researchers from Disadvantaged Backgrounds (LRP-IDB) (NOT-OD-14-106) National Institutes of Health
Extramural Loan Repayment Program for Pediatric Research (LRP-PR) (NOT-OD-14-107) National Institutes of Health
Extramural Loan Repayment Program for Contraception and Infertility Research (LRP-CIR) (NOT-OD-14-108) National Institutes of Health
Extramural Loan Repayment Program for Health Disparities Research (LRP-HDR) (NOT-OD-14-109) National Institutes of Health
Notice of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) Participation in PA-14-114 “Behavioral Interventions to Address Multiple Chronic Health Conditions in Primary Care (R01)” (NOT-DC-14-003) National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders
Notice of Change to the Award Budget and Submission Requirements for PAR-12-198 “Improving Diet and Physical Activity Assessment (R01)” (NOT-DK-14-023) National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
Notice of NICHDs Participation in PAR-13-055 “Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health (R01)” (NOT-HD-14-017) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Request for Information: NHLBI Whole Genome Sequencing Project (NHLBI-WGS) (NOT-HL-14-030) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Notice of the Change in the Expiration Date for PA-11-347 “NINDS SBIR Technology Transfer (SBIR-TT [R43/R44])” (NOT-NS-14-038) National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
Jennifer Hammaker has watched biotech company respEQ Inc. grow from an experiment in a Johns Hopkins lab to a fledgling startup now looking for investors.
RespEQ is a prime example of what Hammaker, who leads the Maryland Innovation Initiative, hopes the state’s research commercialization program will produce more of in the future.
The startup world will perk up to hear that RockthePost and CoFoundersLab recently merged to form Onevest. Together the two companies will provide a single source for startup founders to not only find investors but also find the right co-founders all online.
Kaiser is well known healthcare delivery model and outcomes, but, it turns out, it’s also among the best at engaging members via the web and mobile apps. The organization says in its 2013 annual report (just released) that about 4.4 million of its 9.1 million members use its online health management platform My Health Manager.
It helps to have a friend. And for several pharma giants scrambling to cut R&D costs, those friends are venture capital firms that co-invest in startups whose new drugs and platform technologies appear attractive. In some cases, these pharma-venture “alliances” launch the startups, using the expertise of VC firm partners and company executives.
He’s pointing out a challenge for entrepreneurs, not griping. He’s lived in California, Boston and New York, and he chose this area for a reason — “Maryland-D.C. is the mecca of security.”
So far, the bet’s paid off. ZeroFOX, which focuses on cybersecurity threats from social media, has raised $13 million from both local and out-of-state investors. Among them is Sourcefire’s former chief financial officer. That’s allowed the company to expand from its original two people to nearly 50.
Like its business incubators for technology, cybersecurity and biotech, Montgomery County hopes a kitchen incubator will help food entrepreneurs thrive in the county.
The county is seeking proposals for a private partner to help “accelerate the commercialization of creations from local food entrepreneurs” by establishing a kitchen incubator, a shared kitchen space food entrepreneurs can use to start their businesses.
There is clearly something wrong with pharmaceutical innovation.
Antibiotic-resistant infections sicken more than two million Americans every year and kill at least 23,000. The World Health Organization has warned that a “post-antibiotic era” may be upon us, when “common infections and minor injuries can kill.” Even the world’s tycoons consider the proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria one of the crucial global risks of our times, according to a survey by the World Economic Forum.
NextNav LLC, the bicoastal location services venture launched by XM Satellite Radio founder Gary Parsons, announced on Thursday a $70 million Series D funding led by New Enterprise Associates and Oak Investment Partners.
The eight-figure round is the latest high-dollar financing for NextNav, which two years ago reported a $50 million raise from Columbia Capital. Columbia also joined in the most recent round, alongside Telcom Ventures and Goldman Sachs Investment Partners.
On Thursday, July 17, four science experts served as witnesses at the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing, “The Federal Research Portfolio: Capitalizing on Investments in R&D.” The hearing considered the federal government’s role in research and development (R&D), and the nation’s STEM education and outreach initiatives.
Attendees in the Capitol hearing room were Mariette DiChristina, editor in chief and senior vice president of Scientific American; Vinton G. Cerf, computer scientist, Google’s Internet Evangelist and one of the fathers of the Internet; Neal F. Lane, former director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and Stephen E. Fienberg, professor of statistics and social science at Carnegie Mellon University.
Maryland companies raised $64 million in venture capital funding this spring, with some of the biggest payouts flowing to Baltimore cybersecurity startups.
That’s according to the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. The report, which uses Thomson Reuters data, tracks money flowing to startups and later-stage firms across the country.
Founders Fund already stands out for backing startups with radical ideas, including Counsyl, Hampton Creek, Planet Labs, and SpaceX. Now the venture firm is making a formal commitment to funding startups in aeronautics, life sciences, nanotechnology, and other geeky realms. Founders Fund has dedicated a small percentage of its new $1 billion fund to a new initiative called FF Science, through which the firm will make seed-stage deals.
While considerable attention has been heaped on the public health insurance exchanges over the year, private health insurance exchanges “are experiencing hyper-growth” and enrollment could exceed that of public exchanges by 2017, “if not sooner,” according to Accenture.
After decades as a technological laggard, medicine has entered its data age. Mobile technologies, sensors, genome sequencing, and advances in analytic software now make it possible to capture vast amounts of information about our individual makeup and the environment around us. The sum of this information could transform medicine, turning a field aimed at treating the average patient into one that’s customized to each person while shifting more control and responsibility from doctors to patients.
The question is: can big data make health care better?
Capital efficiency has become a mantra at Atlas, one shared by a number of other early stage biotech investors. It’s a term often repeated in discussions about building young companies, and yet it has become clear that there’s no consistent definition of what the term means.
A common perception is that capital efficiency is synonymous with tightly constrained, small amounts of investor capital – the “small ball” criticism of capital efficiency. Others think it means only ultra-lean, asset-centric, virtual companies. There’s also the perception that you can’t build something big if you are capital efficient.
In 1957, eight entrepreneurs decided to do something that seemed crazy. They launched a new tech company called Fairchild Semiconductor in a small town south of San Francisco. The entrepreneurs had a difficult start, but Fairchild eventually became the first major computer chip company in the region.
The BioMaryland Center today joined with Medicen Paris Region to announce a co-funded international project to support commercialization and collaboration in their two regions. Opticul Diagnostics of Rockville, Md. and Diafir of Rennes, France have been selected as the first two participants of a partnership that was created at BIO International 2012 to promote collaboration on products to improve and speed diagnoses and patient care. The announcement was made at the BIO International Convention 2014 in San Diego.
This is the first jointly funded international project undertaken by the BioMaryland Center, which is part of the Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED) of Maryland. The state of Maryland is the fourth largest biopharma concentration in the United States and Medicen Paris Region represents one of Europe’s largest clusters of life science and health care companies.
It’s not unusual for hospitals to have innovation centers these days, but the folks at New York Presbyterian Hospital have chosen an interesting satellite office for theirs: in the offices that house health IT accelerator Blueprint Health. It’s a remarkable development for an industry in which hospitals have tended to hold startups at arm’s length.
Although hospitals and health systems often welcome entrepreneurs’ motivation to improve healthcare, their knack for identifying problems and developing solutions as well as using technology to speed up care delivery, the complexities of making startup solutions work in healthcare has been challenging. Providers are frequently frustrated by an insufficient understanding by startups of hospital workflows, the complexities of implementing new technology along with the safety and regulatory rigors involved. On the flipside, healthcare startups are often frustrated by what they perceive as the snail-like pace of hospitals to adopt new health IT tools and make care delivery more efficient.
More than 80% of U.S. consumers conduct online research prior to making everyday purchases. This is a statistic that is growing, and extends beyond products to include services and, finally, even healthcare. With the abundance of information available, consumers are empowered–they want to be as informed as possible when selecting physicians, but how does someone navigate through the overwhelming results of Google searches and decide how to best make a decision as important as selecting a healthcare provider? I think most people would agree that selecting a physician and selecting where to have dinner have highly differing degrees of importance when it comes to online research.
There’s a panoply of alternative funding streams for healthcare startups out there – fledgling companies are seeking out avenues like prepaid revenue models, grant funding in lieu of venture capital, and the ever-popular crowdfunding approach.
The outcomes can be a mixed bag, however, said a panel of speakers at MedCity News’ CONVERGE conference in Philadelphia today.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
Baltimore-based Cerecor has gathered up the first half of a $33 million B round, with plans to devote much of that money to a midstage development program for an experimental depression therapy recently punted by a restructuring Merck ($MRK).
In documents filed with the SEC, the biotech noted that it has raised $16.2 million of a planned $33.2 million round. New Enterprise Associates, Apple Tree Partners and MPM Capital led the round, which is also going to fund R&D efforts on its catechol-O-methyltransferase inhibitor platform for conditions “characterized by impairment of executive function and working memory.”
RockThePost, a site that connects startups and investors, just announced that it has merged with CoFoundersLab, a site that helps entrepreneurs find cofounders.
RockThePost, which launched in 2011, sought to form a new kind of social network that brought together money-hungry startups with equity-hungry investors. Although the site never became a household name, its model proved somewhat successful: CoFoundersLab actually raised a portion of its initial $750,000 seed round on RockThePost.
DED awarded a Montgomery County Economic Development Fund grant providing up to $12 million in property tax incentives for customers of BYTEGRID®, a leading data center company located in Silver Spring that is focused on the nationwide acquisition, development and operation of premier multi-tenant data center facilities.
“Montgomery County is focused on increasing our attractiveness to large private and public enterprise organizations seeking to optimize costs by outsourcing IT infrastructure,” said Steve Silverman, Director of Economic Development for Montgomery County. “This strategic grant for BYTEGRID’s data center customers shows our commitment to fostering a pro-business climate that already includes leading digital age businesses in healthcare, financial services, IT services and cyber security. The key takeaway here is that Montgomery County, Maryland is in the regional and national big data game to win.”
NexImmune, an early stage biopharmaceutical company, today announced it has secured $3 million USD in financing led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Other investors include Pfizer Venture Investments and Amgen Ventures. In association with the financing, Jim Barrett of NEA and Janis Naeve of Amgen Ventures were named to NexImmune’s board of directors.
NexImmune is developing immunotherapy products from its proprietary Artificial IMmune (AIM™) nanotechnology. The AIM technology, which was first developed by Drs. Mathias Oelke and Jonathan Schneck at The Johns Hopkins University, has several potential applications for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infectious disease. Proceeds from this financing will be used to support pre-clinical development of the company’s first product, AIM 101, an artificial Antigen Presenting Cell (aAPC) for the treatment of cancer.
Analytical Informatics, Inc, a portfolio company of the New Ventures Department of the University of Maryland, Baltimore is one of the semifinalists in 43North, the world’s largest business idea competition. 43North will award $5 million in cash prizes and is setting out to turn the best new business ideas from around the globe into reality. The top award is $1 million, with six $500,000 awards and four $250,000 awards. There were with 6,932 applications from 96 countries and all 50 U.S. states. That got boiled down to 2,603 qualified submissions and 113 semifinalists. Analytical Informatics, Inc was the only Baltimore and Maryland based company selected.
Promising news for any unlucky american in immediate need of a doctor: BetterDoctor, the San Francisco based healthcare tool and online doctor search service, has closed a $10 million Series A funding round led by New Enterprise Associates and participated by existing investors including SoftTechVC and Finnish venture capital firm Lifeline Ventures.
The fund will be used to further develop the existing service, hire new employees and spread the service’s web and mobile applications to new platforms.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski toured the MedImmune laboratories in Frederick on Monday morning and talked with employees.
Mikulski told the workers she was proud of what they are doing, creating medical solutions to health problems. She also talked with company executives about the company’s future.
Qiagen N.V,, the leading global provider of sample & assay technologies that are used to transform biological materials into valuable molecular information, has launched 14 new GeneRead DNAseq V2 gene panels targeting an extensive range of cancer-related genes or gene regions. Gene panels are an integral part of many next-generation sequencing (NGS) workflows. They are used to enrich genes of interest in a sample prior to sequencing runs and as such can be seen as the core assay in the workflow.
Qiagen’s new GeneRead panels are customisable to include other genes or gene regions of clinical or biological interest and are compatible with any NGS sequencer. They are part of Qiagen’s industry-leading sample-to-library workflows, which are helping to drive the growing use of NGS in clinical applications.
Severe bleeding is a primary cause of death for soldiers wounded on the battlefield. Deep shrapnel and gunshot wounds can be notoriously difficult to control, particularly in soft tissue places such as the neck, shoulder, and groin. Now undergrad students at Johns Hopkins University have developed a prototype device to help address such trauma in a speedy fashion.
The new device is a large plastic syringe with two compartments, similar to epoxy injectors, holding a polyol and a diisocyanat, chemicals that produce polyurethane foam when mixed. The foam hardens shortly after injection and delivers pressure to the wound from within. The hope is that the foam will help soldiers from bleeding out while they’re on the way to a medical facility where a surgeon can address the wound directly.
Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has revealed proposed designs for its new corporate headquarters and global research centre in Cambridge, which is scheduled to open in late 2016.
The plans for the new facility, which will be located on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC), include designs for the global centre, an R&D enabling building and an energy centre.
Maryland has a future in being the perennial powerhouse in cyber security but it’s lacking something that will help the state’s industry take off like a rocket — and that’s depth.
In Friday’s print edition cover story I wrote about how colleges and universities are scrambling to change curriculum to prepare more students for success in the cyber world post graduation. Industry executives have lamented that colleges aren’t doing enough to prepare students to fill vacant positions — more than 10,000 across Maryland in 2013, according to career services firm Burning Glass.
The head of a young Baltimore cyber security company says a New York investor nixed a deal after discovering Maryland’s new cyber security tax credit wouldn’t transfer to investors.
Suzanne Magee, CEO of Bandura LLC, said the credit should go to the investor. That’s how it works with the state’s biotech tax credit.
Baltimore-area companies took home 12 percent of the money venture firms invested in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., region in the second quarter.
Greater Baltimore companies raised a total of $29.5 million in venture capital during the period, according to a MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. Venture capitalists invested a total of $247.3 million in 58 companies in Baltimore and D.C. during the quarter.
While the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins can’t exactly compete with Ivy League Harvard when it comes to dominating the ranking of college rankings, the two D.C. area schools were ranked among the top 50 universities in the world by the Center for World University Rankings. Crushing other top-tier institutions like Dartmouth, Brown and McGill, the local academic titans nourishing the minds of students across the globe substantiated themselves as schools worth attending during a time of loan shark annihilation.
President of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County since 1992, Freeman A. Hrabowski III thinks he knows what students need: lots of support. Morally, colleges owe it to students to do everything possible to help them succeed, he said in a recent visit to The Chronicle, and a higher retention rate means more tuition dollars, too.
Former state economic development secretary Aris Melissaratos is leaving Johns Hopkins University for a job where he’ll have more power.
Melissaratos, who had been with Hopkins for seven years, on July 17 joined Stevenson University as interim dean of the Brown School of Business and Leadership. Melissaratos said he has always had an interest in academia and now will be able to play a leading role in preparing students to join the local workforce.
Venture investors in Silicon Valley are frequent prey of startup founders who spot them in public places — and semi-public places — and start pitching. Last night, a discussion about awkward pitches led four VCs on a panel for the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s annual Pitch event to tell tales from the mens room.
That was my question when I spoke with DreamIt Health newbie BioBots, specifically co-founder Ricardo Solorzano. He has spent three years working on technology to develop low-cost 3D bioprinters that research scientists can use to develop biomaterials. The company was formed by a couple of University of Pennsylvania graduates They view it as a way to change the way people think of regenerative medicine.
Solorzano and fellow co-founder Danny Cabrera joined Hive 76 in Philadelphia so they could learn more about developing these 3D printers. They also work with intern Eric Wamakima. They spoke with MedCity News at DreamIt Health’s launch party for its second class
It’s tough for medical device companies to get that stamp of FDA approval, but the labyrinthine regulatory pathway certainly doesn’t help things. Regulators want to change that:
“…we learned that the delivery of new therapies to patients can be accelerated if medical device innovators — including entrepreneurs and university students and faculty — understand FDA’s regulatory processes,” FDA researcher Francis Kalush wrote recently.
President Obama’s visit earlier this month to 1776, the startup hub in downtown Washington, D.C., shined a spotlight on entrepreneurship and innovative thinking nationwide. It was a good location because the contemporary, well-lit loft that incubates and supports area startups has grown from zero to 215 members in only a year-and-a-half.
The president’s visit highlighted two entrepreneurial stories, not only of 1776 but also of the early steps by American University involving its Masters of Arts in Media Entrepreneurship program (MAME) and two campus collaborators. We became the hub’s first university partnership in a fruitful relationship that could be repeated at other campuses across the country.
The two-year anniversary of the monumental Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act may not have caused much fanfare, but Steve Kraus, a partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, said Massachusetts should be celebrating.
Here are four takeaways from a conversation with the head of the firm’s health care investing, as he analyzes the shifts that have occurred in the two years since the Affordable Care Act was deemed constitutional.
Many medical researchers with ideas not tied to a drug backed by the pharmaceutical industry often find themselves without funding; patients with diseases or other medical conditions, particularly those that are rare, are without much power. That is, until recently.
Now, scientists are turning to crowdfunding to launch their research. Donors won’t get a free CD, T-shirt or other giveaway like they do on Kickstarter. But what fundraisers give in return is hope for a treatment and at least insight into medical conditions.
Paul Thompson, director of IT innovation at Medtronic, explained how he held on for four years to bring the “hospital of the future” to life. His work is part of the company’s larger push to move from a device maker to a healthcare services provider, which he compared to IBM’s move from hardware to services.
At the end of this session at CONVERGE, an audience member asked what metrics Thompson and his team must meet each year to be considered a success.
DreamIt Ventures is kicking off its second health IT accelerator class in Philadelphia with a stronger life sciences theme than last year. More hospitals reviewed candidates this year and the result included four life sciences startups in its nine-member class. They take diverse approaches to the problems they solve — from molecular diagnostics to detect disease earlier to wound management.
It’s an interesting development because healthcare startup accelerators tend to stick to health IT and mobile health companies because it takes a shorter amount of time to develop products, there’s less risk and the path to getting FDA clearance can take a while. Although it’s not interested in therapeutics, DreamIt has definitely been warming up to medical technology that goes beyond health IT. One reason is that molecular diagnostics and 3D printing is increasingly accessible through mobile platforms.
Stanford University scientists say they have developed a new test for type 1 diabetes that will cost a fraction of the current price and could speed up diagnosis from days to hours. That could be useful anywhere, but especially in poorer countries where many people with diabetes go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed because the existing tests are too expensive to be widely offered.
In current tests, blood samples are sent to a lab, where radioactive materials are used to detect the cause of the disease: a so-called auto-antibody that attacks the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. This test is labor-intensive and costs hundreds of dollars.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
Supernus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:SUPN), today announced the execution of a royalty acquisition agreement (“Agreement”) with HealthCare Royalty Partners (“HC Royalty”). Per the Agreement, HC Royalty will make a $30 million cash payment to Supernus in consideration for acquiring from Supernus certain royalty and milestone rights related to the commercialization of Orenitram(TM) (treprostinil) Extended-Release Tablets by Supernus’ partner United Therapeutics Corporation. Supernus will retain full ownership of the Royalty Rights after a certain threshold has been reached per the terms of the Agreement.
“We are pleased to have completed this royalty transaction, which strengthens our balance sheet and enhances our financial flexibility,” said Jack Khattar, President and Chief Executive Officer of Supernus. “The transaction allows us to partially monetize our royalty stream from Orenitram(TM) for a significant cash consideration while positioning Supernus to further benefit from the future upside potential of the product.”
Healthcare Interactive Inc. — which sells Web-based software for companies to monitor medical costs in real time — has raised $8 million in funding.
The Series A funding in the Glenwood, Maryland-based company came from Grotech Ventures, which has more than $1.3 billion under management, and Harbert Venture Partners, an emerging growth-stage investor with $200 million under management.
ORTHOMETRIX, INC. announced today that it has signed an exclusive agreement with ENCORE PATH, INC. to market, sell and service worldwide the Tailwind™ arm rehabilitation device. The Tailwind™ is a patented Bilateral Arm Trainer with Rhythmic Auditory Cueing (BATRAC) that was developed at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Services and licensed to Encore Path, Inc., a portfolio company of the New Ventures Department of the University of Maryland, Baltimore. The Tailwind has been shown to improve arm movement in stroke patients with paralysis. It will be initially marketed in Asia and in Israel, and then in the U.S. after a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) HCPCS code is obtained for use of the Tailwind as a durable medical equipment (DME). Commenting on this agreement, Reynald Bonmati, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Orthometrix, stated, “I am very pleased to partner with Encore Path and the University of Maryland. The Tailwind™ for upper-limb rehabilitation of stroke patients is a natural addition to our SmartStep® Biofeedback system for lower-limb rehabilitation, developed and manufactured by our partner Andante Medical Devices, Inc. Orthometrix, Andante and Encore Path are currently working on the manufacturing of the Tailwind™ by Andante.
The Tailwind was developed by physicians from the University of Maryland specializing in physical therapy and rehabilitation after a decade of scientific research. Clinical studies have shown that the device helps improve arm mobility, function, and range of motion in patients with even severe paralysis. Representatives from the University of Maryland’s New Ventures Department facilitated the introduction of Encore Path, Inc. and Orthometrix, Inc. and the subsequent agreement. The University of Maryland Ventures is designed to fuel the growth of the University’s startups, particularly those based upon intellectual property developed by physicians at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and University of Maryland, College Park.
Storrer will oversee strategy, expansion and operation of Strand Genomics Inc., the wholly owned subsidiary of Strand Life Sciences in North America. Strand is a leader in technology innovations for personalized medicine using genomics in over 2,000 clinical and research institutions worldwide. By enhancing sequence-based diagnostics and clinical genomic data interpretation using a strong foundation of computational, scientific, and medical expertise Strand is bringing individualized medicine to the world.
“We are excited to have Scott Storrer join our team,” said Dr. Vijay Chandru, Chairman and CEO of Strand. “Storrer’s twenty plus years of executive experience leading and growing profitable businesses in the U.S. healthcare industry across payer, provider and personalized medicine sectors will help develop a strong presence for Strand in North America.”
New Enterprise Associates averaged a U.S. funding deal every three days in the first half of this year, the hottest six months for the industry since the end of the dotcom boom in 2001.
Not far behind NEA’s 64 first half deals were Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (54), Andreessen Horowitz (52) and Google Ventures (50), according to a report from investment database research firm CB Insights.
Take advantage of an incredible international business opportunity and explore the India market with Montgomery County Executive Leggett during a business mission to India this November!
Sign up now to join Leggett and fellow business, educational and community leaders for engaging stops in New Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Raipour. August 1st is the deadline to apply for ExportMD grant funds to help defray the cost of participation in the m
Johns Hopkins University is expected to receive almost $6.4 million from the federal health department for a support program for people with dementia. The award, worth up to $6.38 million, is part of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Health Care Innovation Awards.
The award is contingent on final administrative approval by the federal health department.
The Frederick Innovative Technology Center Inc. is looking for business leaders to volunteer for its board of directors.
Preference will be given to those in private industry in the fields of life sciences, advance technology, finance, marketing and entrepreneur. The board meets the fourth Monday of each month.
Alexandria-based venture capital firm Columbia Capital is planning a $425 million fund according to SEC filings reported in the Washington Business Journal. The firm invests in information technology, especially infrastructure, wireless spectrum and other related fields. It’s done plenty of investing around D.C. in the quarter century since it was founded. Millennial Media, Broadsoft, Virtustream and Summit IG are all on the list of local companies invested in.
Not that Columbia limits itself geographically. It led a $23 million round of funding for Seattle-based 2nd Watch in November. According to WBJ, it even occasionally builds a company from scratch to satisfy some IT need, like Cloud Sherpas, which provides enterprise cloud-based services. Whether or not that will be the path Columbia takes this time remains to be seen, but it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that the fund is being raised for creation rather than strictly investment.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notice:
NIH Announces Change in Policy Requirements for Activation Notices for Fellows Sponsored by Foreign and Federal Institutions (NOT-OD-14-101) National Institutes of Health
Notice of Correction to Budget Instructions for PA-14-042 “NIH Pathway to Independence Award (Parent K99/R00)” (NOT-OD-14-102) National Institutes of Health
Request for Information: Collaborative Translational Research Consortium to Develop T4 Translation of Evidence-based Interventions (NOT-HL-14-028) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
Location: North Carolina Biotechnology Center 15 TW Alexander Drive Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-3547 http://www.ncbiotech.org/
Background:
NHLBI’s Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC) hosts this semi-annual Regional Innovation Conference that brings together small businesses, angel investors, venture capitalists, strategic partners, and business leaders from the biotech and pharmaceutical industries. NHLBI staff will be available to describe the details and impact of recent changes in the Federal SBIR/STTR program, as well as note other funding opportunities and resources for NHLBI small businesses.
Previous conferences have been held in Boston, MA, San Francisco, CA, San Diego, CA, and Rockville, MD.
Q.: Is it okay to pay yourself (and other founders) a salary when you’ve only raised money from friends and family? If so, how much is reasonable? What’s an acceptable salary to pay yourself once a non-family seed round is raised?
The Tech Council of Maryland hopes a new office at the University of Maryland BioPark will help the organization play a bigger role in technology and life sciences in Baltimore.
Much of the tech council’s activities are centered in Montgomery County, where the organization’s headquarters and many of its members are based. The tech council will open a new office at the biopark and staff it every Thursday. The Baltimore office will focus on strengthening partnerships with other technology organizations in the city and developing new programs that meet needs of Baltimore-area companies.
More than 70 percent of college graduates with a bachelor’s degree in science, technology, engineering and mathematics are not employed in those industries.
About 74 percent of STEM college graduates hold jobs unrelated to their fields of study, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. And those who are working in STEM fields are predominantly male. Specifically, Census data shows more than 80 percent of engineers and more than 70 percent of computer professionals are men.
Happy 10th anniversary to the National Institutes of Health’s Common Fund! It’s hard to believe that it’s been a decade since I joined then-NIH Director Elias Zerhouni at the National Press Club to launch this trans-NIH effort to catalyze innovation and speed progress across many fields of biomedical research.
Allow me to take this opportunity to share just a bit of the history and a few of the many achievements of this bold new approach to the support of science.
Twenty-eight venture-backed companies completed initial public offerings during the second quarter, raising $4.9 billion. That was a 45 percent increase in dollars raised compared to the previous quarter, according to an analysis by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. It was the fifth consecutive quarter of more than 20 IPOs at venture-backed companies.
In biotech’s early days, telling a story to a wide audience used to be part of the path to success. Founders would share a compelling early narrative to potential investors, reporters, and just about anyone else who would listen. Nature papers were the coin of the realm.
But far from shouting to the rooftops, lately it seems that more and more biotechs are pursuing a different approach. Instead of keeping their technology under wraps until a first financing happens, these companies go into what we call “permanent stealth mode.” The principle here seems to be, “say no more publicly than necessary, and even then, keep it vague.” Meantime, let your actions speak for you: Raise money. Sign partnerships with pharmaceutical companies. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, hand consumers and investors a finished product or service.
On a recent tour of the latest addition to University City Science Center’s campus in Philadelphia – an innovation hub in an established building on its campus set to officially open next week — I unexpectedly came across an office belonging to Merck.
It’s all the more interesting because it’s just a few doors down from DreamIt Ventures and its accelerator DreamIt Health, which has a second class of health IT entrepreneurs moving in next week. The Science Center’s own digital health accelerator will also be working in the building.
The 4th edition of the Orphan Drugs Summit, Northern Europe’s premier orphan drugs conference, will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark this September.
As the conference approaches it is becoming more obvious that collaboration is one of the most important driving forces in the development of orphan drugs. The Orphan Drugs Summit will focus on how to build relationships on multiple levels, highlight how to access partnership parallel advice, and will also outline how stakeholders can benefit from collaboration to develop stronger clinical trials.
Healthcare startups, and all startups for that matter, need investors and funding to stay alive. For this reason, MedCity is pleased to announce that investor Andrew Jay, MD, will be speaking at CONVERGE. Dr. Jay is the head of the medical solutions fund at HealthCare Fund at Siemens Venture Capital, which invests in companies focusing on imaging, diagnostics and health IT.
Jay will be speaking on the second day of MedCity CONVERGE at 9:20 a.m. The third annual CONVERGE is July 15-16 in Philadelphia.
Two private equity firms announced the formation of a $26.6 million fund that will focus exclusively on the aging marketplace and companies within it.
Chicago-based Ziegler and Ohio-based Link-age Ventures announced the close of the Longevity Fund, which aims to address a number of key issues affecting seniors. Among them: coordination of care, chronic disease management, reducing hospitalizations and re-admissions, disease prevention and wellness, aging and government funded programs and public health issues, according to the companies.
A cadre of venture capital firms could cash in from the wave of Bay Area biotech initial public offerings in the first half of the year.
Stalwart VCs such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers of Menlo Park and Domain Associates are among the venture capital firms whose names pop up most often in the IPOs of local life sciences companies through June. Among the other VCs are DAG Ventures of Palo Alto and Essex Woodlands Health Ventures in Palo Alto.
Personalized medicine (PMx), medical treatment tailored to specific patient populations based on their genetic or molecular biology profiles, has long been heralded as the next big thing in healthcare. It’s been about 16 years since Genentech launched Herceptin, a drug for breast cancer patients with a specific genetic mutation. At the time, Herceptin seemed to usher in a revolution for how drugs would be developed and patients would be cured.
In that new version of care, drugs could be tailored to a patient’s specific biochemical profile, dramatically improving efficacy rates and reducing the system-wide costs and complications associated with one-size-fits-all medications. For pharmaceutical manufacturers, this approach had the potential to improve sales and profits through a radically new business model: differentiated products for segmented populations (see “A Strategist’s Guide to Personalized Medicine,” by Avi Kulkarni and Nelia Padilla McGreevy, s+b, Winter 2012).
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI), a regional private-public partnership focusing on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Central Maryland, today announced the launch of a new service offering: the Startup Package for Client Companies. The new package is designed to provide early-stage biohealth companies in Central Maryland with access to critical professional services – including corporate legal guidance, intellectual property, banking, accounting, payer and strategy, and grant support – as an enhanced benefit to working with BHI.
“We are proud to offer this service to our startup clients seeking to commercialize biohealth products,” said Richard Bendis, President & CEO. “BHI aims to facilitate the development of commercially viable health-related products and companies. Providing access to these professional services is a critical step towards helping our biohealth startup clients in achieving this goal.”
Rockville biotechnology company Cellphire is the latest receipient of funding via the State’s InvestMaryland program, receiving $1 million last month!
Cellphire is developing stabilized cellular products, including freeze-dried platelets that can be stored for years and used in a range of advanced therapeutic and diagnostic applications including sports medicine, plastic surgery and dentistry. The company received a contract last year worth up to $57 million from the Biomedical Advanced Research Defense Authority, a division of U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. The InvestMaryland funding will be used to continue development of the company’s freeze-dried platelet product, Thrombosomes, and move it closer to winning FDA approval.
GSK and Save the Children have announced the second annual $1 million Healthcare Innovation Award, which was established to identify and reward innovations in healthcare that have proven successful in reducing child deaths in developing countries.
Organizations from across the developing world can nominate examples of innovative healthcare approaches they have discovered or implemented. These approaches must have resulted in tangible improvements to under-5 child survival rates, be sustainable and have the potential to be scaled-up and replicated. Special attention will be given to work that aims to increase the quality of, or access to, healthcare for newborns.
Take a break from the Summer heat with our sponsor, Hydro Service and Supplies, and join us for another great networking event on July 9th from 5:00 – 7:30 p.m. at American Tap Room in Rockville, MD. This location is a short walk from the Metro located in the Rockville Town Center.
Hydro Service and Supplies, Inc. provides a versatile range of quality ultrapure water systems and products, from large scale central production systems to point-of-use laboratory systems. Since 1967, Hydro has been an industry leader by combining synergistic engineering and innovative designs with high-performance component selections, superior materials of construction, and precision manufacturing that result in high quality ultrapure water systems.
Hydro is dedicated to providing quality products and professional support from our experienced sales, engineering and service teams. Hydro serves Pharmaceutical, Biotech, Microelectronic, Research, Academic, Medical/Clinical, Food and Beverage, and Industrial applications. In addition, Hydro offers engineering services, turn-key installation, start-up and commissioning, validation support, PLC programming, water testing services and reliable service support 24/7/365.
Originating as a solution to educate health workers in developing countries, emocha is now a powerful platform that allows researchers and clinicians to use mobile data capture, health education, and communication to address the challenges of adherence, linkage to care, and patient data management across a myriad of use cases. Sebastian Seiguer, CEO and Founder of emocha, and Morad Elmi, Director of Marketing, spoke with us about the latest from this Baltimore-based startup.
Two Montgomery County companies each took home the top prize of $100,000 in their category as part of the 2014 InvestMaryland Challenge.
Bethesda-based life sciences company, Brain Sentry, won for its helmet-mounted sensor used to identify team sport players who should be evaluated for a concussion. Gaithersburg-based IT company, ClickMedix, won its catergory for technology aimed at helping physicians and health organizations maximize the number of patients they are able to serve.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notice:
Notice of CDC/NCCDPHP Participation in PA-14-071 “PHS 2014-02 Omnibus Solicitation of the NIH, CDC, FDA and ACF for Small Business Innovation Research Grant Applications (Parent SBIR [R43/R44])” (NOT-CD-14-001) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
Notice of Website for Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for PAR-13-231 “Phenotyping Embryonic Lethal Knockout Mice (R01)” (NOT-HD-14-021) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Requests for Applications:
Enriching the Hematology Research Workforce through Short-term Educational Experiences in Emerging Science Research Education Program Grant (R25) (RFA-HL-15-006) National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Application Receipt Date(s): October 13, 2014
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
Leslie Ford Weber, interim executive director of Johns Hopkins University’s Montgomery County Campus, has been appointed to a board of directors executive committee position with the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce.
Weber will serve a yearlong term as vice chair of the economic development committee. She shares the responsibility with Stewart Edelstein, executive director at the Universities at Shady Grove.
The Johns Hopkins University has joined the National Science Foundation‘s National Innovation Network and becomes the fourth member university in the NSF Innovation Corps regional collaboration led by the University of Maryland, along with the George Washington University and Virginia Tech.
The NSF has approved a request from the three original universities to officially include Johns Hopkins in the I-Corps program’s “node” in the Mid-Atlantic called DC I-Corps, which was formed last year with $3.75 million in NSF funding.
University of Maryland, a national leader in entrepreneurship education and venture creation, announces it will offer a new master’s degree program in technology entrepreneurship starting this fall.
The 30-credit, 15-month Master of Technology Entrepreneurship, available online to current and aspiring entrepreneurs worldwide, features the university’s most advanced and comprehensive entrepreneurship curriculum to date, taking students from concept development and prototyping to business model generation and customer validation, as well as legal aspects of entrepreneurship, financial and innovation management, and effective growth strategies.
Former Johns Hopkins University college student Alex Koren wants to make a difference.
Koren feels he has a better opportunity of doing that by dropping out of Johns Hopkins, and devoting all of his time to his ideas on a Thiel Fellowship.
On June 24, UBI Index announced the Global Top 25 University Business Incubators of 2014. We would like to thank all participants of this year’s benchmark for great efforts in supporting entrepreneurs and helping the industry understand the importance of incubation.
Valuations on venture-backed companies jumped again in the second quarter as the number of IPOs and the amount VCs invested in startups both hit post-dot-com highs, a new report from PitchBook Data shows.
The total amount invested has climbed steadily each quarter in the past year, jumping from $12.8 billion in Q2 of 2013 to $21.5 billion in the same period this year. The $13.9 billion raised in 76 new venture funds is also a recent high.
A survey of healthcare and life science professionals and investors suggests healthcare M&A activity will surge past 2013 levels when there were 394 deals valued at $97 billion. The report by Bass Berry & Sims and Mergermarket indicates that market disruption, brought on by the Affordable Care Act, will lead to more consolidation deals across healthcare facilities, life science and healthcare IT companies.
The Affordable Care Act and HITECH Act are etched into the heart of most of these deals. That’s apparent from the facilities trying to figure out ways to cope with reduced Medicare reimbursements to the technology hospitals will need to adopt to fit in with change in payment models in the future. They also need to comply with electronic medical record requirements. Here are six trends that illustrate and factor in to the survey’s outlook.
Educational experts have been telling us the future of employment opportunity will be in jobs requiring science, technology, engineering or mathematics training. At least in the D.C. area, the future is now.
A new study from the Brookings Institution finds the majority (55.1 percent) of job postings in the Washington area in the first quarter of 2013 required STEM skills. And not rudimentary skills either. More than 48 percent of all job postings required STEM skills and at least a bachelor’s degree.
Anyone who wants a job next year at Anne Arundel Medical Center — whether as a surgeon or security guard — will have to prove they don’t smoke or use tobacco.
The Annapolis hospital’s new hiring policy might be controversial, but it is legal in Maryland and more than half of the United States. And it’s a type of job screening that is gaining favor with employers — from hospitals to companies such as Alaska Airlines — trying to control rising health costs and cultivate a healthier, more productive workforce.
Reston-based New Atlantic Ventures joined a handful of other venture investors in backing Truveris, a New York startup whose cloud-based platform helps drive down the cost to companies of providing prescription drug benefits.
NAV Fund, an existing investor, joined New Leaf Venture Partners, Tribeca Venture Partners and First Round in Truveris’ $12.75 million Series C round, which was led by Canaan Partners.
The heart is more forgiving than you may think — especially to adults who try to take charge of their health, a new Northwestern Medicine® study has found.
When adults in their 30s and 40s decide to drop unhealthy habits that are harmful to their heart and embrace healthy lifestyle changes, they can control and potentially even reverse the natural progression of coronary artery disease, scientists found.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
Anne Wojcicki bounds into a conference room in Mountain View, California, straight from a five-mile ride from home on an elliptical bike. The 40-year-old cofounder and CEO of the consumer genetic testing firm 23andMe is breathless, and not just because of the workout. On this warm day in mid-June, Wojcicki is “super-excited” about an announcement scheduled for two days hence: the Food and Drug Administration has agreed to review a health-related genetic report the company wants to make available to customers. 
Qiagen has acquired an exclusive global license from the University of Tokyo for the biomarker SF3B1. The company said it sees potential for developing companion diagnostics to guide myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) treatment with new anticancer compounds under development that target the SF3B1 gene.
Inside sources reveal that Indian pharmaceutical generics firm Lupin, along with other U.S. pharma firms, is considering bidding for GlaxoSmithKline’s auctioned mature and generic drugs.
Montgomery County plans to launch a major technology initiative in its public schools in August, providing 40,000 laptops and tablets to students as part of a project that will expand quickly in coming years, officials said Thursday.
Infectious diseases, pathogens and bioterrorism agents are all inside a new building downtown. Jessica Kartalija explains it’s great news for researchers at Johns Hopkins. It’s the newest addition to the Baltimore Science and Technology Park at Johns Hopkins. Inside, it’s a state-of-the-art lab that will keep Maryland on the cutting edge of public health and technology.
The Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) recently published a list of the top 100 universities worldwide granted U.S. patents in 2013, and among them were three local schools: Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia.
Jennifer Hammaker has watched biotech company respEQ Inc. grow from an experiment in a Johns Hopkins lab to a fledgling startup now looking for investors.
The startup world will perk up to hear that RockthePost and CoFoundersLab recently merged to form Onevest. Together the two companies will provide a single source for startup founders to not only find investors but also find the right co-founders all online.
Kaiser is well known healthcare delivery model and outcomes, but, it turns out, it’s also among the best at engaging members via the web and mobile apps. The organization says in its 2013 annual report (just released) that about 4.4 million of its 9.1 million members use its online health management platform My Health Manager.
It helps to have a friend. And for several pharma giants scrambling to cut R&D costs, those friends are venture capital firms that co-invest in startups whose new drugs and platform technologies appear attractive. In some cases, these pharma-venture “alliances” launch the startups, using the expertise of VC firm partners and company executives.
Founders Fund already stands out for backing startups with radical ideas, including Counsyl, Hampton Creek, Planet Labs, and SpaceX. Now the venture firm is making a formal commitment to funding startups in aeronautics, life sciences, nanotechnology, and other geeky realms. Founders Fund has dedicated a small percentage of its new $1 billion fund to a new initiative called FF Science, through which the firm will make seed-stage deals.
While considerable attention has been heaped on the public health insurance exchanges over the year, private health insurance exchanges “are experiencing hyper-growth” and enrollment could exceed that of public exchanges by 2017, “if not sooner,” according to Accenture.
In 1957, eight entrepreneurs decided to do something that seemed crazy. They launched a new tech company called Fairchild Semiconductor in a small town south of San Francisco. The entrepreneurs had a difficult start, but Fairchild eventually became the first major computer chip company in the region.
Hrabowski III thinks he knows what students need: lots of support. Morally, colleges owe it to students to do everything possible to help them succeed, he said in a recent visit to The Chronicle, and a higher retention rate means more tuition dollars, too.
