Richard Bendis will be a speaker at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference which takes place from March 8-17 in Austin, Texas. SXSW is a set of film, interactive, and music festivals which occur every year in March. Mr. Bendis will be speaking on March 9th at a session titled “Entrepreneurs in Residence: Not Just for VCs.” In his presentation, Richard will introduce the BioHealth Innovation, Inc. EIR program and speak about some of the commercialization challenges being addressed creatively by the biohealth community in Maryland.
BHI Also Announces Agreement With BD to Create Entrepreneur-in-Residence Position
Rick Ivey, BD Diagnostics
BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) today announced the fiscal year 2013-2014 election of officers and a new appointment to its Board of Directors. BHI also announced it has entered into an agreement with BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) to establish an entrepreneur-in-residence (EIR) position at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Technology Transfer. In conjunction with this agreement, BD is entitled to a voting position on the BHI Board of Directors, which will be held by Richard M. “Rick” Ivey, Worldwide Vice President Research & Development, BD Diagnostics – Diagnostic Systems.
“I am pleased to welcome the new roster of officers and a new member to the BHI Board of Directors,” said Richard Bendis, BHI President and CEO. “The officers are a committed group of individuals who already have contributed to the steady growth of BHI, and will continue to be important leaders as the organization further develops.”
“Rick Ivey joins the Board on behalf of BD as part of the terms of an agreement between BHI and BD to establish an NIH EIR position,” added Mr. Bendis. “He represents an important new addition to our Board as he is a seasoned medical technology executive who can offer experience and insights to the growing cadre of start-up diagnostics companies in the State of Maryland.”
ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, June 4, 2013 – 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, is proud to announce the publication of the Central Maryland BioHealth Entrepreneur’s Resource and Finance Guide 2013. The Guide was developed by BHI, the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore and the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development, in collaboration with the Baltimore Business Journal.
The Guide serves as a compendium of resources to biohealth innovators and entrepreneurs working to start and grow new companies and technologies in the region. This essential entrepreneurial resource includes a compilation of information on financial resources, university facilities and programs, economic development programs, and existing federal laboratory facilities and programs, as well as how to work with these assets. The Guide is one of the many projects BHI is developing to successfully transform the regional environment for biohealth startups through harnessing Central Maryland’s biohealth assets and establishing an entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The Guide has been distributed through the Baltimore and Washington business journal subscribers, and is being distributed to all regional partners. For your copy of the guide please download here or contact BioHealth Innovation for details on how to receive a hard copy.
Richard Bendis will speak at the Translational Research Forum during the 2013 BIO International Convention in Chicago. During the forum, speakers will address issues with current translational research models, explore new funding and collaboration opportunities, evaluate how to apply them to federal, academic, and private institutions. The session will take place Monday, April 22, from 4:35 p.m. – 5:25 p.m.
Rich Bendis (BHI) and Paul Vulto (MIMETAS) signing the MOU agreement.
MIMETAS is a Dutch microfluidics company focusing on high-throughput organ-on-a-chip systems for predictive toxicology testing, efficacy screening and personalized therapy.
BHI will support MIMETAS by assisting in establishing a MIMETAS US-based subsidiary, aiding in the application for US- and Maryland-based grants (e.g. SBIR, TEDCO), and identifying potential collaborators and partnerships.
This partnership is important in further expanding Maryland’s connections internationally and expanding Maryland’s biohealth sector.
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 its selection of Ram Aiyar, Ph.D., M.B.A., as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) for BHI at the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Dr. Aiyar will help advance fundamental research discoveries to new therapeutics, diagnostics and devices that can be used clinically and commercially.
“We’re pleased to add Dr. Aiyar to our roster of Entrepreneurs-in-Residence,” said Rich Bendis, BHI President and CEO. “He is now our third EIR – joining Todd Chappell, who is EIR at NIH, and Ken Malone, our EIR working with the University of Maryland Ventures. The growth of this program will be a benefit to BHI and our partner organizations for years to come, and will result in transitioning more early-stage biomedical technologies to commercial potential. ”
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, announced today the launch of its Commercial Relevance Program (CRP). BHI’s CRP is designed to help life science companies navigate the complicated process of preparing applications for federal funding, inclusive of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), and other federal government awards.
“The federal grant application process can be very complex. Based on 2012 data released by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Maryland ranks 32nd out of 50 states with regard to SBIR award success rates. We would like to improve on this – and are confident that the CRP will help companies be more successful with their submissions,” said Ethan Byler, Director, Innovation Programs, BioHealth Innovation, Inc.
“At the end of the day, it’s about helping Central Maryland companies to get the best results possible as they seek out federal grant awards as a means of non-dilutive funding,” he added.
The CRP incorporates a pre-proposal review by knowledgeable BHI staff and advisors prior to a life science company’s submission of a full proposal. Through this review process, applicants will receive a set of recommendations and tips for troubleshooting their proposal for federal funding.
Interested life science companies in Central Maryland should contact BHI today for more information. The following federal agency SBIR/STTR deadlines are fast approaching:
About BioHealth Innovation, Inc. BioHealth Innovation, Inc., is a regional innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant bio-health innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland. Learn more at www.biohealthinnovation.org.
Blue Button Plus (Automated and Interoperable Blue Button) can provide a technology path for startups and innovators to build new products and services to help Americans with their health. But beyond, technology startups and small businesses have to think about practical matters like funding. What are ways that the federal government is trying to help health startups, particularly health tech startups, develop and commercialize businesses?
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is a federally-funded program encourages domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research/Research and Development (R/R&D) that has the potential for commercialization. Through a competitive awards-based program, SBIR enables small businesses to explore their technological potential and provides the incentive to profit from its commercialization. By including qualified small businesses in the nation’s R&D arena, high-tech innovation is stimulated and the United States gains entrepreneurial spirit as it meets its specific research and development needs.
The Final ReportOn May 20, 2013, the White House Lab-To-Market Inter-Agency Summit was held in Washington, D.C. The Summit was organized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The purpose of the meeting was extraordinary: asking national experts outside of the federal agency system to recommend ways to increase the return-on-investment for the $140 billion annual taxpayer expenditure on federally-funded research and development.
The format for the meeting also was unusual. Research agencies nominated 20 national experts experienced in various phases of technology commercialization to participate in the Summit. The Administration placed no preconditions or limitations on the expert Panel and asked it to focus on “transformative” ideas. We were privileged to be asked to serve as the Summit’s co-chairs.
The Administration requested that the Panel address several overarching questions:
How can agencies better align themselves to more effectively promote the commercial development of their research;
How can effective metrics for various stages of these efforts be developed; and
How can we better leverage multi-agency resources to enhance the public’s return-on-investment through the commercialization of more federally-funded technologies?
Scott Carmer (BHI Board Chair), Jerry Parrott, and Rich Bendis (BHI CEO)
On January 24th, 2013 BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) recognized Jerry Parrott, formerly with Human Genome Sciences, for his contributions as a BHI Founding Board member. He served on the board from 2011 to 2013 and will continue to remain active on BHI’s Commercial Relevance Advisory Board (CRAB). We thank Jerry for his service and look forward to a long lasting relationship.
The Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore (EAGB) and BioHealth Innovation (BHI) in collaboration with the Baltimore Business Journal are proud to announce the publication of the Central Maryland BioHealth Entrepreneur’s Resource and Financing Guide.
This Guide will be a compendium of resources to BioHealth innovators and entrepreneurs working to start and grow new companies in the region. A wealth of resources exists in Maryland to support emerging BioHealth companies, however, they are not always readily accessible or captured in one place. The Guide will compile information on financial resources, university facilities and programs, economic development programs, and existing federal laboratory facilities and programs and how to work with them.
On the evening of April 15 as part of the InvestMaryland Challenge Award ceremony held at MICA in Baltimore, BHI presented three awards to local companies. Boss Medical LLC of Baltimore, ConverGene LLC of Gaithersburg, and Vasoptic Medical LLC of Columbia were selected for the awards based upon their high quality products under development, which have good possibility for securing federal funding with support and assistance. Each award – valued at $2,500 – consists of consulting services from BHI on Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or federal funding proposals. The SBIR program is designed to support small businesses in commercializing their technological research efforts.
The Global Virus Network plans to move its headquarters to the University of Maryland BioPark in Baltimore, officials announced Thursday.
Emerging pandemic viral threats and current viral killers are a worldwide problem. For this reason, the nonprofit GVN brings together the top medical virologists from more than 30 institutions in 21 countries, to promote international collaborative research, education and advocacy.
Last week, the Baltimore BioPark played host to the Innovation Working Group, which consists of executives from the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission. The commission was founded as a joint venture between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
The highly anticipated event is an opportunity for the United States and Russia to find new ways to collaborate on projects in the fields of biotech and science. Members of the group were given a tour of the University of Maryland, College Park and Baltimore BioPark. The event was led by Oleg Fomichev, the Russian Deputy Minister of Economy, and Lorraine Hariton, Special Representative for Business and Commerce of the U.S. Department of State. Among those that joined the three day tour were chief executives of biotech companies from both Maryland and Russia, as well as leaders from the Pushchino BioTech Cluster.
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 its selection of Ken Malone, Ph.D., of Early Charm Ventures, as the first BHI Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) assigned to work directly with UM Ventures. Dr. Malone, a serial entrepreneur who has founded or been an officer of five biotechnology or advanced materials companies, will help advance the commercialization efforts of new start-up companies based upon innovative discoveries coming out of research programs at the University of Maryland (UMD) College Park and Baltimore.
“We’re thrilled to name Ken Malone as an EIR,” said Richard Bendis, BHI President & CEO. “Ken and I have a long history of working together, so I know first hand that he has the experience, drive and perspective to be a true asset to BHI and to the many start-ups he’ll serve from University of Maryland in support of the newly launched UM Ventures initiative.” Dr. Malone will assist any interested UM start-ups once they have been launched.
– Technology Company Awarded Prize at Invest Maryland Challenge Ceremony –
BALTIMORE, MD, April 16, 2013 – University of Maryland (UM) Ventures, an ambitious joint research commercialization effort of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), announced today that it has awarded the first UM Ventures Start-Up Prize to VisiSonics, an Investment Maryland Challenge Semi Finalist company that was founded on intellectual property owned by the University. VisiSonics was recognized during the Invest Maryland Challenge Award Ceremony on Monday, April 15, 2013 at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland.
“Identifying customers and having sales is, of course, a major hurdle for university start-ups,” said James L. Hughes, Director of UM Ventures, and President, Research Park Corporation, University of Maryland Baltimore. “With the significance of achieving more than half a million dollars in sales in 2012, VisiSonics is a worthy recipient of this inaugural prize.”
Richard Moore, BD DiagnosticsROCKVILLE AND BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, August 26, 2013 – 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, announced today its selection of Richard Moore, M.D., Ph.D., as a new Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Technology Transfer (OTT). BHI and BD established this position in July 2013. Dr. Moore, an executive with decades of experience in diagnostics development and technology strategy, will help support the development of new start-up companies and product commercialization based upon innovative technologies selected via OTT license agreements.
In this newsletter we proudly present the new Chairman of the Advisory Board: Richard Bendis.
With his expertise on innovation strategy The Technopolicy Network intends to strengthen its position as the global leading network on Science Based Regional Development and Science Based Incubation. In his article he will give you several insights in the opportunities that lie ahead of us.
This is the time to pay tribute to the achievements of our founding Chairman, Prof. Roger Stough. With his advice and support Prof. Stough made The Technopolicy Network to what it now is. In his article he looks back on the growth of The Technopolicy Network over the past decade.
The Tech Council of Maryland called on legislators Monday to triple the funding for the state’s research and development tax credit and double the scope of its popular biotech tax credit, among other measures.
The Tech Council of Maryland places the expansion of the R&D credit from $6 million to $18 million among its top priorities for the 2013 General Assembly session, which convenes in Annapolis on Wednesday. The measure failed to win approval last year despite passing the Senate. The Tech Council also wants to see that credit made available for companies that haven’t yet reached profitability.
As part of the University of Maryland’s 26th Annual Invention of the Year Awards ceremony held at the University of Maryland Golf Course on April 16, BioHealth Innovation sweetened the pot for this year’s three award winners. BHI offered each award winner strategic consulting services on federal grants or SBIR awards – valued at $2,500 per company. The BHI Commercial Relevance Program is designed to support small businesses in commercializing their technological research efforts.
The three winning inventions were: INFORMATION SCIENCE CATEGORY: Winner: Time-Reversal Division Multiple Access for Wireless Broadband Communications Feng Han, Yu-Han Yang, Beibei Wang, Yongle Wu and K. J. Ray Liu
LIFE SCIENCE CATEGORY: Winner: A Method for Early Diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) Eva Chin and Dapeng Chen
PHYSICAL SCIENCE CATEGORY: Winner: A Method for Rapid, Inexpensive Prototyping of Microfluidic Devices Omid Rahmanian, Donald DeVoe
Emergent Biosolutions Inc. said it has secured exclusive right to manufacture and sell VaxInnate Corp.’s pandemic influenza vaccine candidate in the United States.
Under a license agreement with VaxInnate, Emergent Biosolutions acquired exclusive U.S. commercial rights to next generation pandemic influenza vaccine candidate.
This license enables Emergent to fulfill the requirement to secure a pandemic influenza vaccine candidate under its contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the company noted.
Lets collaborate on building a vibrant biotech (or any other) community! Nice chestnut, but how does one design a community that functions across industries, geographies, support organizations, academic institutions and federal labs, each with very different missions and views of their (and others’) roles? How do you find a shared vision for these variant groups, one that drives growth for the greater region and doesn’t cause the players for fight over each opportunity as if it is the last scrap of possibility we’ll see? How do you prevent such a vision from becoming another dusty whitepaper, where behaviors weren’t aligned to make it happen? I had a chance to discuss how such a collaboration should be designed with Rich Bendis, President & CEO of BioHealth Innovation (BHI), an organization which spans from Rockville to Baltimore.
ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, March 4, 2013 – 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 that BioHealth Innovation, Inc. President & CEO Richard Bendis is scheduled to present at the upcoming SXSW 2013 conference and the 2013 BIO International Convention this Spring. Mr. Bendis is also serving on the Program Committee for AdvaMed 2013: The MedTech Conference, which will be held in Washington, DC, in September.
Specific information for each event is as follows:
2013 South By Southwest “SXSW” Conference, March 8-12, 2013, Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas. Mr. Bendis is participating in a panel on Saturday, March 9, entitled, “Entrepreneurs-in-Residence: Not Just for VCs!” Venture capital firms have utilized the services of ‘Entrepreneurs-in-Residence’ (EIRs), seasoned innovators with functional expertise, to help spur entrepreneurship and fill gaps in expertise. This panel will look at the value of combining the ‘innovation mojo’ of EIRs with some of the government’s brightest ‘intrapreneurs’ to solve the nation’s most pressing challenges. Joining Mr. Bendis on the panel will be Arnaub Chatterjee (Associate Director of Health Information Partnerships, Merck – Office of the Chief Medical Information and Innovation Officer), John Paul Farmer (Senior Advisor to the U.S. CTO) and Zachery Jiwa, Health IT Advisor; Innovation Fellow, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; Advisor, HIMSS State Advisory Roundtable.
2013 BIO International Convention, April 22-23, 2013, McCormick Place, Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Bendis is scheduled to be part of The Translational Research Forum on April 22, 2013, beginning at 1:30 p.m., and a panel discussion focused on effective strategies in developing accelerator models beginning at 4:35 p.m.
AdvaMed 2013: The MedTech Conference, September 23-25, 2013, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC. Mr. Bendis is reviewing panel submissions in the eHealth IT Track.
Montgomery officials are under no illusions about the county’s image among the Washington region’s young: boring.
“We’re a little sleepy,” said County Council member Roger Berliner (D-Potomac-Bethesda). “We go to bed early.”
For all its prosperity and family-friendly suburban appeal, Montgomery is in the throes of a midlife crisis. That angst has led to a new item at the top of the public policy agenda: a yearning to be hip.
Partnership with Johns Hopkins and BioHealth Innovation, Inc. will speed 10 healthtech startups to market
Baltimore, MD and Philadelphia, PA — September 18th, 2013—DreamIt Ventures is pleased to announce the launch of DreamIt Health Baltimore, a partnership with The Johns Hopkins University and BioHealth Innovation, Inc. to recruit, invest in, and speed the growth and success of a select group of early-stage health IT companies. The program comes on the heels of a successful health IT program in Philadelphia also built on strong industry partnerships that give participants access and advantages typically out-of-reach to startups.
“The key to making health care more accessible is innovation, and the most fertile focus for health care innovation is in acquiring, storing, analyzing and sharing information,” said Ronald J. Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins. “This accelerator project will have important implications for the future use of information as we use technology to find solutions for the most pressing health problems of our day. Just as important, it sets up Baltimore to become even more central to the health care information revolution through the rapid validation of solutions.”
“Technology holds the potential to transform the way in which we approach health care in this country and around the world,” said Paul Rothman, MD, Dean of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine. “Johns Hopkins has been at the forefront in developing innovative solutions to the most pressing health care challenges. The partnership with DreamIt presents an exciting and unrivaled opportunity to develop the most cutting-edge solutions at the crossroads of information technology and medicine.”
British healthcare firm GlaxoSmithKline has filed for US regulatory approval of its new type 2 diabetes drug albiglutide, which belongs to the same group of injectable GLP-1 receptor agonists as Byetta, Bydureon and Victoza .
GSK announced on Monday that it had submitted the once-weekly medication to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval and confirmed that it also plans to seek European Union regulatory approval for the new product in 2013.
In 1953, Cambridge researchers Watson and Crick published a paper describing the interweaving ‘double helix’ DNA structure – the chemical code for all life.
Now, in the year of that scientific landmark’s 60th Anniversary, Cambridge researchers have published a paper proving that four-stranded ‘quadruple helix’ DNA structures – known as G-quadruplexes – also exist within the human genome. They form in regions of DNA that are rich in the building block guanine, usually abbreviated to ‘G’.
The NHLBI Division of Extramural Research Activities (DERA) is pleased to announce the addition of Dr Lawrence Mahan, as the Director of the Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC). Dr. Mahan’s professional experience spans academia, government and industry in both basic and applied biomedical research. Additionally it includes global business and strategic alliance development, strategic planning, technology evaluation, entrepreneurship guidance, and consulting on platform technology development in the life sciences.
Most recently Dr. Mahan served as Director of Innovation and Business Development for Children’s National Medical Center and its research institutes, the Children’s Research Institute and the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, where he managed intellectual property, strategic business alliance development and the advancement of academic entrepreneurship.
Our Entrepreneur-in-Residence Ram Aiyar participated in a tech transfer series featured on BioCentury This Week discussing the need for accelerated innovations and the current lack of commercialization focus on commercially relevant technologies. The program was divided into 3 parts, Stuck in the Lab, Fresh Approaches, and Validation and also featured Dr. Alicia Loeffler and Rosemarie Truman.
The three-part program can be watched by following the link below.
McLean-based Science Applications International Corp., which announced plans in August to split off part of its operations into a separate publicly traded company, has decided on a name for the new business.
The spinoff, which will focus on national security, health and engineering, will be called Leidos.
Time-reversal techniques for optimizing broadband communication networks and rapid prototyping of microfluidics devices were among the Clark School of Engineering inventions recognized as the most promising new technologies at the University of Maryland Invention of the Year Awards.
The University of Maryland’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC) hosted the 26th Annual Invention of the Year Awards reception on Tuesday, April 16, 2013 from 4:30-6:00 pm at the University of Maryland Golf Course Club House.
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.
Shares of United Therapeutics surged Monday after regulators approved the company’s newest treatment for high blood pressure, Orenitram.
A Cowen and Co. analyst called the FDA’s move a “surprise” because the FDA had refused to approve the drug twice before and United Therapeutics hasn’t reported any additional data from clinical studies.
MedImmune’s Cambridge UK medical technology hothouse will be part of an historic tie-up between the business and the Brazilian government’s ‘Science Without Borders’ programme.
MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, says that 30 Brazilian post-doctoral fellows will work at its sites in Maryland, California and Cambridge, UK for a period of two years.
There’s a reason why Johns Hopkins University has been named one of the top med schools worldwide and the number one hospital in the U.S. Students at Johns Hopkins are driven and relentless in their pursuit of innovative solutions to every day problems. They tend to be incredibly talented, skilled in their respective fields. Which would explain why the Baltimore school was named one of the top 10 universities with the most creative students by ViewsOnYou this year.
A London-based startup, ViewsOnYou is known for acting as a dating site of sorts for prospective employees and companies hiring. It sets up profiles to help match job seekers with the ideal businesses for them according to their personality type. Taking three components into consideration – energy, interpersonal and intelligence – ViewsOnYou offers a more in-depth connection for both parties.
A group of heavyweight biotech industry executives, including the former CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., have formed a new Baltimore biotech company.
Centrexion Corp. has raised a total of $23.4 million since its incorporation in February, according to recent Form D filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) officials announced a $1 million dollar prize for innovation in the emerging area of bioelectronics research. The prize will be awarded to the scientists who are first able to solve the challenge of creating a miniaturized, fully implantable device that can read, write, and block the body’s electrical signals to treat disease. It is hoped that finding a solution to this challenge will open and accelerate significant avenues of research in this field. The scientific challenge was developed and agreed by a group of approximately 150 leading scientists from around the world, brought together by GSK’S Bioelectronics R&D unit at a summit earlier this month in New York. Collectively, summit attendees agreed that if they create an implantable wireless device that can record, stimulate and block neural signals to a single organ, it will be a critical factor enabling the onward development of bioelectronic medicines as a future therapeutic reality.
GSK’s Bioelectronics R&D unit is pursuing a relatively new scientific field that could one day result in a new class of medicines that would not be pills or injections but miniaturized, implantable devices. GSK believes that these devices could be programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves of the body, including irregular or altered impulses that can occur in association with a broad range of diseases. The hope is that through these devices, disorders as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension and diabetes could be treated.
SAVE THE DATE: DreamIt Health Baltimore 2014 Kickoff Weekend: January 17th and 18th, 2014 Baltimore, MD
DreamIt Health Baltimore – powered by The Johns Hopkins University, BioHealth Innovation, and Northrop Grumman – is ramping up for the Winter 2014 accelerator class in Baltimore, MD and we want to make sure the kickoff events are on your calendar. More information below.
DreamIt Health Baltimore Kickoff Reception: January 17, 2013 On the evening of Friday, January 17th, 2014 DreamIt Ventures and our partners are hosting a kickoff party to meet the DreamIt Health Baltimore 2014 companies and other members of the Baltimore entrepreneurial community. Location is TBD and the event will begin around 5:30/6:00pm eastern time. We will be sending formal invitations to the event in the near future but wanted to get this on your calendar now. Please ink us in!
The kickoff reception will include light snacks and beverages, in addition to networking and your first opportunity to meet the DreamIt Health Baltimore 2014 companies.
Sponsored by:
Kickoff Weekend Working Session: Saturday, January 18, 2014 – 9:00am – 5:00pm (INVITE ONLY) We are in the process of identifying potential mentors for the companies as well as pairing them up with their law firm & accounting firm partners. Members of this community should please save the date for our working session that Saturday with the companies. We’ll send out a detailed RSVP for the event soon.
If you have any questions about either of these events or the DreamIt Health Baltimore program please contact Dana Rygwelski (dana@dreamitventures.com).
I am a biotech VC, but not a techie. So I don’t follow stem cells, gene therapy, and other similar “blockbuster” technologies in the life sciences. Rather than looking at all the gosh-and-golly stuff going into the biotech pipeline, I wait to see what is coming out of the other end. So far, very little in the most innovative areas.
People are excited about biotech’s IPO window and money flowing into venture funds as reflected in, for example, Bruce Booth’s blog posts. But what he sees as a new day in biotech, I see as the same fundamentals in a new synthetic financial environment manufactured by Ben Bernanke. I applaud Bruce’s optimism. Without people like him and the enthusiasm they bring to the space, biotech would be afflicted by the same anxieties that are paralyzing pharma today.
A handheld ‘bio pen’ developed in the labs of the University of Wollongong (UOW) will allow surgeons to design customised implants on-site and at the time of surgery.
The BioPen, developed by researchers from the UOW-headquartered Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), will give surgeons greater control over where the materials are deposited while also reducing the time the patient is in surgery by delivering live cells and growth factors directly to the site of injury, accelerating the regeneration of functional bone and cartilage.
In the same way that great advances in our understanding of the human genome sparked new opportunities for biotech companies in the early 2000s, growing knowledge about how microbes in the human body affect health has paved the way for a small class of biotech startups emerging now.
These companies are looking at ways to restore balance to populations of bacteria in and on the body that, when they become disrupted, may promote disease. Although these relationships are still not completely understood, researchers have been studying potential links between the microbiome and metabolic diseases, inflammation and a host of other conditions.
Borrowing concepts from 3D printing, scientists in Australia say they’ve come up with a device and a technique that could allow surgeons to precisely deliver live cells and growth factors directly onto damaged bones to help regenerate bone and cartilage.
The “bio pen” holds and dispenses living cell material that’s housed inside a polymer and protected by a second layer of gel material, according to the University of Wollongong. The “ink” is solidified by a low-powered UV light that’s attached to the device, so it can be layered to construct a 3D scaffold in the wound site. From there, it’s expected that the cells will multiply and eventually differentiate into nerve, muscle or bone cells.
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, announced today that Reg Seeto, M.D., has been appointed to the BHI Board of Directors. Dr. Seeto currently serves as Vice President, Head of Partnering & Strategy at MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca.
“It is a pleasure to welcome Reg to the BHI Board of Directors,” said Doug Liu, Chair, BHI Board of Directors, and Senior Vice President of Global Operations for Qiagen. “Reg’s background in business development and partnering strategy will be an important asset to our Board as we give counsel to BHI in its fostering of startups in Central Maryland. We look forward to his contributions to this Board, to the BHI organization, and to the biohealth startup community.”
Dr. Seeto rejoined the MedImmune Leadership Team in 2013 to lead the Partnering and Strategy Group after having spent a year as an executive abroad for AstraZeneca. He is responsible for MedImmune’s Business Development and Strategy teams, which deliver external partnership strategy for the organization.
Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) has joined DreamIt Health Baltimore, a collaborative startup business accelerator program with the goal of identifying, validating and developing innovative solutions to healthcare challenges.
Northrop Grumman joins The Johns Hopkins University and BioHealth Innovation Inc. in the Baltimore-based accelerator, which was launched in September by DreamIt Ventures, a seed-stage accelerator based out of Philadelphia.
Startups selected for the four-month program receive $50,000 in seed funding; access to potential beta customers, pilot partners, data and systems; accounting and legal support; and expert guidance and mentoring from the accelerator and its partners.
From Sept. 15-25, Montgomery County executive Ike Leggett led a trip for four cities in China: Shanghai, Xi’an, Benxi, and the Gu’an County right outside of Beijing. The trip included over 80 business, education, and government leaders from Montgomery County and the DC metropolitan area including Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) superintendent Joshua Starr, county council member Hans Riemer, and Michael Goldman of the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA).
This marked the first trade trip to china in five years by the county Executive’s office – the last one was in 2008.
The purpose of this mission was to encourage Chinese investors to consider Montgomery County as an attractive location for their investments, open doors for MoCo businesses there, as well as establish a “Sister City” relationship with the city of Xi’an, said a press release put out by the Montgomery County Office of Public Information.
SAVE THE DATE: DreamIt Health Baltimore 2014 Kickoff Weekend: January 17th and 18th, 2014 Baltimore, MD
DreamIt Health Baltimore – powered by The Johns Hopkins University, BioHealth Innovation, and Northrop Grumman – is ramping up for the Winter 2014 accelerator class in Baltimore, MD and we want to make sure the kickoff events are on your calendar. More information below.
DreamIt Health Baltimore Kickoff Reception: January 17, 2013 On the evening of Friday, January 17th, 2014 DreamIt Ventures and our partners are hosting a kickoff party to meet the DreamIt Health Baltimore 2014 companies and other members of the Baltimore entrepreneurial community. Location is TBD and the event will begin around 5:30/6:00pm eastern time. We will be sending formal invitations to the event in the near future but wanted to get this on your calendar now. Please ink us in!
The kickoff reception will include light snacks and beverages, in addition to networking and your first opportunity to meet the DreamIt Health Baltimore 2014 companies.
Sponsored by:
Kickoff Weekend Working Session: Saturday, January 18, 2014 – 9:00am – 5:00pm (INVITE ONLY) We are in the process of identifying potential mentors for the companies as well as pairing them up with their law firm & accounting firm partners. Members of this community should please save the date for our working session that Saturday with the companies. We’ll send out a detailed RSVP for the event soon.
If you have any questions about either of these events or the DreamIt Health Baltimore program please contact Dana Rygwelski (dana@dreamitventures.com).
Startups selected for the DreamIt Health Baltimore accelerator program will get $50,000 in seed funding and access to industry heavyweights like Northrop Grumman Corp.
The defense contractor has signed on as a partner for the new health IT accelerator program, where 10 startups will be selected for the program. The first program runs Jan. 17 through May 9.
On Saturday November 16, participants of the first ever Maryland Leaders on Fast Track (LOFT) symposium gathered at Johns Hopkins University in Rockville to explore STEM careers. The event, hosted by MdBio Foundation and Hispanic Heritage Foundation, drew over 150 participants from Maryland, Virginia, and D.C.
The symposium brought together a diverse student body from local high schools and colleges; over 90 percent of students were minorities and more than half were female. The event also attracted numerous community leaders, including Congressman John Delaney, Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Montgomery County Council President Nancy Navarro, and Montgomery County Executive, Ike Leggett who was awarded the ‘Maryland STEM Education Leader Award’ at the event.
Emergent BioSolutions wants to exercise an option to buy 8 acres next to its East Baltimore manufacturing facility for an expansion that eventually could add up to 100 jobs, a company official said.
The Rockville-based biotechnology company bought its facility on East Lombard Street for $7.85 million in 2009, and has invested $50 million there since, Chief Financial Officer Bob Kramer said.
The City Council is slated to vote Wednesday on the sale of the city-owned parcel next to the facility near Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
For research universities to produce the ideas and talent the United States needs in order to lead in the 21st century, they “must make a steady and persistent movement to adapt to the times,” according to William (Brit) Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland (USM).
Kirwan spoke on the future of research universities on Wednesday, Dec. 11, at the University of Delaware. The talk, presented to a group of UD faculty and administrators, was designed to help set the scene and percolate new ideas as UD considers the next phase of its Path to Prominence strategic plan, a process that will begin in the new year.
GSK announced a $1 million dollar prize for innovation in the emerging area of bioelectronics research. This prize will be awarded to the scientists who are first able to solve the challenge of creating a miniaturised, fully implantable device that can read, write and block the body’s electrical signals to treat disease and it is hoped that after finding a solution to this challenge will open and accelerate significant avenues of research in this field.
The scientific challenge was developed and agreed by a group of approximately 150 leading scientists from around the world, brought together by GSK’S Bioelectronics R&D unit at a summit this week in New York. Collectively, summit attendees agreed that if they create an implantable wireless device that can record, stimulate and block neural signals to a single organ, it will be a critical factor enabling the onward development of bioelectronic medicines as a future therapeutic reality.
AstraZeneca, a global and innovation-driven biopharmaceutical business, has signed an agreement to acquire the entirety of Bristol-Myers Squibb’s interests in the companies’ diabetes alliance for an initial consideration of $2.7 billion on completion and up to $1.4 billion in regulatory, launch and sales-related payments. AstraZeneca has also agreed to pay various sales-related royalty payments up until 2025. In addition, AstraZeneca may make payments up to $225 million when certain assets are subsequently transferred.
Upon completion of the transaction, AstraZeneca will own intellectual property and global rights for the development, manufacture and commercialisation of the diabetes business, which includes Onglyza (saxagliptin), Kombiglyze XR (saxagliptin and metformin HCl extended release), Komboglyze (saxagliptin and metformin HCl), dapagliflozin (marketed as Forxiga outside the US), Byetta (exenatide), Bydureon (exenatide extended-release for injectable suspension), metreleptin and Symlin (pramlintide acetate).
MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, is pleased to announce its participation in the Brazilian government program, Science Without Borders.
Thirty Brazilian post-doctoral fellows will work at MedImmune’s three sites in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Mountain View, California and Cambridge, UK for a period of two years. The areas of research will include oncology, respiratory, inflammation and autoimmune diseases (RIA), cardiovascular and metabolic diseases (CVMD), infectious diseases, translational science, antibody discovery and protein engineering, and biopharmaceutical 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.
Many medical scientists feel most comfortable at the laboratory bench, developing hypotheses, testing ideas, and running experiments. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH), too, almost exclusively funds this type of hypothesis-driven basic research.
However, bringing a drug, diagnostic tool, or medical device to market requires a lot more than basic research. The problem, scientists say, is that federal funding runs out long before a potential product is ready for investors. “If you’ve made a discovery with NIH grant money and you want to run some studies in a mouse model, those can be expensive, and it’s not the type of study that NIH reviewers typically like. There’s this gap in the ability to get money”, says Paul DiCorleto, director of Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute.
Combined capabilities provide scientists with access to new and existing immortalized cell lines for use in broad research applications and clinical markets.
ATCC, the premier global biological materials resource and standards organization, and Evercyte GmbH, a proven developer of immortalized human cells, have entered into a strategic partnership to develop and distribute immortalized cell lines that retain key performance characteristics of primary cells. Immortalized primary cell lines enable scientists to have a sufficient supply of physiologically relevant cells for extended studies in biological, medical, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and toxicological research.
Johns Hopkins University has the sixth-most driven student body in the world, according to data compiled by London-based startup ViewsOnYou.
The website uses three components to match people with a company or employer — energy, interpersonal and intelligence. There are more than 20 metrics that fall into those components, one of which is an individual’s drive.
The National Institutes of Health is releasing funding opportunities to build a new arsenal of tools and technologies for unlocking the mysteries of the brain. The NIH action is in support of President Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative.
The six opportunities announced today were developed in response to high priority areas(PDF – 536KB) identified by the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director’s BRAIN Working Group in September 2013. Awards are expected to be announced in September 2014 and will constitute NIH’s initial investment of $40 million in the initiative.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation just got a physician, big university administrator, and one of the world’s most respected drug developers rolled into one as its new CEO.
Susan Desmond-Hellmann, the chancellor of UC San Francisco since 2009 and the former president of product development at Genentech, has been hired as the new CEO of the Gates Foundation, according to a statement from the foundation. She will start on May 1. UCSF said Sam Hawgood, the dean of the school of medicine, will replace Desmond-Hellmann as interim chancellor.
It’s hard to believe that nearly two years after it picked its inaugural class of entrepreneurs to respond to trends in healthcare. Now the health IT accelerator in New York Blueprint Health is gearing up for class number five.
Looking back on its first graduates, Dr. Brad Weinberg, who co-founded the program with Mathew Farkash, noted that seven of the original nine companies are still in business. Five are generating revenue. Looking at its alumni of 39 companies with which it’s invested, 36 of them are still in operation and 80 percent are turning a profit — a record he would challenge other healthcare accelerators to beat.
This year, conversations about creativity and innovation have been happening all over the world. And while there’s still a long way to go, we’re excited to see just how many schools and communities are embracing the importance of letting a child’s imagination run wild.
A fantastic example of this is when five-year-old Miles Scott became Batkid in San Francisco-turned-Gotham City this November.
When personal genomics and biotech firm 23andMe was founded in Mountain View, Calif., in 2006, the hype over the genetic tests it offered directly to consumers was immediate and irresistible to many. The company promised that for a nominal fee, it could scan your saliva sample and tell you — based on your genetics — everything from who your ancestors were to what diseases you may be at risk of developing many years down the road. 23andMe raised more than $100 million in capital from such big-name investors as Google and Genentech. Today, the company’s website boasts having close to 500,000 “genotyped consumers.”
So it was a surprise to some observers when, on November 22, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) sent a strongly worded letter to 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki demanding that the company stop marketing its test, called Personal Genome Service (PGS), until it secures authorization from the agency. The FDA contends that PGS is a medical device being pitched for the diagnosis and prevention of disease, and therefore it must obtain approval under federal law.
The three months of intense focus. The crafting of the perfect pitch. The big presentation on demo day, followed by press mentions and meetings with investors.
And…then what? What comes after the accelerator?
For the entrepreneurs of Rock Health’s Boston Class, which wrapped up in August of 2012, there have been four follow-on fundings, some pilot tests, a pivot and a few long quiet periods. I checked in with the entrepreneurs just over a year after they completed to program to see how they’re all doing now.
People should stop wasting their money on dietary supplements, some physicians said today, in response to three large new studies that showed most multivitamin supplements are ineffective at reducing the risk of disease, and may even cause harm.
The new studies, published today (Dec. 16) in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine —including two new clinical trials and one large review of 27 past clinical trials conducted by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force — found no evidence that taking daily multivitamin and mineral supplements prevents or slows down the progress of cognitive decline or chronic diseases such as heart diseases or cancer.
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.
MedImmune announced on Wednesday a $6.5 million research partnership with Johns Hopkins University, marking the second academic collaboration inked by the Gaithersburg biotech in recent months.
The agreement, which spans five years, will center on projects in oncology, infectious disease, antibody discovery and protein engineering, as well as respiration, inflammation and autoimmunity.
Rockville-based biodefense company Emergent BioSolutions, taking steps to move deeper into the commercial drugmaking world, is paying $222 million to buy Cangene Corp., a Canadian firm, according to the Washington Post.
Emergent emerged as a key biodefense company following the Sept. 11 attacks, when it sold Anthrax vaccines to the U.S. government.
Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) has joined DreamIt Health Baltimore, a collaborative startup business accelerator program with the goal of identifying, validating and developing innovative solutions to healthcare challenges.
Northrop Grumman joins The Johns Hopkins University and BioHealth Innovation Inc. in the Baltimore-based accelerator, which was launched in September by DreamIt Ventures, a seed-stage accelerator based out of Philadelphia.
Startups selected for the four-month program receive $50,000 in seed funding; access to potential beta customers, pilot partners, data and systems; accounting and legal support; and expert guidance and mentoring from the accelerator and its partners.
BD Diagnostics, a segment of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), a leading global medical technology company, today introduced two new erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) instruments in Europe that standardise analysis for more accurate, timely results and an efficient workflow in comparison to a manual Westergren method. This next generation of BD ESR instruments results in improved patient care in the laboratory or point of care setting.
Erythrocyte sedimentation is a commonly used hematology test to measure inflammation and the presence and severity of disease. “Improved automation and efficiency are key to carrying out analytical tests in a busy laboratory. More and more tests are being conducted each year and reduced healthcare spending puts pressure on laboratory resources,” comments Stephen Church, European Medical Affairs, BD Diagnostics -Preanalytical Systems.
The University of Maryland (UM) BioPark announced today that the JS Yoon Memorial Cancer Research Institute, a basic research organization looking at the fundamental genetic and epigenetic basis of cancer, has expanded its space within the Biotechnology Innovation Center at the BioPark. The Institute, which moved into the Park in mid-2013, is housing six employees at the BioPark who are charged with performing basic cancer research designed to lead to therapeutic and diagnostic solutions addressing a variety of cancer types.
“What sets us apart from other cancer-focused entities is that we seek to elucidate the molecular basis of cancer and to use this knowledge to develop therapies and diagnostic tests, rather than the current method which is the other way around,” said Ji Eun Lee, Managing Director, JS Yoon Memorial Cancer Research Institute. “We’re thrilled to be conducting our research at the BioPark, which offers excellent proximity to the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UM SOM), Johns Hopkins, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institutes of Health. It’s also a huge benefit to have access to the top-rate resources and core facilities available through the UM SOM as we conduct our research.”
GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) (GSK.L) said on Monday it plans to raise its stake in its Indian pharmaceutical unit to up to 75 percent from 50.7 percent through an open offer in a deal worth about 629 million pounds ($1.02 billion).
With the latest India deal, GSK is set to spend close to $2 billion in roughly a year to increase its holdings in two listed Indian companies, underscoring the British drugmaker’s drive to deepen its footprint in emerging markets.
GlaxoSmithKline is to invest another 200 million pounds ($330 million) on advanced manufacturing in Britain, the company said on Wednesday, underlining the draw of a tax break designed to encourage research and development.
Britain’s so-called “patent box” scheme, which offers a reduced rate of corporation tax on income derived from patents, has been hailed by GSK, its biggest drugmaker, for transforming the country as a place to invest.
William Hanna Center for Innovation at Shady Grove, 9700 Great Seneca Hwy Rockville, MD 20850
Springboard Enterprises presents the Dolphin Tank, a pitch-practice event for life science entrepreneurs.
What is the format? Pre-selected presenters deliver a two- to three-minute elevator pitch (no slides!), followed by feedback from an expert panel. The audience also weighs in.
Who will pitch? Six to eight early-stage life science companies, or those with an idea for a new life science business. Those selected can pitch their idea/business on their own, or with a group.
What sectors? Life science, including biotechnology, medical devices, healthcare IT, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostics.
Men and women are encouraged to apply to pitch at this event.
Deadline to apply to pitch: Monday December, 16 at 12noon EST Expect an email from jennifer@sb.co within 24 hours of the pitch deadline to confirm whether you’ve been selected to pitch.
Instead of looking at pictures in textbooks or working with simulations on computers, high school students across Maryland have a chance to experiment with professional scientists while using the latest lab equipment.
The teens conduct these experiments, not in their classroom, but in a bus outfitted as a mobile laboratory,
The traveling Bio Lab recently visited Patapsco High School and Center for Arts in Baltimore, which delighted of their teacher.
The Indian Biomedical Association (IBA) invited entrepreneurs from early phase companies with products or services in the life sciences industry the opportunity to connect, collaborate and partner with investors. Following the event on Nov 17th [Developing and delivering effective investor presentation for your early stage venture], four companies were chosen to pitch in front of investors on Dec 17th, 2013. The four companies are: Neuronascent, RoosterBio, LiquiLens and OTOMAGNETICS.
Top Five Reasons You Should Attend:
1. Learn by Example- Listen carefully to how others pitch so that you can perfect your own!
2. Understand what seasoned investors expect in real life terms
3. Networking with like-minded professionals
4. Create your own Due Diligence process for investing
5. Building a vibrant entrepreneurial healthcare and life science community in the DC/MD/VA region – Be a Part of It!
What is your New Year resolution? Get your idea to the market with funding and resources? We can help you!
AccelerateBaltimore™ is an initiative of the Emerging Technology Centers, Baltimore’s award winning incubator, and Abell Foundation. In its first two years, we have invested $250,000 in 10 companies. Now, we are looking for the next 6 innovative startup technology companies to add our portfolio.
Apply by December 31, 2013 11:59pm!
Our goal is to close the gap between innovative ideas and getting to market by providing the seed capital, resources, mentors, potential partners and a coworking space. We are looking for 6 exciting startups that use modern technologies to create new business solutions that can be brought to market in 3 months.
Spring Capital Partners has completed fundraising for a $175 million fund that will invest in small to midsize companies.
The fund is the third — and largest — the Baltimore firm has raised since launching in 1999. Its first in 2000 raised $75 million. The second in 2006 raised $115 million.
Spring’s new fund will buy minority stakes in companies with $10 million to $150 million in revenue. Its investments will not be confined to specific industries, but will span a wide range of companies. Earlier investments have included manufacturers, information technology firms government contractors and software companies.
Our world is changing at an unprecedented pace. To prepare our students, lessons must go beyond the “3 R’s” and foster 21st century skills. Skills like critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity will be essential for students to take on the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Note: As of August 6th, 2013, Smithsonian Student Travel is now known as EF Explore America. Please visit our website at http://www.efexploreamerica.com.
The Fort, one of the first startup accelerators in the D.C. area, may be closing its physical doors, but according to Jonathon Perrelli, managing director of Fortify Ventures, it will live on in a blog and in spirit at 1776.
“There’s a confusion that The Fort and Fortify Ventures are synonymous,” Perrelli explains. They aren’t. “We believe in accelerators,” he says, “and we want to support early-stage companies.” He and the team just don’t want to run an accelerator anymore.
When something like three in four venture-backed startups fail, picking the ones that won’t is definitely not an easy feat.
In search of what they call the “unicorn VCs” of healthcare – investors who have consistently invested in companies with the biggest of the big exits – analysts at research firm CB Insights combed through a decade of healthcare M&A data. They found 50 medical device and biotech companies that exited, through IPO or acquisition, with valuations of at least $500 million between 2004 and 2013.
DreamIt Ventures is raising a $30 million fund to further support its portfolio companies.
The five-year-old early-stage startup accelerator has raised $10 million so far, said managing partner Karen Griffith Gryga, who is raising the fund. The raise will go toward follow-on funding for the nearly 130 companies that have graduated from DreamIt’s programs in Philadelphia, New York City and Austin. (DreamIt’s latest program, DreamIt Health Baltimore, will launch in January 2014.)
Own an emerging cyber security company and need more cash to grow?
Maryland has set aside $3 million in tax incentives for companies seeking outside investments. Those investors must keep their money in the company for at least three years.
There has been some confusion over the tax credit so state officials are trying to get the word out that there’s money on the table.
Drexel University, the University City Science Center and DreamIt Ventures are on a mission to support innovators and entrepreneurs in the Philadelphia region and have formed a strategic partnership that creates a hub for start-ups to test their wings and the capital that will support their continued growth.
Drexel – Science Center Collaboration
Drexel and the Science Center have collaborated to form a 17,500-square-foot innovation hub that will serve as a launching pad for companies by offering business incubation and accelerator spaces and services to support idea generation, innovation and growth as well as support for later-stage companies.
NYC Economic Development Corporation president Kyle Kimball on New York City working with large pharmaceutical companies and venture capital firms to create $100M fund.
The following is an email sent by James P Gavigan, PhD, Head of the Science, Technology and Education Section, Delegation of the European Union to the United States of America regrading the Launch of Horizon 2020.
Dear All,
Please note that the EU’s new program to fund research and innovation activities from 2014-2020 – Horizon 2020 – was officially launched on 11 December 2013 with a first tranche of funding of Euros 7.8 billion being made available for calls for proposals in 2014 out of a total of almost 80 billion for the seven year period.
I enclose herewith the Press Release and an accompanying Memo announcing the launch:
I would also like to draw your attention to the new Horizon 2020 web portal which is the unique access point for all information on the program – its content, structure, how to participate, etc.:
There are currently more than 4 million Americans who have been unemployed for 27 weeks or more. This figure doesn’t include those who work part-time or on contracts — or those who, discouraged, have simply stopped trying. Many of them are older and well educated, and their situation doesn’t seem to be improving despite America’s slow crawl out of the recession. While last week’s jobs numbers extolled a decline in the national unemployment rate, the numbers for the long-term unemployed didn’t even budge.
MIT professor Ofer Sharone is tackling this issue head on, piloting a new initiative to help the long-term unemployed and gather valuable research on both job-seeking and hiring practices. He is also the author of the recent book Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences. My edited discussion with Sharone is below.
I was manning a booth at the Harvard Club of New York’s authors’ night when an older woman approached and picked up a copy of my book, Reinventing You. She paged through it for a moment, then put it down. “Too late for me,” she said abruptly, and walked away.
Over the past six months of my book tour, it’s a question I’ve heard often. Isn’t professional reinvention just for young people? What if I’m too old? How can I spend years training for something new, when I’m already near retirement? It’s true: reinvention is different later in your career. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.
Being able to learn marketable digital skills is sluggish and difficult — or so they say.
Adda Birnir noticed a gender divide between a media company’s business and technical side (read: men) versus the editorial side (read: women). She created online tech education platform Skillcrush to give women a way to learn marketable skills that could lead to steady, high-paying jobs and relevant, satisfying work.
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.
Northwest Biotherapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: NWBO), a biotechnology company developing DCVax® personalized immune therapies for solid tumor cancers, has completed an underwritten public offering of 4,895,834 units at a public offering price of $4.80 per unit, resulting in gross proceeds of $23,500,000. Northwest also announced today that the underwriter has exercised in full its option to purchase an additional 734,374 units to cover over-allotments. Exercise of the over-allotment option increases the gross proceeds to the Company to $27,025,000.
Each unit consists of one share of common stock, and a warrant to purchase 0.5 shares of common stock at an exercise price of $6.00 per share. The warrants are immediately exercisable and expire on the fifth anniversary of the date of issuance. The shares of common stock and warrants are immediately separable and will be issued separately.
Emergent BioSolutions Inc.’s U.S. Health and Human Services contract to help produce flu vaccines in the event of a pandemic are key to the firm’s expansion, Chief Financial Officer Robert G. Kramer says.
The Baltimore Development Corp. on Wednesday confirmed that it is offering a second $250,000 new job creation tax incentive to Emergent.
On a trade mission to Brazil, Governor Martin O’Malley today announced that Brace Pharmaceuticals, an investment company created by EMS S/A, Brazil’s largest domestic pharmaceutical company, has opened its U.S. headquarters in Montgomery County and plans to invest $200 million into the new operation. The company, which is located in the Rockville Innovation Center, is focused on the late stage clinical development of pharmaceutical products with the potential for near-term commercialization. Brace invests in research and development companies’ efforts to successfully complete their clinical trials and seek FDA marketing approval. Brace recently entered into its first venture investment in a U.S. company with Gliknik, a Baltimore-based biopharmaceutical company that is creating new therapies for cancer and immune disorders. The announcement came after Governor O’Malley visited EMS headquarters near Sao Paulo and met with the company’s owner and Chairman, Carlos Sanchez and its Vice President of Strategy & Operations, Vinzenz Plorer, a member of the Maryland delegation to Brazil.
Brace Pharmaceuticals Inc., an arm of Brazilian pharma company EMS S/A, has established its U.S. headquarters in Rockville and will invest $200 million in the operation, the O’Malley administration said Tuesday.
Brace, based out of the Rockville Innovation Center, bills itself as an “investment company” focused on developing and commercializing late-stage clinical products. It is a backer of Baltimore-based biotech Gliknik.
Noble Life Sciences (Gaithersburg, MD) announced today that the company has been awarded a Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) grant of $100,000 from the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO). The grant will be used to develop assays to determine the effect of cancer treatments on metastatic cells derived directly from patients. Metastasis-initiating tumor cells isolated from the blood of cancer patients will be used to assay the activity of drugs both in culture and in novel metastatic mouse models developed using these invasive circulating tumor cells (CTCs).
Dr. Stephen Horrigan, Chief Scientific Officer of Noble Life Sciences, noted, “In over 90% of cancer deaths, metastasis, not the primary tumor, is responsible. Yet virtually all cancer drug development testing is based on activity in primary tumors. The development of these metastasis-associated assays will enable us to offer highly innovative services to clients who are developing novel therapeutic drugs, in particular those that target metastatic cancers and cancer stem cells. One goal of our development effort will be to demonstrate the ability to test ex vivo the sensitivity and resistance of metastasis-initiating invasive CTCs to candidate drugs. A second goal will be to create patient-derived metastasis mouse (PDM mouse) models thereby establishing mouse avatars for preclinical testing of human metastatic tumors.”
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.
When you speak with Dr. Joseph Loscalzo about the new Boston Biomedical Innovation Center, you can’t help but get excited about the prospects of enhancing the health of the nation by promoting greater commercialization of NIH-funded discovery science.
“We have all the people we need to make it work. We have all the resources now in hand that we need to make it work. So I think that we are in a very unique situation to prove that this concept is a valid one for the future development of technologies that spring from what the NIH supported over the years as basic investigation that can now be applied to patient care.”
It’s not uncommon for startups to fail, but DreamIt Health’s Managing Director Elliot Menschik and Psilos Group cofounder Lisa Suennen have noticed that some failures are more common than others. Specifically, the two investors said a poorly set up team or a startup that isn’t willing to change with technology leads to problems later on.
While Menschik focuses primarily on early stage startups at DreamIt Health, Suennen’s firm generally invests around $20 million in late stage startups. Still, the investors noted that failures of startups had similarities across the board.
The Tech Council of Maryland (TCM), Maryland’s largest trade association for technology and life science companies, today announced that it has partnered with Year Up National Capital Region (NCR) in a workforce development initiative designed to address the need of Maryland employers for skilled technical workers and provide urban young adults with the skills, experience and support they need to flourish in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers. Together the groups will host quarterly Workforce Development Roundtable discussions with TCM constituents in the region to discuss workforce initiatives, the first of which is scheduled for January 8 from 7:30 a.m. to 9:15 a.m.
“We welcome the opportunity to work with Year Up NCR to identify ways we can create a more robust pipeline of enthusiastic young adults seeking careers in the technology industry, who will meet our members’ growing demand for skilled workers,” said Philip Schiff, TCM’s CEO. “Year Up’s experience in empowering young adults with marketable skills and other opportunities will be valuable as we work together to consider the training, recruitment tactics, diversity programs, internships and employer/higher education partnerships required to build a competitive workforce.”
Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) promotes the development and commercialization of products and processes through industry/university research partnerships. MIPS provides matching funds to help Maryland companies pay for the university research. Projects are initiated by the companies to meet their own research and development goals.
The Life Sciences Manager is responsible for connecting Maryland companies to faculty and researchers in University System of Maryland institutions, plus St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and Morgan State University to address corporate technology development needs. The Manager facilitates the creation of academic-industrial R&D partnerships through the MIPS program, with a particular emphasis on biotechnology, medical and other life sciences. The Manager evaluates proposals on an ongoing basis and acts as a technical coordinator for the MIPS program by identifying the technical reviewers for proposals. Additionally, the Manager coordinates the economic development reviews on MIPS proposals and implements existing MIPS concepts, processes, tools and other procedures necessary to evaluate and monitor ongoing projects, and develop improved capabilities therein.
A Johns Hopkins undergraduate biomedical engineering student team headed by Indian American Piyush Poddar that devised a two-part system to improve the way life-saving shocks are delivered to hearts earned first prize in the undergraduate division of a national Collegiate Inventors Competition.
Winners in the Collegiate Inventors Competition, conducted by Invent Now and the National Inventors Hall of Fame, were announced Nov. 12 after the finalist teams presented their projects to contest judges at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Alexandria, Va.
FRANCIS S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has been distributing a chart that shows the success rate of grant applications to NIH for scientific research. While the rate was about 30 percent as recently as a decade ago, it has plunged to about 15 percent, which Dr. Collins says is the lowest in history. One reason for this is that more applicants are seeking funds, but the budget squeeze also is to blame. Dr. Collins is worried that the low success rate will cause young scientists and researchers to abandon the laboratory for other careers or to take their talents and ideas to other countries.
Baltimore has hired an Austin, Texas-based firm to develop an economic development strategic plan for the city.
The contract with AngelouEconomics which is not expected to exceed $167,500, will be paid for by the Baltimore Development Corp. Signed on Sept. 15, the contract is slated to expire at the end of March 2014, said Joann Logan, a BDC spokeswoman.
Each year, the State of Maryland continues to lead advancements and best practices in U.S. stem cell research through the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (MSCRF). To celebrate and share the most current research coming out of the state, more than 350 scientists, researchers, bioethicists, patient advocates, government officials and members of the public came together today to attend the Sixth Annual Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Campus in Baltimore. Hosted by The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission (Commission), the event delivered plenary sessions, concurrent presentations, more than 100 poster exhibits and 20 comprehensive scientific presentations on stem cell studies presented by Maryland researchers.
Lockheed Martin Corp. will formally open on Wednesday a Center for Health Innovation in Baltimore County to help the defense contractor delve deeper into the health care industry. The center, located within Lockheed’s offices on Lord Baltimore Drive near Woodlawn, will serve as a hub for Lockheed’s growing health care technology business.
The center will house existing technologies used by health care industry clients and serve as a place to develop new tools to address the industry’s needs.
The state of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have embarked on a new partnership effort, the main goal of which is to attract high technology companies to Maryland, which in turn will enable both future missions of NASA and the economic future of Maryland.
The agreement, signed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Goddard Space Flight Center Director Chris Scolese will help in several ways. Goddard will obtain specialized skills and technologies needed for its numerous mission applications. It will help the center engage in technical exchanges with local tech companies regarding new trends, theories, techniques, and problems in aerospace technology. And finally, it will provide an opportunity for the development of local educational and labor resources specific to Goddard’s needs.
Flu or influenza (caused by influenza virus) is a miserable experience as it daunts the victim with countless sneezes, head aches and fever.
Flu develops when tiny droplets coughed or sneezed into the air by an infected person are inhaled by an uninfected person. Flu is often confused with common cold. But, they are different, though certain flu symptoms are the same. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center, fever and muscle pain associated with flu goes away with prevention and treatment in a day or two, however, fatigue may last for a week.
Few companies watch their bottom line with more anxiety than startup firms, but the ones who want to move into a new business accelerator in Columbia will need to think beyond revenue and expenses.
Howard County’s Conscious Venture Lab is on the hunt for fledgling companies practicing a form of what’s often called responsible or sustainable capitalism — businesses with aims that include but aren’t limited to profits. The accelerator’s organizers want firms that consider not just shareholders in their decisions but also a broad range of other “stakeholders” such as employees, suppliers and the environment.
GlaxoSmithKline has announced the formation of a consortium comprised of “six internationally-renowned comprehensive cancer centres”, three in North Americva and three in Europe.
In forming the Oncology Clinical and Translational Consortium (OCTC), GSK says it will benefit from the partners’ expertise in preclinical, translational and clinical development of novel anticancer therapeutics including kinase inhibitors, epigenome modulating compounds and immunotherapies. In return, the centres will have access to studies with GSK’s early-stage cancer pipeline “and opportunities to advance the next generation of novel oncology therapeutics”.
Strand Life Sciences Private Limited, a global life sciences company headquartered in Bangalore, is collaborating with the San Francisco Bay Area based El Camino Hospital to locate a Strand Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at the Genomic Medicine Institute of the El Camino Hospital to accelerate the adoption of next generation sequencing based research panels and counseling services by the physicians at the Hospital and its partner clinics.
A Letter of Understanding was signed on Wednesday December 4th by Dr. Vijay Chandru, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Strand Life Sciences and Dr. Eric A. Pifer, Chief Medical Officer of El Camino Hospital. This signals the start of a collaborative effort to bring advanced genomic tests in cardiology, oncology, pharmaco-genomics and personalized medicine to the community served by the El Camino Hospital, a community that has traditionally been an early adopter of high technology solutions.
Part of moving forward and progressing with health IT initiatives involves proactively setting new goals and establishing a roadmap for the future. The Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange Foundation has taken this to task by releasing its 2013 report that puts forth recommendations for the health IT industry over the next decade.
Report officials outline 10 recommendations in four critical areas of focus including patient engagement, payment models, data exchange and interoperability and innovative encounter models.
Less than 10 percent of hospitals have warmed up to RFID technology. That’s the assessment of Mark Roberti, the founder and editor of RFID Journal, so it’s very much an emerging trend in healthcare. The idea is that by using resources more effectively, hospital staff can spend less time running around trying to find medical supplies and more time with patients.
“The reason why healthcare costs are so high is hospitals keep buying things they already have and waste money,” Roberti said at a conference organized by his Journal which focused on RFID in Healthcare. Hospitals have been so focused on the priority of saving lives that they have been slow to adopt technology that saves money.
ZocDoc dug into America’s “largest database of patient behavior” to discover the top patient trends of 2013.
ZocDoc makes it easy for people to book doctors appointments through its online booking service. More than 4 million patients use ZocDoc every month, and their interactions provide a wealth of data and insights that were never available before.
Each year, nearly $100 billion is spent in the United States on healthcare related research, with an increasing proportion of the breakthrough research being carried out in academic medical centers. While continued medical progress relies on enhanced academic-industry collaboration, the information available on the academic commercialization system function across these institutions is not uniform and often difficult to access.
The Medical Innovation Playbook is the first-ever comprehensive study of technological innovation and commercialization at the nation’s top healthcare centers.
As aging populations put a strain on cash-strapped governments, chronic illness and rare disease prevention is taking centre stage in healthcare. To meet new levels of demand, the sector is ramping up its innovative capacity through collaborations. But harnessing the disruptive potential of these partnerships is still very much a work in progress, according to participants of the INSEAD Healthcare Alumni Summit in Zurich in October this year.
Collaborations are widely seen by the sector as crucial to raise extra finance amid a credit crunch, share risk, boost research productivity, discover new therapies – and ultimately to reinvent the way healthcare is delivered. So large and small pharma companies, hospitals, pharmacy chains, venture capital firms, IT consultants, and academia are forming an array of partnerships.
Today, Sanofi US launched its second Partners in Patient Health (PiPH) Innovation Challenge: Collaborate | Innovate, which will award $100,000 to the winning team. This year’s theme is “Co-Creating for Breakthroughs: Moving toward a collaborative research and development ecosystem.” The Challenge calls on non-profit patient, provider and professional associations to partner with other associations and/or academic institutions to propose new approaches which translate patient insights into improvements in the drug development process.
A treatment breakthrough can cost billions of dollars and decades of time to research. Patient organizations are in the position of helping patients and their constituents to play an important role in research and development (R&D). Patient involvement in the entire process can lead to improvements in efficiency and effectiveness of industry efforts in developing new therapies.
The OneStart Americas competition, a partnership between Oxbridge Biotech Roundtable and SR One, the venture capital arm of GlaxoSmithKline, officially launched on November 4 at UCSF. The kick-off event was followed by similar events held this month in Los Angeles, San Diego and Boston.
OneStart Americas invites individuals or teams of burgeoning life science entrepreneurs under 36 years of age to apply in one of four tracks: drug discovery, medical devices, diagnostics, or health information technology. 35 selected semi-finalists will undergo two-months of extensive mentorship from venture capitalists, pharmaceutical executives, and other entrepreneurs in order to turn their idea into a comprehensive business plan.
Eight former pro football players learned this year that they have signs of a degenerative brain disorder called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition linked to depression, dementia, and memory loss. These somber findings were uncovered using a new method of brain imaging that, for the first time, enables researchers to spot signs of the condition in the living brain. Previously CTE could only be identified after a victim died.
The new method could help quantify the risks of repetitive blows to the head (see “Images of a Hard-Hitting Disease” and “Military Brains Donated for Trauma Research”). It could also help future players avoid the degenerative and sometimes lethal condition by limiting their exposure, and it may help scientists develop better protective gear and treatments.
In support of the Christie Administration’s commitment to nurturing the growth of emerging technology and biotechnology businesses, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (EDA) announced that 65 companies have been approved to share the $60 million allocation available through the State’s Technology Business Tax Certificate Transfer Program in Fiscal Year 2013.
This competitive program enables technology and biotechnology companies to sell New Jersey tax losses and/or research and development tax credits to raise cash to finance their growth and operations. Since the program was established in 1999, more than 500 businesses have been approved for awards totaling $710 million. Each of the 65 applicants approved this year will receive an estimated $920,000, which is 15 percent more than last year and over double the Fiscal Year 2011 average.
From our genomes to Jawbones, the amount of data about health is exploding. Bringing on top Silicon Valley talent, one NYC hospital is preparing for a future where it can analyze and predict its patients’ health needs–and maybe change our understanding of disease.
The office of Jeff Hammerbacher at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine sits in the middle of one of the most stark economic divides in the nation. To Hammerbacher’s south are New York City’s posh Upper East Side townhouses. To the north, the barrios of East Harlem.
Technology once used to help helicopters fly better will in the future be used to help patients breathe better.
InnoVital Systems, a spinoff of Beltsville defense contractor Techno-Sciences, will pair its experience developing technology for the military with medical research by MedStar Health and the Cleveland Clinic to create a new medical device. The InVent Diaphragm Assist is an implantable device that can help patients with respiratory illnesses breathe, instead of a ventilator system.
Revolution Growth is investing $22 million in Sweetgreen, an organic salad retail chain launched by three Georgetown grads in 2007 that has since expanded across the District and five states, the company announced Wednesday.
Sweetgreen is a relatively low-tech investment for Revolution Growth, a $450 million fund founded by Steve Case, Donn Davis and Ted Leonsis. Under the deal, Case will join Sweetgreen’s board. The funds will go toward national growth in “key markets,” as well as building the company’s “team and corporate culture, and growing community programs and marketing initiatives,” according to a news release.
Scientists have been toying for years with creating tiny implants and nanorobots that could carry drugs to certain diseased cells. It is about as targeted as therapy can get, but at this point it’s all a bit futuristic.
Within the confines of petri dishes, researchers are still tinkering. A new study is the first to demonstrate that a nanorobot, which the researchers are calling a DNA nanocage, can both encapsulate and release a biomolecule without degrading the cage itself — and at a size small enough to keep the drugs trapped until they reach the end target.
New York has built gleaming new research facilities and lured at least one large drug company, but the city still trails places such as Boston and San Francisco in fostering small companies that experiment with cutting-edge medical treatments.
To help the local biotechnology scene catch up, the Bloomberg administration is working with large pharmaceutical companies and venture capitalists to create a $100 million fund to invest in fledgling life sciences companies.
San Francisco-based Burrill & Company looked like it had beaten the odds a little more than a year ago during a tough time for biotech venture capital firms. Burrill said in a statement that it had put together Burrill Capital Fund IV, with “aggregate capital commitments” of $505 million to invest in drugs, diagnostics, medical devices, healthcare delivery, wellness, and digital health.
Actually, it turns out the fund raised about $200 million. Partly as a result of the size difference, the team responsible for investing the cash has split off from Burrill into a new venture firm called Biomark Capital, Xconomy has learned.
The fourth edition of Building Biotechnology, the premier biotechnology industry primer, is now available.
Building Biotechnology has been adopted by dozens of educational programs, and is on the nightstands of many biotech CEOs. The book covers a broad range of essential knowledge in business, regulations, patents, law, policy, and science.
Its image further enhanced by the recent IPO of Twitter, Silicon Valley now stands in many minds as the cutting edge of the American future. Some, on both right and left, believe that the Valley’s geeks should reform the nation, and the government, in their image.
Increasingly, the basic meme out of the Valley, and its boosters, is that, as one venture capitalist put it: “We need to run the experiment, to show what a society run by Silicon Valley looks like.” The rest of the country, that venture capitalist, Chamath Palihapitiya, recently argued, needs to recognize that “it’s becoming excruciatingly, obviously clear to everyone else, that where value is created is no longer in New York, it’s no longer in Washington, it’s no longer in L.A. It’s in San Francisco and the Bay Area.”
Back in August, I wrote about how the rich and famous were adopting health wearables. But what about the other end of the spectrum? Recent Pew data shows that lower income people are the most likely to have one or more chronic disease, but the least likely to use a health app. Developing mobile health technologies for low income and underserved populations doesn’t just have the potential to help those populations — it could also help the entrepreneurs that choose to take advantage of it.
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.
Johns Hopkins University has won a key court judgement in its disputed plan to develop a 108-acre donated farm into a $4.7 million “science city,” The Gazette reports.
The Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled Thursday that the plan complies with the agreement forged between Johns Hopkins and Elizabeth Banks, who sold Belward Farm in 1989 for $5 million. In November 2011, Tim Newell, one of Banks’ relatives, sued Hopkins claiming the university was violating a land use agreement it made with Banks.
In 1837, entrepreneur and philanthropist Johns Hopkins bought a Federal-style mansion located on 300 acres in northeast Baltimore. Henry Thompson, a businessman and War of 1812 cavalry captain, had built the estate in 1803 and named it Clifton after his ancestral home in England. It became Hopkins’ summer home, where he liked to entertain family and friends, until his death in 1873. It’s where he welcomed the Prince of Wales, who became King Edward VII. It’s where he held a clandestine meeting that included Salmon Chase, secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln; his friend John Work Garrett, the B&O Railroad president; and other B&O officials, who offered to use the rail for Union Army troop movements. And it’s where he hoped the university that would bear his name would be located
A new health information technology accelerator has caught the eye of one of Baltimore’s technology leaders.
Jason Hardebeck, executive director of the gb.tc, formerly the Greater Baltimore Technology Council, has been named managing director for DreamIt Health Baltimore. The accelerator is scheduled to launch in January.
Trevigen Inc. has been awarded $252,000 for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I Contract, 261201300042C, from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a tumor-aligned 3D coculture system. Dr. Gabriel Benton is the Principal Investigator.
“Many anticancer drugs fail in human trials despite showing efficacy in in vitro studies and animal models. It has become clear that 2D in vitro monoculture assays do not reflect the complex cellular composition and microenvironment of the tumor tissue, and this may explain their failure to predict clinical efficacy” says Dr. Hynda Kleinman, former NIH PI.
A university team took first place in a health competition earlier this month after implementing a method to improve health care access for Americans.
This year’s American Public Health Association Codeathon event brought several teams from around the country to Boston on Nov. 1 to figure out how to put the Affordable Care Act into practice. The university’s team, Terrapin Health Transformers & Friends, brought together developers, coders, designers and health professionals to brainstorm their idea, said Kenyon Crowley, team leader and the Center for Health, Information and Decision Systems deputy director.
It wasn’t just another business competition for Scott Holland, it was the realization of a life-long dream.
Holland’s startup i-Lighting, a novel easy-to-install indoor and outdoor LED lighting system, was awarded $100,000 and other prizes in April 2013 during the inaugural InvestMaryland Challenge, a prestigious business competition by the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development. Following weeks of rigorous judging and mentoring, his company beat out dozens of others, ranging from high-tech manufacturers to smart phone app developers, in the general category.
CDER’s mission is to protect and promote public health by helping to ensure that human drugs are safe and effective for their intended use, that they meet established quality standards, and that they are available to patients. The range and complexity of the human drug supply and development pipeline, and the global nature of regulated industry operations present unprecedented challenges to effective regulatory oversight. Effective and sustainable regulatory operations also require explicit recognition of agency resource limitations.
Once a month, Growlers Brew Pub in Gaithersburg is packed with people talking about the latest trends in the biotechnology and life sciences industries.
The people who gather at Growlers are biotechnology students, lab workers, human resources managers, job seekers, educators, scientists, entrepreneurs and vendors. They come for the camaraderie and the opportunity to connect with people in the bioscience industry.
MedStar Health and the Cleveland Clinic said Monday they’d signed a deal with a Maryland company to license patent rights for a medical device that would help patients with severe lung and neuromuscular diseases to breathe.
The deal comes two years after Columbia, Md.-based MedStar and the prestigious Cleveland Clinic’s technology transfer arm unveiled its alliance aimed at commercializing medical innovation.
The Evan Burfield of June 2000 was the archetypal startup wunderkind, the kind of overachiever who naturally invites unfavorable comparisons to yourself at the same age.
There was his skinny, almost teenaged face on The Washington Post’s website, accompanying a reader Q&A on how he built a financial software company, netDecide, instead of rowing at Dartmouth.
The fiasco with the $600 million federal health insurance website wasn’t all bureaucratic. Forcing slow and disparate databases run by government and insurance companies to work together in real time—and then launching the service all at once—would have challenged even technology wunderkinds.
In particular, the project was doomed by a relatively late decision that required applicants to open an account and let the site verify their identity, residence, and income before they could browse for insurance. That meant the site would have to interface in real-time with databases maintained by the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies.
Last summer when we were still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the Affordable Care Act, many people I talked to said that regardless of the decision, the wheels were in motion. Too much had already happened for the Court to get the horse back in the barn.
That may be true, but President Obama and the ACA got everything started on a national scale: the focus on reducing readmissions, on care coordination, on patient engagement. When would hospitals have started revamping the discharge process or getting serious about follow-up care without the stick of reduced reimbursements? When would doctors and hospitals and long-term care facilities have started really focusing on any of these serious problems without real incentives to do so?
Jason Hardebeck, whom many in Baltimore’s tech community know as the executive director of gb.tc, has been picked to lead DreamIt Ventures‘ new accelerator for health IT startups here.
Hardebeck will take on the role of managing director of DreamIt Health Baltimore, which will shuttle early-stage health care startups through a four-month program beginning in January, providing them with stipends of up to $50,000 in addition to other professional services. The program will be based out of Bond Street Wharf in Fells Point, a Johns Hopkins University property that DreamIt is leasing from the university.
Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and US-based VC Avalon Ventures have announced the creation of the first of up to ten San Diego-based biotech firms as part of a $495m alliance signed in April.
Sitari Pharmaceuticals, which is using technology licensed from Stanford University, will receive a total of $10m from Avalon and GSK to get the San Diego-based company off the ground. The company will investigate treatments for celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder which targets the small intestine. Avalon also created COI Pharmaceuticals, a support firm which will supply people and infrastructure to Sitari and other firms to emerge from the alliance.
It’s frequently used to raise money for producing movies and recording CDs, but a Toronto hospital is hoping the crowdfunding craze can help get potentially life-saving treatment out of the lab and into the arms of the people who need it most.
For almost two decades, Dr. Gregory Czarnota, chief of radiation oncology at Sunnybrook Hospital, has been working with Michael Kolios, an associate dean in Ryerson University’s faculty of science, on software that could help better manage breast cancer treatments.
It’s been a relatively quiet year for facility investment projects from Merck KGaA, the life sciences and chemical firm that employs more than 38,000 around the world and reported 2012 revenues of more than US$15 billion. But the past fortnight has been something else entirely.
On Nov. 15, Merck announced an €80-million (US$108.3-million) investment in a new pharmaceutical manufacturing facility to be located in the Nantong Economical Technological Development Area (NETDA) in the Greater Shanghai region (Yangtze River Delta area).
Heart attacks, anaphylactic shock and clinical decision support for healthcare workers in rural clinics in developing countries. Those are the targets of a group of mobile health apps that could help decide the future of mhealth technology commercialization at the university. It’s part of a new program at the University of Pennsylvania.
Six apps were chosen by development firms who will produce prototypes for the Center for Technology Transfer. The first three were conceived by faculty from Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and qualify for UpStart’s incubator program. A drug verifier app, developed by a Wharton business school student, will get advice from UpStart’s new student entrepreneur adviser program. Aside from Resuscor, each of them fit the description for the Noble Mobile category — an app to improve society.
A Chinese herbal medicine for liver ailments has cleared a big hurdle with regulators in the United States, but there’s still a long way to go.
For Tarek Hassanein, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, it took a long time to learn and finally to pronounce “fuzhenghuayu (FZHY)”. That’s the Chinese name of a patented Chinese drug that treats liver fibrosis, the scarring process of the liver from injuries and diseases.
Peter DeComo raised $20 million from investors for Renal Solutions Inc. in 2002, when the Pittsburgh medical device company had only a working prototype for an artificial kidney and no money.
During the next five years, he brought in $20 million more in capital before selling Renal Solutions to a German outfit in 2007 for nearly $200 million.
“That company couldn’t even get funded today,” lamented DeComo, the CEO of South Side-based ALung Technologies Inc., because venture capital investors have pulled back from startup companies in his industry.
You’ve cracked open the crate of cranberries, stuck the turkey in the oven and are well into filling your second muffin tin with cornbread batter. And just in time for dinner, MedCity is here to talk about innovative obesity treatments, both pharmaceutical options and medical devices.
The Netherlands has retained its position at the top of the annual Euro Health Consumer Index (EHCI) which compares healthcare systems in Europe.
On 48 indicators such as patient rights and information, accessibility, prevention and outcomes, the Netherlands secured its top position among 35 European countries for the fourth year in a row, scoring 870 of a maximum 1,000 points.
To say an IT project like HealthCare.gov was a large-scale, complex behemoth undertaking is an understatement, to say the least. All the myriad elements of the project must be successfully interconnected for it to function properly, which clearly did not occur.
Neglect any one of these elements and it can lead to “outright failure,” says Richard Spires a consultant who formerly served as the Department of Homeland Security’s chief information officer.
“Domain specificity is important.” It is so refreshing to hear a tech entrepreneur like Steve Blank say this. Blank has been worked with researchers and clinicians for almost three years to bring the lean startup philosophy to healthcare. This is one of his conclusions about the industry.
Many people trying to get healthcare into the 21st century – doctors, nurses, entrepreneurs, investors – have been frustrated by the obnoxious attitude that technology is the solution to everything. A few too many tech entrepreneurs have breezed into the health world with “the solution.”
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.
‘We need to provide high-quality education at a lower cost. If at the end of the day, this means there aren’t as many universities or some people don’t have jobs, you know, this is not a welfare business. We have the interest of the nation at stake. And this is what we all have to keep focused on—high quality and containing costs.’
QIAGEN has announced an agreement with Eli Lilly and Company to develop and commercialize a molecular companion diagnostic paired with a novel Lilly oncology compound. This is the third co-development project by QIAGEN and Lilly to create companion diagnostics, which are tests that analyze genomic information in patient samples to enable personalized decisions on treatments.
The latest collaboration, involving an undisclosed Lilly compound and an undisclosed molecular diagnostic target, builds on a master collaboration agreement for development of tailored therapies in cancer and other therapeutic areas signed earlier this year.
Imagine a website launched by students, for students to share information about their innovation ecosystem on campus. I’m talking a navigation tool of sorts that allows students from every corner of the country to learn about what effective strategies universities have developed to enhance resources for students interested in exploring the technology and entrepreneurship realms. No, this isn’t a dream. This website exists, and it goes by the name of “University Innovation.”
The wiki was initially created by the University Innovation Fellows, an elite group of 45 students that are a part of a national movement to catalyze innovation on campus. But they’ve now opened up the wiki for the whole world to enjoy as a “resource to all student stakeholders in the Technology, Innovation and Entrepreneurship spheres in higher education.”
Before 1960, the only way to treat cardiac arrest involved opening up the chest cavity and applying manual cardiac massage. The surgeon would take the heart in his hands and squeeze it ever so cautiously to a distinct rhythm in order to help pump blood to the brain and other important organs, giving the patient a chance at life once again. While a bold method, it was rarely attempted and more often than not didn’t prove successful.
So, taking this as an opportunity to try something new, surgeons at Johns Hopkins created a new Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation technique dubbed closed-chest cardiac massage. The group of surgeons with a knack for innovation created a way to pump the arrested heart without ever having to open up the patient.
Millennial Media, WeddingWire and RainKing Solutions led the list of Maryland companies making the 2013 Deloitte Technology Fast 500, a prestigious technology awards program in United States and Canada. Among Maryland’s eight repeat companies, United Therapeutics Corporation is on the list for the 13th straight year and Zenoss is on the list for the third straight year.
Overall, there were 15 Maryland companies on the list, up from 12 in 2012. Maryland’s 15 companies were the eighth most among states/provinces. California far outpaced other states with 166 companies, with Massachusetts, Ontario, New York, Washington and Pennsylvania following. Virginia had 16 companies on the list for the seventh most among states/provinces.
Baltimore is a top destination for students looking to attend college.
The Charm City has ranked eighth among major metro areas in the American Institute for Economic Research’s College Destinations Index for 2013 and 2014.
As reported in the Baltimore News Journal, Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz on Monday proposed a new department name and department head nominee for the County’s economic development agency.
The head of Maryland’s university system on Wednesday said higher education needs to embrace disruptive technologies such as massive online courses in an effort to serve more students and contain costs.
“If at the end of the day this means there aren’t as many universities or some people don’t have jobs, you know, this is not a welfare business,” William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, said at The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council annual meeting. “We have the interests of the nation at stake.”
The state of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have embarked on a new partnership effort, the main goal of which is to attract high technology companies to Maryland, which in turn will enable both future missions of NASA and the economic future of Maryland. The agreement, signed by U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and Goddard Space Flight Center Director Chris Scolese will help in several ways. Goddard will obtain specialized skills and technologies needed for its numerous mission applications. It will help the center engage in technical exchanges with local tech companies regarding new trends, theories, techniques and problems in aerospace technology. And finally, it will provide an opportunity for the development of local educational and labor resources specific to Goddard’s needs.
Dr. Daniel Saltzman says he can prove that bacteria that ordinarily cause food poisoning in people can be modified for use as guided missiles to deliver cancer-killing payloads into tumors.
But he needs $500,000 for some preliminary work, and despite his project’s potential, he’s not holding his breath for funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the nation’s leading source of biomedical research grants.
QIAGEN (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt, Prime Standard: QIA) today announced an agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) to develop and commercialize a molecular companion diagnostic paired with a novel Lilly oncology compound. This is the third co-development project by QIAGEN and Lilly to create companion diagnostics, which are tests that analyze genomic information in patient samples to enable personalized decisions on treatments. The latest collaboration, involving an undisclosed Lilly compound and an undisclosed molecular diagnostic target, builds on a master collaboration agreement for development of tailored therapies in cancer and other therapeutic areas signed earlier this year.
QIAGEN and Lilly are long-standing partners in personalized healthcare. QIAGEN’s therascreen(R) KRAS RGQ PCR Kit has been widely adopted by laboratories since its July 2012 approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a companion diagnostic. The therascreen KRAS Test detects gene mutations in metastatic colorectal cancer patients, indicating which ones will benefit from Erbitux. In September 2011, QIAGEN and Lilly partnered to develop a companion diagnostic that evaluates the Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) gene, which plays a role in some blood cancers. The test is paired with a Lilly compound to guide use of the proposed drug, currently in clinical trials.
The Symposium is the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund premier event that delivers comprehensive scientific talks, poster presentations, Ethics discussions 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 an additional networking time and an intimate environment.
Keynote Address: The John L. Kellermann, III Memorial Lecture
Keynote Speaker:
Rita Perlingeiro, Ph.D. Associate Professor & Lillehei Endowed Scholar Lillehei Heart Institute University of Minnesota
Many of today’s biotech companies don’t aspire to be companies at all. They’re more like temporary “virtual” projects, with skeleton crews of contractors who come together for a spell and then move on to the next thing. As others have observed, it’s much like what actors, directors and producers do to make movies in Hollywood.
That’s not how the enduring, independent biotech companies do it. These companies aspire to be bigger than any one individual, or any one product bound to lose patent protection in a few years. That means they need to do an old-fashioned thing—hire lots of smart people, give them good salaries and benefits, and challenge them to accomplish big things. Otherwise, there’s no way to carry out a long-term, lofty mission of creating valuable new products for patients.
A new business accelerator in Howard County has launched a crowdfunding campaign to get off the ground.
Conscious Venture Lab in Columbia is looking to raise $50,000 through the crowdfunding website Indiegogo, which allows users to set fundraising goals and generate donations from online supporters. The Howard County Economic Development Authority and the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship, part of the development authority, will match the money Conscious Venture Lab raises through its crowdfunding campaign.
With the cost of drug development hitting the $5 billion mark and 94 percent of drugs failing at some point in clinical development, pharmaceutical companies have been turning to new tools to help clinical trial design: computers and robots.
A couple of Wall Street Journal articles highlight this trend.
One notes that in June, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Medicines Agency endorsed a simulator from the Critical Path Institute to help develop Alzheimer’s disease treatments. Additional simulators are in the works for tuberculosis, Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
GlaxoSmithKline’s $500 million portfolio with Avalon Ventures invested in its in first startup – Palo Alto-based Sitari Pharmaceuticals.
According to Fierce Biotech, the San Diego-based venture group and its partners at GSK are funding Sitari with $10 million in cash and research support, with the R&D assist coming from the pharma giant.
The pharmaceutical industry needs better scientific models for testing drugs before they get to the proving ground of human clinical trials. Current lab dish models and animal testing models are time-consuming, expensive and chronically unable to predict which drugs are going to work in clinical trials. The industry is crying out for new modes of early testing that can shorten the timelines, reduce the cost and increase the odds of success in clinical trials.
Both lab dish models and animal models have run into serious limitations. Cell culture (“in vitro”) assays offer some real advantages. Many can provide true, “human” answers to fairly simple questions. But they lack complexity.
Open innovation is not new, but it is relatively new to health care, igniting a broad cross-section of challenges, hackathons, and competitions that seek to identify breakthrough solutions to solve for our health and our health care. By applying the best practices of the leading tech accelerators, these programs accelerate the speed at which new solutions are developed, companies are formed, and jobs are created.
To quote Todd Park, CTO of the United States of America, “There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur at the intersection of health care and IT.” And there has never been a better time, or industry, for open innovation, a game where no one loses. Open innovation is good for the sponsoring organization, good for the innovator, good for the patient, and good for America.
It’s more than likely that the readers of the NPQ Newswire may not be all that heavily involved in scientific research, but for those who are, the impact of federal budget cuts on agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies supporting scientific research have been devastating. For example, in fiscal 2013, the NIH had its budget cut (per sequestration) by 5 percent, roughly $1.5 billion, which meant that 640 research grants were not issued. As this Mediaite table shows, the NIH may be the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, but its appropriations have plummeted from over $31 billion in 2010 to a projected $27 billion in 2014:
Several pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Merck (NYSE: MRK) , and Bayer (NYSE: have been taking steps to infuse their pipelines with new drug drugs by developing incubators to identify life science innovations that fit in with their longterm goals. Now Celgene (NASDAQ: CELG) is collaborating with a biotech incubator backed by early stage life science and healthcare investor Versant Ventures, according to a company statement.
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.
Gaithersburg-based biotech MedImmune has appointed Yong-Jun Liu, chief scientific officer of the Baylor Research Institute, as its new head of research.
The appointment puts Liu in a pivotal role, not just for MedImmune but also for its parent company, AstraZeneca, which is depending on its U.S.-based biologics arm to supply a pipeline of early-stage drug candidates.
The University of Maryland on Wednesday announced the appointment of Thomas R. Fuerst, Ph.D., as the new director of the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research.
IBBR is a joint research enterprise created to enhance collaboration among the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD), the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the fields of medicine, biosciences, technology, quantitative sciences and engineering.
Physician’s Choice Laboratory Services (PCLS) announced today that it has recently partnered with Genesys Biolabs, a division of 20/20 GeneSystems, Inc. (Rockville, MD) to offer PAULA’s Test (Protein Assay Using Lung Cancer Analytes), a simple blood test that aids physicians in the early detection of lung cancer.
“As an enthusiastic proponent of personalized medicine, PCLS is pleased to partner with 20/20 GeneSystems to promote their newest assay for early stage detection of lung cancer, PAULA’s Test. This test will be of great value to the physicians and patients affected in communities PCLS serves. Lung cancer is a curable disease when caught early and risk-directed screening will save lives as well as reduce the total cost of treatment. The test is a beneficial leap forward for high-risk individuals, providers, and the healthcare system,” said Joe Wiegel, President of PCLS.
Johns Hopkins undergraduate students have invented a system to shock a dangerously irregular heart back into normal rhythm more safely and effectively.
The two-component system is designed both to expand a doctor’s options in routing electric current through the heart and to improve the application of pressure to the patient’s body to help treatment succeed.
Two more venture capital firms have been selected to receive InvestMD funds that they will invest in local startup companies.
EnerTech Capital Partners will receive $10 million and Foundation Medical Partners will receive $7 million. As part of the state’s InvestMaryland program, the firms will use it to back local startup companies. After a startup exits, the state gets 100 percent of its principal investment and 80 percent of the proceeds from the exit. The venture firms can keep the remaining 20 percent of the proceeds.
New Enterprise Associates has had a hand in a number of Boston’s biotech startups over the years. But it wasn’t until now that the big VC firm officially put a physical footprint in the biotech cluster in Cambridge, MA.
NEA today is announcing that it has opened an office in Kendall Square. It’s on the third floor at 700 Tech Square in Cambridge, and will serve as a local home base for the VC firm and its healthcare partners, many of which serve on boards in the area. NEA already has offices in New York, California, Washington, D.C, Chicago, China, and India.
QIAGEN (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt, Prime Standard: QIA) today announced an agreement with Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) to develop and commercialize a molecular companion diagnostic paired with a novel Lilly oncology compound. This is the third co-development project by QIAGEN and Lilly to create companion diagnostics, which are tests that analyze genomic information in patient samples to enable personalized decisions on treatments. The latest collaboration, involving an undisclosed Lilly compound and an undisclosed molecular diagnostic target, builds on a master collaboration agreement for development of tailored therapies in cancer and other therapeutic areas signed earlier this year.
QIAGEN and Lilly are long-standing partners in personalized healthcare. QIAGEN’s therascreen® KRAS RGQ PCR Kit has been widely adopted by laboratories since its July 2012 approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a companion diagnostic. The therascreen KRAS Test detects gene mutations in metastatic colorectal cancer patients, indicating which ones will benefit from Erbitux. In September 2011, QIAGEN and Lilly partnered to develop a companion diagnostic that evaluates the Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) gene, which plays a role in some blood cancers. The test is paired with a Lilly compound to guide use of the proposed drug, currently in clinical trials.
GlaxoSmithKline and Theravance’s new inhaled lung drug Relvar has been approved in Europe to treat both asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), confirming an endorsement from regulators in September.
The medicine, which is inhaled through a palm-sized device called Ellipta, consists of a corticosteroid to reduce inflammation and a novel long-acting beta-agonist (LABA), which is designed to open the airways.
A Cambridge company developing new drugs focused around DNA damage and genetically defined cancers has attracted investment from another pharma giant, Pfizer, in its latest funding round, a £20 million Series B.
Pfizer Venture Investments was the only new investor in Mission Therapeutics’ Series B round, which was led by existing investor Sofinnova Partners and also included Imperial Innovations, SR One and Roche Venture Fund, which means it now has three major pharmaceutical companies backing it – SR One is GlaxoSmithKline’s corporate healthcare VC fund.
Johns Hopkins is more than halfway to its $4.5 billion fundraising goal, the university announced Wednesday, with the money helping to support initiatives that include urban revitalization and global health.
More than 162,000 donors have helped Hopkins meet the halfway mark earlier than officials had previously expected, in spring 2014. The $4.5 billion fundraising goal is among the biggest such efforts in the country and the largest for the Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The Professor Venture Fair began at Bioscience Day 2007 and has become an annual event that gives faculty inventors the opportunity to pitch their new technologies to a team of venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from the region. Presenters are judged based upon clarity of pitch and commercial viability.
Bioscience Day 2013 Venture Fair 11:00 am – 12:00 n
Moderator: Gayatri Varma, Director, OTC
Presenters and INventors: Anthony Melchiorri and John Fisher; Yanjin Zhang; Hadar Ben-Yoav, Reza Ghodssi, Gregory Payne and Deanna L. Kelly ;Kenyon Crowley, Ritu Agarwal , Guodong “Gordon” Gao, Nanette I Steinle and Arnab Ray; Donald DeVoe
Judges:Todd Chappell, Wyatt Somogyi, Matt Cohen, Stephen P. Auvil
Location: Grand Ballroom Lounge, Stamp Student Union
Theme: “The First Mile of a Marathon”. The theme explores the next steps towards commercialization of University developed technologies. Most inventors painstakingly develop their technologies, and yet, underestimate the herculean task of moving an idea from the lab to launch. Even before funding, there is a lot of heavy lifting, analysis, customer discovery, team building, etc. that needs to be done. The panel speakers will discuss these next steps that every inventor or potential entrepreneur has to undertake.
Moderator: Elana Fine, Managing Director, Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship
Panelists: Todd Chappell, Wyatt Somogyi, Matt Cohen, Stephen P. Auvil
Location: Grand Ballroom Lounge, Student Stamp Union, UMCP
This NIH Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) invites applications to support an Evaluation and Administration Coordinating Center. This unit will facilitate the coordination among and between the awardees of RFA-HL-14-019 “Low-Cost, Pragmatic, Patient-Centered Randomized Controlled Intervention Trials (UH2/UH3)” and the NIH. This unit will also be responsible for conducting an evaluation of the RFA-HL-14-019 program.
Using scores obtained from cognitive tests, Johns Hopkins researchers think they have developed a model that could help determine whether memory loss in older adults is benign or a stop on the way to Alzheimer’s disease.
The risk of developing dementia increases markedly when a person is diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, a noticeable and measurable decline in intellectual abilities that does not seriously interfere with daily life. But physicians have no reliable way to predict which people with mild cognitive impairment are likely to be in the 5 to 10 percent a year who progress to dementia.
Mary Washington Healthcare (MWHC) and Zebrareach today announced a collaboration that provides MWHC’s more than 4,000 Associates free membership to Zebrareach, a smartphone application that gives employees loyalty discounts at local stores, as well as other special offers negotiated for MWHC. The Zebrareach membership program for MWHC will launch in November 2013.
Zebrareach (http://zebrareach.com) is a mobile customer engagement application for small business that builds customer retention through a free consumer smartphone application. Businesses build and manage volume and tier-based loyalty programs, message exclusive news, product announcements, special events, secret menu items, limited time offers and more to their loyal customers. Customers are able to place orders for products and services through the web and mobile Zebrareach application. Zebrareach works for all customers, with or without mobile phones.
An earlier research brief we’d issued highlighted that Silicon Valley dominates the list of top 50 VC-backed tech exits. The post generated a fair amount of chatter including some comments calling us arrogant Silicon Valley’ites (we’re based in NYC).
Among the more constructive comments were several from healthcare VCs who wondered if the data would be similar for the healthcare sector. The prevailing hypothesis was that Silicon Valley’s dominance wouldn’t translate to healthcare (or perhaps not as much). Note: our healthcare classification includes companies ranging from medical devices to biotech to pharma.
Billlionaire investor Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks and Landmark Theaters and is a regular on Shark Tank, has expanded his interests to personalized health. He is part of a group of investors in mobile health startup, Validic,which raised $760,000 in a seed round. The Durham, North Carolina company has developed a platform to integrate and aggregate data from more than 80 health-oriented apps.
Cuban said this about the investment:
“Personalized health is the future of healthcare…and with the explosive growth of new mobile apps and devices coming on the market, Validic solves a fundamental problem of integrating all those new innovations into the healthcare system. I’m very excited for the future of Validic and the mobile health space.”
In the past few years, pharmaceutical distributor Cardinal Health (NYSE:CAH) has acquired a major distributor and half a dozen pharmaceutical companies in China. It also acquired AssuraMed to enter the home-health supply market, and invested in startups including HealthSpot, which makes a telemedicine kiosk, and Intralign, which helps providers optimize the cost and quality of surgical care.
Those moves were all part of a clearly defined strategy to meet the changing healthcare marketplace. John Rademacher, president of ambulatory care at Cardinal Health, told BioOhio members at the trade group’s annual event on Tuesday that the company’s investment and acquisition strategy is driven by these 12 healthcare industry trends:
Big data may be about to overwhelm the healthcare system. A little healthcare business intelligence tip: Data by itself won’t drive value and outcomes. Smart healthcare analytics will. In Deloitte’s DBrief, “Big Data Revolution: Unlocking Healthcare Analytics,” healthcare industry experts talked about the opportunities and barriers for industries across the care continuum to harness data, contextualize it and use it to move from hindsight to insight (and eventually, with the help of predictive analytics, foresight).
“The future is already here,” Brett Davis, a principal at Deloitte, said. “It just hasn’t been evenly distributed yet.” Here are the six key trends in healthcare shaping how data will be used.
Much has been written about the pharmaceutical industry’s R&D-productivity challenge during the past decade: the decline in new-drug approvals has raised discovery and development costs just as companies struggle to find new drugs to replace blockbusters that have lost (or will soon lose) their exclusivity. Yet by one important measure, the output of the pharmaceutical R&D process has accelerated significantly: the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 39 new drugs in 2012—the highest level in a decade.
We’ve heard a lot this year about the IPO boom for biotech companies. Even after a few high-profile blowups (Ariad, Sarepta), the public biotech stock indexes are still outperforming the Nasdaq Composite Index and S&P 500. Some biotechs have been acquired for megabucks (Onyx, ViroPharma). We’ve heard about another biotech bubble in the making.
Apply Now to be a Presenting Company at Bio€quity Europe 2014
Now celebrating its 15th meeting, Bio€quity Europe is the premier industry event for financial dealmakers looking for investor-validated life science companies positioning themselves to attract capital and for pharma licensing professionals to assess top biotech prospects. Bio€quity Europe has showcased more than 600 leading European companies to thousands of investment and pharma business development professionals. Delegates from over 20 nations attended Bio€quity Europe last year.
Present Your Story to the Financial Community
Each Presenting Company provides a thorough 25-minute overview to fund managers, venture capitalists and pharma business development and licensing professionals.
Special “Next Wave” sessions feature young innovator companies and consist of eight-minute presentations on the company, technology and programs. In addition, the turf-neutral setting provides unique access to a cross-section of sellside analysts, investment bankers, and business development professionals from top-tier pharmaceutical and biotech companies in a single location.
Special events and private meeting space allow Presenting Companies, “Next Wave” presenters and Sponsors to network and conduct one-on-one meetings with the delegates throughout the two-day event.
Last week, the nation’s leading heart organizations released a sweeping new set of guidelines for lowering cholesterol, along with an online calculator meant to help doctors assess risks and treatment options. But, in a major embarrassment to the health groups, the calculator appears to greatly overestimate risk, so much so that it could mistakenly suggest that millions more people are candidates for statin drugs.
The apparent problem prompted one leading cardiologist, a past president of the American College of Cardiology, to call on Sunday for a halt to the implementation of the new guidelines.
A patient with abdominal pain dies from a ruptured appendix after a doctor fails to do a complete physical exam. A biopsy comes back positive for prostate cancer, but no one follows up when the lab result gets misplaced. A child’s fever and rash are diagnosed as a viral illness, but they turn out to be a much more serious case of bacterial meningitis.
Such devastating errors lead to permanent damage or death for as many as 160,000 patients each year, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Not only are diagnostic problems more common than other medical mistakes—and more likely to harm patients—but they’re also the leading cause of malpractice claims, accounting for 35% of nearly $39 billion in payouts in the U.S. from 1986 to 2010, measured in 2011 dollars, according to Johns Hopkins.
IBM has made its Watson cognitive computing technology available as a cloud-based app development platform, and healthcare vendors are already getting in on the act.
Company officials they hope to encourage new uses of the fast-evolving technology and spur a slew of innovative apps. In this new marketplace, they say, developers of all sizes and industries can access resources – developer toolkits, educational materials and access to Watson’s application programming interface – for developing Watson-powered technology of their own.
Mark Cuban’s comments about personalized health may have turned a few heads but as one source soberly reminded us, he is not the first or the only billionaire investor in healthcare. Not by a long shot. Several people who have nine zeroes in their net worth have invested in the space. They’re motivated by emerging mobile health technology to help reduce healthcare costs and see it as playing a critical role in the future of healthcare technology. There are also philanthropic considerations to increase access to healthcare in underserved populations.
MhealthInsight reckons there are about 19 billionaire investors in mobile health, including Cuban. Here are some highlights from that list.
For budding startups, accumulating funding is necessary — but difficult. Crowdfunding can be a viable alternative for entrepreneurs.
That was one key takeaway for the few hundred part-time and aspiring entrepreneurs gathered at the Entrepreneurs Inspiring Entrepreneurs Expo at the BWI Marriott Monday who caught the “Sourcing the Crowd” panel discussion.
Paul Silber had some unexpected advice from a venture capitalist for the entrepreneurs who crowded a conference room at the BWI Airport Marriott Monday hoping to find out how to land some VC cash.
Silber’s suggestion: tap all other sources first, like friends and family and angel investors, before looking to a venture capital firm for funding.
We’ve all done it. You throw your clothes in a bag and head to the airport. Sixteen hours later, you’re in a country where the customs, dress, language and food are very different from home. As you leave the airport, you stop at an ATM, and within seconds have enough local currency for a taxi and a few meals. All you needed was an ATM card and some money in the bank.
In fact, your trip is going really well until you slip on some ice and fall down a flight of stairs. As you tumble to the bottom and see your femur bone break through the skin, you wonder whether you will be awake to tell the hospital about your allergy to local anesthetics and your heart disease, which has left you with an abnormal heart rhythm.
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.
DreamIt Health Baltimore is a healthtech accelerator that will select up to ten startups from around the world to take up residence in the heart of Charm City and achieve in four months what might otherwise take years. The program is designed to help these teams tackle significant problems in the healthcare industry and achieve critical business milestones. We do this by enabling access to people and resources normally out of reach, by removing as many obstacles as possible, and with guidance from successful entrepreneurs who have been there before and done it before. Participants will have the opportunity to work closely with all corners of Johns Hopkins and tap into the region’s wealth of federal healthcare institutions including CMS, FDA and NIH. The capstone of the program, Demo Day, gives these teams the opportunity to unveil their products and progress before a few hundred early-stage investors and key industry figures.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013 from 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM (EST)
Rescheduled due the government shutdown, this event is to gather interested small businesses seeking assistance from the Small Business Innovation Research grants program within the National Institutes of Health. This is a free event brought to you by BioHealth Innovation. Hear from the largest SBIR awarding Institutes on current Institute funding priorities. Meet one-on-one with program managers regarding your current project. Learn of SBIR assistance provided by BioHealth Innovation.
Email Ethan Byler, ebyler@biohealthinnovation.org to request a one-on-one meeting with one of the program managers from NCI, NIAID, or NHLBI.
The Indian Biomedical Association (IBA) is inviting entrepreneurs from early phase companies with products or services in the life sciences industry the opportunity to connect, collaborate and partner with investors.
Entrepreneurs should submit their presentations for IBA’s event on “Developing and delivering effective investor presentation for your early stage venture” by 10/31/2013 for the event to be held on Tue November 19, 2013, 6:00 – 8:00 PM. Location: Johns Hopkins University, Room 121, Building 3, 9605 Medical Center Dr, Rockville, MD.20850
Selected companies will be invited to make their pitch to a panel of experts who will provide critical feedback.
Following the above event, a short list of selected companies will be invited to make their presentation to a group of investors on Tue December 17, 2013, 6:00 – 8:00 PM, at IBA’s “Biomedical Innovation Funding Forum“. Location: Johns Hopkins University, Room 121, Building 3, 9605 Medical Center Dr, Rockville, MD, 20850
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. presented preclinical data on its lead bispecific Adaptir therapeutic, ES414, at the 5th Annual Protein and Antibody Engineering Summit (PEGS) in Lisbon, Portugal. The ES414 molecule was constructed using Emergent’s Adaptir technology platform and is being developed as a potential therapeutic for metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).
The presentation shared results of preclinical studies demonstrating ES414 is pharmacologically active and well tolerated. Preclinical in vitro and in vivo studies have shown ES414 redirects T-cell cytotoxicity (RTCC) towards prostate cancer cells expressing prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA), an antigen commonly found on prostate cancer cells. The ES414 molecule selectively binds and links the T cell receptor on cytotoxic T cells to the PSMA on tumor cells, triggering tumor cell destruction.
BD Diagnostics, a segment of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), a leading global medical technology company, announced today at EUROGIN 2013 that the Company has achieved CE/IVD marking of its BD Totalys(TM) MultiProcessor, an automated instrument that integrates the pre-processing for the BD SurePath(TM) Liquid-based Pap Test with a molecular aliquot, maintaining sample integrity while improving efficiency in the lab. The Company also supported a symposium at the conference which highlighted the performance of the new BD Onclarity(TM) HPV Assay on the BD Viper(TM) LT System, which is pending EU certification.
“These new products are part of BD’s integrated Women’s Health portfolio and support full sample chain of custody, high diagnostic accuracy and a clear patient management approach – all important elements to improving patient care,” said Paul Holt, Global Market Segment Leader, Women’s Health & Cancer – BD Diagnostics. “When laboratories and physicians partner with BD Diagnostics, they benefit from highly customized, leading-edge solutions for the rapidly changing landscape of cervical cancer screening.”
The University of Maryland BioPark announced today that the Clinical Trial Center for Functional Foods (CTCF2) has signed a lease for office space at the BioPark. The main home for the CTCF2 is located in the Jeolla-buk Province of South Korea, and is part of the Chonbuk National University Hospital.
“When the BioPark was founded, we had the goal of establishing a strong presence from the international life sciences community,” said Jane Shaab, University of Maryland Research Park Corporation Senior Vice President and Executive Director of the UM BioPark. “We began building this presence with the SNBL Clinical Pharmacology Center, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of a Japanese biomedical company, and now we have our first investor from Korea.”
A merger of the University System of Maryland and the Southern Maryland Higher Education Center is one step closer after leaders signed an agreement this month for a new building at the California campus.
A merger could open up educational and business opportunities for the region, officials said Friday during a signing agreement at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons.
The increasing digitization of healthcare could shake up the industry in many ways, from allowing doctors to do their jobs more efficiently to reducing demand for specialists, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
How technological changes will increase access and improve quality of care is still a moving target, however, according to the new study, published today in Health Affairs. Meanwhile, a different set of researchers found that one technological intervention improved access to care for depression, but had no impact on depressive symptoms.
GSK today announced the recruitment of 140 new apprentices over the next two years in the UK – of which a third will be in engineering. This represents a 27% increase in the company’s annual intake of apprentices since 2012/13.
GSK also announced plans to increase the number of engineering graduate trainees by 26 in Britain – an increase of 25% since 2012/13.
DreamIt Health, a new health startup incubator that paired entrepreneurs around Philadelphia with experts from Independence Blue Cross and Penn Medicine to help commercialize new ideas, is now venturing down I-95 to expand into the city of Baltimore. We spoke with Elliot Menschik, MD, PhD, who manages DreamIt Health, about the goals of the new venture and the opportunities it plans to offer to Baltimore’s medtech entrepreneurs.
Social networks have been all “abuzz” over the past month getting the vote out for the most important elected-position in the region.
No … silly … we are not talking about elected officials in our neighboring Commonwealth, we are talking about what really matters — the Pitch Across Maryland 2.0!!!
Today is the day we tallied the view-votes for the “Fan Favorite” competition of the Pitch Across Maryland.
Now on its sixth run, the Research Commercialization Introductory Course is a very popular online course designed to help science and engineering researchers better understand how research commercialization works. Over 5000 students, faculty and researchers from across the US have taken this course since it’s been offered.
Research commercialization involves taking articles, documentation, know-how, patents, and copyrights, which are created during research activities and getting them to users and patients for real societal impacts. In some cases, commercialization involved taking patents based on the research and licensing them to a company. This usually involves also having the researchers consult to the company. In other cases, commercialization involves forming of creating a startup and applying to federally funded commercialization programs. In all cases, though, research commercialization typically involves defining the nature of the research being commercialized (e.g., in a patent or intellectual property agreement), establishing a commercial relationship with another party (e.g., employment, a sale or license), and negotiating a contract (e.g., compensation).
Newly-minted MBA graduates are more frequently turning away from finance jobs as financial crisis aftereffects linger and instead picking careers in the tech sector.
In fact, for the first time, more Stanford Graduate School of Business grads this year chose tech jobs over finance jobs, The Wall Street Journal reports. Thirty-two percent of this year’s class picked tech while 26 percent headed into finance — those figures were 13 percent and 36 percent, respectively, two years ago.
The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) will hold its second annual Parent STEMpowerment Workshop on Nov. 17, in the Kossiakoff Center on its Laurel, Md. campus. The free workshop, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., is designed to help parents of elementary and middle school students prepare their children to explore careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The event, developed for parents with little or no exposure to STEM fields, will provide resources to support children in the pursuit of STEM careers and impart a better understanding of the importance of STEM.
Furthering a commitment to bilateral innovation, a delegation of five biomedical and information technology companies from the University of Nizhny Novgorod visited the University of Maryland on October 16-25 under the auspices of the U.S.-Russia Innovation Corridor. The companies participated in the first region-to-region visit of Russian startups under the program since UMD and UNN signed a Memorandum of Understanding in April 2013 to deepen ties in the biomedical industry.
Johns Hopkins University has an acceptance rate under 20 percent. It’s clearly a prestigious institution. But what is it like to interview for a job at the region’s largest private employer?
I hit the books hard to go through Glassdoor’s index of user-submitted interview questions. Here are the three geekiest interview questions asked at Johns Hopkins (pertaining to different jobs, of course). Take a moment to see if you can answer them.
GSK has selected eight winners in its first Discovery Fast Track competition, designed to translate academic research into starting points for new potential medicines. The contest attracted 142 entries across 17 therapeutic areas from 70 universities, academic research institutions, clinics and hospitals in the US and Canada.
The winning projects show clear opportunities to deal with important unmet medical needs, including antibiotics resistance, diseases of the developing world and certain cancer types. The selected scientists will collaborate with GSK’s Discovery Partnerships with Academia (DPAc) team, the sponsor of the competition, to rapidly screen and identify novel compounds to test their promising hypotheses. If advanced chemical testing is successful, the winning investigators could be offered a DPAc partnership to further refine molecules and assess their potential as novel new medicines.
After the trip UNN participants were interviewed and filled the Feedback forms (see the Appendix). The results of interviews and feedback forms processing may be summarized as follows.
State government agency expenditures for research and development totaled $1.404 billion in FY 2011, an 11.3% increase over the $1.261 billion reported in FY 2010. Expenditures for R&D facilities (construction projects, major building renovations, and land and building acquisitions intended primarily for R&D use) totaled $109 million in FY 2011, a 1.7% increase over the $107 million reported in FY 2010. This InfoBrief presents summary statistics from the FY 2010 and FY 2011 Survey of State Government Research and Development, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The FY 2010 and FY 2011 survey presents the most recent NSF statistics of R&D activities performed and funded by state government agencies in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Survey data are available by state and by individual state agency. For the first time, NSF collected two fiscal years of data from state governments as part of a single survey operation. In addition, a new category was added to this survey, so state agencies were given the option to separately classify their energy-related R&D expenditures. Other R&D categories include agriculture, environment and natural resources, health, transportation, and other.
Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2013, Southeastern Universities Research Association
In 2010, the University of Virginia created a pan-university innovation initiative designed to elevate innovation, entrepreneurship, and translational research as core competencies and key strategic priorities of the institution. A long-time practitioner of “traditional technology transfer”, UVa sought nothing less than a “sea change” in its innovation ecosystem and culture in creating this new innovation platform. Intellectual property is still protected, marketed and licensed (i.e., “traditional technology transfer”). But beyond these activities, the university has nurtured an ecosystem (both within the institution and beyond) which can be leveraged to identify innovation and knowledge assets more broadly and earlier; to advance those assets through proof-of-principle and commercial relevance assessments; and to leverage such assets and relationships to create products, services, companies, and jobs – and value for the university. Along the way, UVa Innovation actively uses its research capacities, social media, crowd-funding, grand challenge competitions, outreach and networking, and relentless “innovation proselytizing” to engage increasing numbers of university students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and supporters in elevating innovation as core competency and focal point of UVa’s mission.
Nearly 6,000 people took part in the second annual Baltimore Innovation Week at the end of September, in partnership with many great organizations throughout the region. Full disclosure, we at Technical.ly Baltimore helped lead the big open calendar of events. Find a wrap video and some outcomes of the week below. This year, we saw […]
Okay. The verdict’s still out on loud. (If my family–myself included–is any indicator, that’s probably a losing battle.) The point is our human capital is plummeting globally thanks to our poor health, according to the World Economic Forum’s new Human Capital report. Our obesity and fast-paced lives are bound to catch up with us with heart disease and diabetes among other chronic disease. But it could come around and kick us where it collectively hurts the most: our already hurting economy.
Another massive acquisition by MedImmune and a new fund to uncover the next ARM lit up a vibrant October when deals in the Cambridge UK technology cluster topped $900 million.
It took the seventh month total in Business Weekly’s Cambridge Cluster Deals Digest to just over $23 billion. While MedImmune splashed the most cash, it was a home-grown innovation that had the Cambridge investment community buzzing.
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.
Attend the last DreamIt Health information sessions on Tuesday, November 5, 2013 from 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm at the Johns Hopkins Brain Science Institute and Wednesday, November 6, 2013 from 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm at the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus.
DreamIt Health is a health tech accelerator that helps startups achieve in four months what might otherwise take years to accomplish. The program has helped launch 130 IT companies to date.
DreamIt Managing Partner Elliot Menschik will present on November 5 and BioHealth Innovation’s Ethan Byler will present on November 6. These free programs will answer questions about Dreamit, and lite fare will be provided.
Tuesday, November 12, 2013 from 8:30 AM to 11:30 AM (EST)
Rescheduled due the government shutdown, this event is to gather interested small businesses seeking assistance from the Small Business Innovation Research grants program within the National Institutes of Health. This is a free event brought to you by BioHealth Innovation. Hear from the largest SBIR awarding Institutes on current Institute funding priorities. Meet one-on-one with program managers regarding your current project. Learn of SBIR assistance provided by BioHealth Innovation.
Email Ethan Byler, ebyler@biohealthinnovation.org to request a one-on-one meeting with one of the program managers from NCI, NIAID, or NHLBI.
DreamIt Health Baltimore is a healthtech accelerator that will select up to ten startups from around the world to take up residence in the heart of Charm City and achieve in four months what might otherwise take years. The program is designed to help these teams tackle significant problems in the healthcare industry and achieve critical business milestones. We do this by enabling access to people and resources normally out of reach, by removing as many obstacles as possible, and with guidance from successful entrepreneurs who have been there before and done it before. Participants will have the opportunity to work closely with all corners of Johns Hopkins and tap into the region’s wealth of federal healthcare institutions including CMS, FDA and NIH. The capstone of the program, Demo Day, gives these teams the opportunity to unveil their products and progress before a few hundred early-stage investors and key industry figures.
Johns Hopkins Montgomery County Campus Executive Director Elaine Amir retired Sept. 30. On an interim basis, Leslie Ford Weber is serving as campus executive director.
Leslie knows her way around Johns Hopkins and Montgomery County. She is director of government and community affairs for Montgomery County, representing both the university and the Johns Hopkins health system in their interactions with county elected officials, businesses and other external organizations. Before joining Government and Community Affairs, Leslie held a dual role as executive vice president of the Suburban Hospital Foundation and senior vice president of Government and Community Relations for Suburban Hospital.
The number of Maryland companies receiving venture capital increased to 26 in the 3rd quarter of 2013, doubling the number of deals in the 2nd quarter. The 26 deals totaled $140 million, according to the latest PWCMoneytree report. Nationally venture capital investment activity rose 12% in terms of dollars and 5% in the number of deals compared to the second quarter of 2013. More than half of the deals were early and seed stage deals, signaling optimism among the report’s sponsors regarding “the future of innovation and the vibrancy of the startup ecosystem.”
Federal health care reform has been catching a bit of flack the last few weeks, as health insurance exchanges continue to experience severe technical difficulties.
But it’s not all bad. At a panel Thursday on health care information technology, Carolyn Quattrocki, who leads the governor’s Office of Health Care Reform, said that companies with bright ideas about how to use technology to improve health care policies are “so critical — and becoming more critical.”
Between federal health reform, a cache of federal agency headquarters and notable health care brands like Johns Hopkins, Maryland is a prime spot for up-and-coming health IT companies. But despite a wealth of resources, M. Jason Brooke had to look hard to find the help he and his business partner needed to launch their medical device company.
To help pave a smoother path for others, Brooke and a team of other entrepreneurs have organized Maryland HealthTech Coalition. The group is designed to bring together health IT companies to share ideas, contacts and resources.
Noble Life Sciences, a provider of preclinical research services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, announced that its animal facility was awarded full accreditation by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC International). AAALAC assessment and accreditation programs are designed to recognize organizations that demonstrate excellence in animal care and use.
Organizations volunteer to participate in AAALAC’s program in addition to complying with local, state and federal laws that regulate use of animals in research. Accreditation was awarded following submission of a detailed program description and an in-depth review of the program and facility during an on-site visit by AAALAC representatives. In addition, Noble is currently licensed by the United States Department Of Agriculture (USDA) and meets the assurance requirements of the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW).
GrayBug LLC, a startup ophthalmic drug company spun out of Johns Hopkins University’s Wilmer Eye Institute, has hired its first full-time CEO and raised $1.5 million in new venture capital funding.
Michael O’Rourke, a veteran pharmaceutical industry executive and consultant, joined Baltimore-based GrayBug on Oct. 15. He comes to the company as it closed $1.5 million in funding from investors including the Maryland Venture Fund, the Abell Foundation and Brown Advisory, the Baltimore asset management firm.
To generate its list of the top 10 U.S. regions in which to secure a biotech job, GEN adopted a straightforward methodology. It identified the regions most frequently cited in biotechnology and pharmaceutical job listings. Over the past month, GEN collected data by scrutinizing five employment websites—LinkedIn, BioSpace, Medzilla, Indeed, and Monster.
The locales with the most biopharma-related jobs include the regular suspects—San Francisco and Boston—and also up and comers like the New York metropolitan area, which has grown steadily over the last few years.
Join the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs and Women in Bio as we host a panel of life science leaders who will share insights from their experience commercializing technology. The discussion facilitated by Lynn Johnson Langer, PhD, MBA, Director, Enterprise & Regulatory Science Programs, Johns Hopkins University will cover:
Gaithersburg-based GlycoMimetics Inc. set the terms for its upcoming IPO on Monday, planning to sell 4 million shares at between $14 and $16 apiece.
The biotech expects to list on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GLYC. It would be the third in an already active stretch for Maryland life sciences IPOs, following Intrexon Corp. and MacroGenics Inc. to the public markets.
Type 2 diabetes is viewed as one of the biggest drivers of healthcare costs partly because of the complications that can arise from the condition. Diabetes costs in 2012, for example, reached $245 billion. One complication — hyperglycemia – can cause diabetic coma if it remains untreated. WellDoc is working on a way to predict hyperglycemia without patients needing to have continuous glucose monitoring. The plan is to add the mhealth tool to its prescription mobile app platform Bluestar, which the company is preparing to roll out.
It presented positive findings from a study of the hyperglycemia prediction tool at the Diabetes Technology meeting in San Francisco this week, according to a company statement.
Vaccine manufacturers are often criticized for investing in shots aimed at high-margin Western markets, while neglecting diseases affecting the developing world. This week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation set up a project to spur development in neglected areas by cutting the financial risk of early research.
GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK) and Sanofi ($SNY) are the first companies to sign up to the project, called the Vaccine Discovery Partnership (VxDP). Under VxDP, the Gates Foundation will work directly with biopharma companies on projects that further its goals and span from preclinical through to Phase IIa. By providing financial support for the projects, the Gates Foundation hopes to make early-phase vaccine research a less risky proposition for the industry.
Bioscience Research & Technology Review Day is a special event that features research talks, presentations, mini-symposia, and demonstrations by university scientists. The program provides a unique opportunity for executives and professionals in industry and government to:
Discover the most recent advances in bioscience and biotechnology at the University of Maryland
Promote the potential for academic-industry-government collaboration
Meet University scientists and interact with graduate student researchers
Network with colleagues who share an interest in the promotion of bioscience and the bioscience industry
Recruit employees and investigate job opportunities
For the ninth year Kevin Plank, Founder & CEO of Under Armour, will partner with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business to host one of the nation’s toughest business competitions. There’s $115K on the line, and how does access to Kevin Plank’s professional network sound? Apply by January 6, 2014. Visit our web site to learn more about Plank’s story and commitment to entrepreneurship. The elegibility, timeline, prize breakdown and more is listed below. Don’t miss the chance to pitch your business to Plank and other top judges.
Application Deadline: January 6, 2014
Semifinal Round: February 21, 2014 @ Under Armour Headquarters, Baltimore, MD
Final Competition: April 4, 2014 @ Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, University of Maryland
BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE:BDX), a leading global medical technology company, together with Direct Relief and the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC), today launched BD Helping Build Healthy CommunitiesSM, a four-year initiative that will expand access and improve care for underserved and vulnerable populations in the U.S. The initiative, first announced earlier this year with a founding pledge at the Clinton Health Matters Initiative, includes a BD commitment of approximately $5 million in cash and product to clinics and community health centers (CCHCs) employing innovative models of care, along with strategic support from all
James Ramsey could easily move his business to where he lives in Eastern Virginia, but Maryland is just too rich in his opinion.
He would rather drive more than three hours each way every week to a house he rents in Baltimore to keep his business in Maryland. That’s because with all the neighboring colleges in the state, he thinks the talent pool is too good to pass up.
A new report released today by The Science Coalition illustrates one of the many returns on investment of federally funded scientific research: the creation of new companies. Sparking Economic Growth 2.0 highlights 100 companies that trace their roots to federally funded university research and their role in bringing transformational innovations to market, creating new jobs and contributing to economic growth. An accompanying online database provides free access to company profiles and allows users to sort companies by federal funding agency, university affiliation, type of innovation and other criteria.
The National Science Foundation has awarded collaborative grants totaling $892,587 to three universities to develop data mining tools for electronic health record systems, FierceEMR reports.
The grants were distributed to: Southern Methodist University in Dallas; University of Texas at Arlington; and University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
Online health information company WebMD has snapped up Avado, a startup that develops cloud-based software to let physicians and patients interact.
The companies declined to disclose financial information, but said Avado’s technology will be integrated under the WebMD brand and that the founders will join the company to continue developing the technology and business relationships.
For $99, genetic testing startup 23andMe will analyze your DNA, telling you how to live smarter and longer–and what disease might kill you. But there’s another inner frontier to explore in personalized medicine: the bacteria in your gut.
For $89, Ubiome, a startup founded by Jessica Richman–a doctoral candidate at Oxford who did stints at Google and McKinsey after graduating from Stanford in 2009–will send you a kit that harvests the organisms that live inside your body. For additional fees, you can also gather bacteria from your mouth, nose, skin, and genitalia.
The typical university research park is 119 acres (just over 48 hectares), has seven buildings open and is located in a suburban jurisdiction with a population of 500,000 or less.
But urban-style live-work-play campuses are where they’re going, typified by Centennial Campus (affiliated with North Carolina State University), Mission Bay (affiliated with the University of California San Francisco) and the Fitzsimons Life Science District in Colorado (affiliated with the University of Colorado’s academic medical center).
The Life Sciences Discovery Fund (LSDF) has posted a revised 2012-2013 Granting Programs Request for Proposals (RFP) at http://www.lsdfa.org/documents/pdfs/LSDF_2012-2013_Granting_Programs_RFP.pdf that includes the following important changes:
Opportunity grant principal investigators must confer with LSDF programs staff before pre-proposal submission.
For Opportunity grants, only co-investments that are made contemporaneously with LSDF funding are counted as leverage. LSDF does not consider past funding (i.e., monies previously committed, received, or expended) or future predictions of funding as leverage.
Opportunity grant pre-proposals may undergo review by LSDF-convened external expert panels prior to evaluation by the LSDF Board of Trustees.
Regulatory consultation expenses are allowable if they inform the conduct of the proposed research and development activities.
Principal investigators are encouraged to bring up to two additional individuals to the pre-proposal and full proposal interviews.
For-profit applicant organizations will be required to provide a certificate of existence, certificate of incorporation, or a business license with their proposals.
Board of Trustees award decision meeting dates have been updated.
If a full proposal is submitted under this RFP but not funded, the principal investigator may resubmit the full proposal without having to submit a new pre-proposal, provided that the principal investigator, applicant organization, and scope of work are the same in the resubmitted proposal as in the original proposal (as determined solely by LSDF).
All invitations to submit a full proposal under this RFP expire on July 23, 2013.
Fidelity Biosciences and REGENX Biosciences today announced the formation of Dimension Therapeutics, a gene therapy company focused on developing novel treatments for rare diseases. Dimension will focus on advancing its platform of gene therapy programs in rare diseases through clinical development, starting with lead programs in hemophilia, and building out a world-class product engine for AAV therapeutics. Dimension has completed an undisclosed Series A financing led by Fidelity Biosciences.
In conjunction with its launch, Dimension has entered into an exclusive license and collaboration with REGENX. REGENX holds exclusive rights to a portfolio of over 100 patents and patent applications pertaining to its NAV® vector technology that includes novel AAV vectors such as rAAV7, rAAV8, rAAV9, and rAAVrh10. Through its license and collaboration with REGENX, Dimension has acquired preferred access to NAV vector technology and rights in REGENX product programs in multiple rare disease indications.
Site Selection for Life Sciences Companies,” a report released this month by business intelligence firm Venture Valuation and KPMG, uses an agglomeration of other reports and proprietary data to analyze key decision factors relevant to the leading life sciences clusters in France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK.
Why those territories? The authors say those countries are often preferred by foreign companies seeking European or global headquarters. But depending on which factors are emphasized and how they’re weighted, any of the six might stand above the rest.
1776, the downtown startup hub that launched earlier this year with a grant from D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s administration, has recruited Gray staffer David Zipper to head its for-profit venture arm.
Zipper was instrumental in mustering the mayor’s support behind the initiative located at 1133 15th St. NW, which combines co-working, startup education, events and mentorship under one roof and brand. 1776 has so far received some $380,000 from the District, $200,000 of which went toward the initial 15,000 square foot build-out, with the rest funding the Challenge Cup global startup competition.
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, MD, April 16, 2013 – 
said it has secured exclusive right to manufacture and sell VaxInnate Corp.’s pandemic influenza vaccine candidate in the United States.
Our Entrepreneur-in-Residence ![BioCentury 10.13.13 - [1] Stuck in the Lab](http://www.biocenturytv.com/images/marquees/marq_101313_play.png)
When personal genomics and biotech firm 23andMe was founded in Mountain View, Calif., in 2006, the hype over the genetic tests it offered directly to consumers was immediate and irresistible to many. The company promised that for a nominal fee, it could scan your saliva sample and tell you — based on your genetics — everything from who your ancestors were to what diseases you may be at risk of developing many years down the road. 23andMe raised more than $100 million in capital from such big-name investors as Google and Genentech. Today, the company’s website boasts having close to 500,000 “genotyped consumers.”
he Symposium is the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund premier event that delivers comprehensive scientific talks, poster presentations, Ethics discussions and networking time, enabling cell therapy basic research and technologies from the lab to pre-clinical and to commercialization.
The University of Maryland on Wednesday announced the appointment of Thomas R. Fuerst, Ph.D., as the new director of the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research.
