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.
Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett returned recently from a 10-day, 4-city trip to China aimed at advancing Chinese jobs and investment in the County and opening doors for County businesses there, as well as establishing a “Sister City” relationship with the city of Xi’an, with eight million residents and home to the famous Terra Cotta Army.
Packed with visits to businesses and high-tech centers, educational institutions and hospitals, as well as government meetings, the delegation’s itinerary reflected the mission’s strong focus on education and business development. Multi-level partnerships were developed on education, healthcare, and business fronts.
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.
November 6-9, 2013, The Universities at Shady Grove Conference Center
The Korea-Maryland, USA Bio Expo is the premier event to building collaborations in the biotech industry with Korea. This year the Expo will showcase 40 exhibitors, over a 100 companies from Korea, and provide seminars for pharmaceutical development. Korean government officials will be on hand to discuss programs and initiatives that the Korean Central Government is rolling out to assist foreign companies looking to open into the Asian markets. The companies participating in the Expo are interested in licensing technologies for future development and investing in U.S. technologies. Attendees are encouraged to reach Joe Lee at jlee@jgbli.com to register.
The Korea-Maryland, USA Bio Expo is free to attend and more information can be found at www.kmbioexpo.com.
Join BioBuzz and their sponsor Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies along with many others from the local biotech industry at another exciting BioBuzz event on October 30th from 4:30 – 7:00 p.m. in Gaithersburg at Growlers in Old Towne Gaithersburg!
Cybersecurity companies in Montgomery County will be eligible for tax credits starting next year as part of the county’s mission to become a national hub for companies that sell cybersecurity products to the private sector.
The Washington region is emerging as a hotbed for the cybersecurity industry, in part because of its proximity to federal agencies, the military and government contractors.
The Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore (EAGB) is pleased to announce Wes Moore as the keynote speaker at its Annual Meeting. The event will take place December 11, 2013 at the Hilton Baltimore. Year after year, this celebration attracts the region’s top leaders from industry, higher education and government.
Wes Moore, a Baltimore City native, is a youth advocate, Army combat veteran, social entrepreneur and host of Beyond Belief on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Moore, a Johns Hopkins graduate, became nationally known after publishing The Other Wes Moore which became an instant New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. It details the disparate life journeys of two boys from Maryland with the same name — one who went to prison and the other (the author) who forged a successful career.
For six years, green energy business Clean Currents made the Rockville Innovation Center above the downtown Rockville library its home.
The company enjoyed reduced costs for spaces and certain services than it would have had in the general private market. It had access to shared conference rooms, administrative help, a kitchen and copy machine, all pretty much financed by Montgomery County.
The Johns Hopkins University regained a five-year, $70 million federal grant designed to change how researchers pursue drug development and other medical treatments, but the University of Maryland, Baltimore lost its first bid for a similar grant, the National Institutes of Health said Tuesday.
The award pleased Hopkins officials, who had been forced to tweak their proposal for the grant after their application wasn’t renewed in 2012. The university received $80 million through the program, which focuses on what is known as “translational” research, from 2007 through 2011.
When WellDoc was founded in 2005, it was one of the first companies that sought 510(k) clearance for its patient and physician facing mobile health DiabetesManager platform. By putting its flagship apps through the discipline of clinical trials that generated positive results, it has helped earn confidence from physicians to prescribe it to their patients. Insurance companies are providing reimbursement for physicians and that has been critical for the company’s growth.
The Baltimore, Maryland-based company’s fundraise last year of about $8.4 million, in an amended Form D filing today, shows that confidence in the company is building. In a phone interview with WellDoc Chief Strategy and Commercial Officer Chris Bergstrom, he said the company continues to be entirely funded by angel investors who are flexing more power as Super Angels. “Each year we have brought on a higher caliber of angel investors. We’re really raising angel money at an institutional investor level.” He added: “It’s a great time and place for institutional investors, but angel investors can provide as much strategic value as institutional investors.”
QIAGEN N.V. today announced a partnership with Clovis Oncology CLVS +1.11% to co-develop and co-commercialize a companion diagnostic test to guide the use of CO-1686, a novel Clovis Oncology product candidate currently in clinical development. The Clovis drug candidate will initially target an unmet clinical need in patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) driven non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) for whom current EGFR-inhibiting drugs no longer control disease.
The diagnostic will build on QIAGEN’s therascreen® EGFR RGQ PCR Kit, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in July 2013 as a companion diagnostic for use in the treatment of metastatic NSCLC in patients whose tumors have certain EGFR mutations. Analytical performance of the therascreen EGFR test has been established for 21 EGFR mutations, including the most prevalent resistance mutation, T790M. The test supports efficient laboratory workflow with real-time PCR technology on the FDA approved Rotor-Gene Q MDx, which is part of the QIAsymphony family of laboratory solutions.
Becton, Dickinson and Company (BD) has launched shortest ever insulin syringe needle for the first time in Hyderabad. The needle is 25 per cent shorter than the contemporary needles available in the market.
BD, a leading global medical technology company, has launched BD Glide 6mm needle, the smallest ever insulin syringe needle developed with TBL technology for the first time in India. The needle has been designed to improve patient comfort. Compared to present needle size, 80 per cent patients have preferred this new needle.
Towson University is getting more serious about entrepreneurship on campus, and Frank Bonsal III will play a big role in that new focus.
Bonsal has served as interim director for TowsonGlobal, the university’s business incubator, since June. Earlier this month, he became the university’s first director of entreprene
Venture capital deals in the Greater Baltimore area jumped in the third quarter, as investors poured money into medical device makers, biotech firms and one of the region’s largest money managers.
VC firms invested $445.7 million in 53 companies in the Baltimore-Washington area in the three months ended Sept. 30. That was up from $420 million invested in 30 companies in the second quarter and the highest level in almost six years, according to the MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. The report uses data from Thomson Reuters.
Between October 1 and 17, the federal government ceased all nonessential operations because of a partisan stalemate over Obamacare. Although it is premature to declare this the greatest example of misgovernance in modern U.S. Congressional history, this impasse ranks highly.
One casualty of the showdown was any consideration of changes to lessen the impact of the across-the-board sequestration cuts that began on March 1. The cuts have caused economic and other distress across the nation, including serious impacts within the health care sector. Nearly eight months into sequestration, we can move beyond predictions and begin to quantify these effects.
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
The economy works like a simple machine. But many people don’t understand it— or they don’t agree on how it works — and this has led to a lot of needless economic suffering. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to share my simple but practical economic template. Though it’s unconventional, it has helped me to anticipate and sidestep the global financial crisis, and has worked well for me for over 30 years.
The city’s once-grungy northern districts have transformed into a thriving area with hip boutiques, destination restaurants, and a homegrown art and nightlife scene.
With mHealth becoming the norm instead of the exception, a panel at Partners HealthCare’s 10th Annual Connected Health Symposium last week concluded that EHR vendors will have to find a way to modify their products to focus on data that the patient and his or her care team want, or they’ll become obsolete.
Important information for a patient’s care actually exists outside the electronic medical record, panelists said.
The National Institutes of Health aims to boost healthcare technology and science through 15 Institutional Clinical and Translational Science Awards. Total amount of the awards is $79 million in 2013.
The awards will be used to help translate basic discoveries into new treatments that tangibly improve human health requires innovative collaborations and resources, as well as a diverse, highly-trained workforce,” NIH officials said in announcing the awards on Oct. 22.
Crowdfunding moved closer to becoming a reality for small businesses Wednesday morning when the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed rules that will govern how shares in small companies are sold through Internet intermediaries.
The SEC took only 50 minutes to unanimously approve the proposed rules, which were issued more than 560 days after the JOBS Act, the law that legalized the use of crowdfunding for equity investments, was signed by President Barack Obama.
Venture capitalists invested $1.12 billion to U.S. mobile companies in last quarter, making it the biggest venture capital financing quarter in history for this sector.
Q3 also had the highest number of mobile deals ever in a quarter, and it was the first time mobile VC deal share eclipsed the healthcare sector, according to a study by CB Insights.
I think few things could be more rewarding than investing in a company that develops a cure or effective treatment for any of the hundreds of conditions that affect millions of people with no effective treatment. But finding the right company can be fraught with risk. That’s one reason why angel and venture investors have been allocating funds to later stage companies that carry less risk.
Luke Timmerman of Xconomy and David Sable, the portfolio manager for the Special Situations Funds, each compiled a handy list of red flags that should make prospective investors in startup life science companies pause. Here are six of them.
Every country, every government, every population is a participant in a global trial and error. Each one faces different circumstances and, therefore, approaches healthcare differently. But, as world health leaders see it, everyone can learn from others’ struggles and successes to improve and simplify their respective strategies. Health information technology is at the core.
Finding the global lessons from local healthcare strategies facilitates progress toward Universal Health Coverage, or UHC, a public health concept championed notably by the World Health Organization and it’s director, Margaret Chan. According to Najeeb Al-Shorbaji, director of knowledge, management, and sharing at the WHO, in a statement released to Healthcare IT News, WHO defines UHC as “all people receiving quality health services that meet their needs without exposing them to financial hardship in paying for them.”
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Beacon Community program, established under the HITECH act, gives grants to local communities to explore health IT innovations. Three Beacon Communities that have been piloting text-message-based diabetes interventions published a paper in the Journal of Medical Internet Research detailing some challenges and best practices for implementing a mobile health intervention.
Voxiva powered all three interventions. Two of the communities, the Crescent City Community in New Orleans, Louisiana and the Southeast Michigan Community in Detroit, used txt4health, a 14-week program aimed at individuals at risk for diabetes. The other, the Utah Beacon Community in Salt Lake City, used Voxiva’s Care4Life platform, a 26-week program for adults already diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.
Biotechnology startups have stampeded to the public markets this year, but their colleagues in the medical device field have sat quietly on the sidelines.
Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News So far this year, 27 venture-backed biopharmaceutical companies have gone public, compared to just one medical device company, according to industry tracker Dow Jones VentureSource.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
The I2C Conference is a full-day event to help you get your technology moving forward. Come hear three in-depth panels on Innovation, Commercialization and Financing, including speakers from MedImmune Ventures, NASA/Goddard, NIH, Northrop Grumman Information Systems, University of Maryland and many more. Enjoy lunch with your Table Host to discuss issues affecting your innovation or small business with a subject matter expert from a federal lab, university tech transfer office, venture capital, business service organization and others. Tour the wealth of information in our Exhibit area. Apply to pitch your business for feedback at ConnecTech – spaces open for only 6 applicants until October 4th. Register today at the Early Bird rate of $30 to save $10 before the price increases on October 4th!
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.
Christy Wyskiel is the new senior adviser to the president for enterprise development at Johns Hopkins University. Wyskiel has previously worked as an investor in early stage and startup companies. She has also provided business and management support to startups, such as Hopkins spinout GrayBug.
Wyskiel officially takes on her new role leading Hopkins’ tech transfer office Jan. 1. But she’s already busy getting the lay of the land and helping map out what will come next for Hopkins with regard to technology commercialization.
When Pascal Soriot took the reins of AstraZeneca last fall, he said he planned to corral firms with promising innovations in their pipeline to reinvigorate the Anglo-Swedish pharma’s offerings.
And so he has – to the tune of more than $1 billion.
Since the former chief operating officer of Roche AG was named CEO on Oct. 1, 2012, the firm has made five acquisitions, five collaborations with other pharmas to develop drugs, and entered two licensing deals. Six of the 12 moves are tied to cancer treatment developments, a core focus for the firm, while the remaining are in diabetes and renal, kidney, cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
Governor Martin O’Malley today joined with Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett and City of Gaithersburg Mayor Sidney Katz to announce that Emergent BioSolutions is expanding into a new headquarters building in Gaithersburg, and also plans to make improvements to its existing Research and Development site. As part of the expansion, the global pharmaceutical company will retain its existing 235 employees, and hire an additional 133 employees over the next five years.
“Emergent BioSolutions’ continued investment in Maryland helps solidify our position as a life sciences powerhouse,” said Governor O’Malley. “I am proud that Emergent BioSolutions is growing in Maryland, continuing to create jobs and working to develop life-saving vaccines that will give hope to millions of people around the world.”
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield will offer up to $1.5 million in grants to help medical providers develop telemedicine-based behavioral health services, the Baltimore insurer announced this week.
CareFirst wants to seed projects that use video conferencing or other technologies to allow doctors and others to diagnose and treat patients remotely.
As an African-American man entering a Caucasian-dominated industry, Solomon Graham wasn’t intimidated when he founded Quality Biological in 1983, investing $10,000 of his own money to start the business.
The Gaithersburg company is one of the longest-operating biotechs in Montgomery County and has grown into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. It provides products and supplies for molecular and cell biology laboratories to use in infectious disease and cancer research.
A prominent health system CEO implored the Washington region’s employers to not drop their company health plans in response to the Affordable Care Act, predicting disastrous consequences for the industry if they do.
So far, most companies aren’t taking that step. But enough have to raise the alarm for William “Bill” Robertson, CEO of Gaithersburg-based Adventist HealthCare, which operates two Montgomery County hospitals and network of affiliated services.
“When I was a young entrepreneur, board meetings were by far the worst days of my life,” says Jeff Bonforte, the veteran company-builder who just sold his latest, Xobni, to Yahoo. “Board meetings are the height of insecurity for a CEO. Basically it’s a group of people who can both judge you and fire you based on that judgment.”
He’s had his fair share of bad experiences. At his first company, iDrive, he’d find himself every quarter standing in front of the room, sweating bullets, struggling to get through his meticulously-prepared slides. “It was a mess,” he says. “They’d just sit there and tell me how insufficient I was, how I needed to bring in someone more senior, or smarter. Then it just hit me. I don’t need this. I don’t need people to attack me for four straight hours. I need people who can help me.”
MedImmune’s venture arm has jumped in to lead a $12.5 million round for a Chapel Hill, NC-based startup that is working on a new drug to treat a common ailment spurred by chemotherapy. G1 Therapeutics, which was initially seeded by Hatteras Venture Partners to the tune of $600,000, says that the new funds will finance its IND work and point the company to proof-of-concept data on a drug designed to protect against myelosuppression–the loss of blood cells–during chemo. Hatteras Venture Partners and Mountain Group Capital contributed to the round.
G1 was founded on the work of Norman Sharpless at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and Kwok-Kin Wong at Harvard Medical School. They concluded that a cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor could play a big role in protecting the bone marrow of chemo patients.
Under Armour Inc. is hunting for the techies that can help the company beef up its fitness tracking device known as Armour39.
Armour39, a digital performance monitor launched in March, tracks an individual’s heart rate, calories burned and workout intensity, and provides a “WILLpower” score that reflects how hard an individual trained during a workout.
QIAGEN N.V. (frankfurt prime standard:QIA) today announced the Empowered Genome Community, which is a first-of-its-kind initiative to help people who have had their genomes sequenced share, explore, and interpret their data with researchers and each other. To highlight how the community can spark new biomedical insight, QIAGEN also released an open collaborative analysis of myopia in 111 people whose genomes were sequenced through Harvard’s Personal Genome Project (PGP), which is a public repository of well-phenotyped human genomes. Anyone – citizen scientist or full-time researcher alike – can directly review and help refine the analysis via QIAGEN’s Ingenuity® Variant Analysis(TM) (https://variants.ingenuity.com/community-myopia) with the goal of jointly publishing robust insights on myopia next year.
Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens plans to give Johns Hopkins University $20 million to help spur potentially vision-saving research at the school’s Wilmer Eye Institute.
The gift will be included in the 85-year-old’s estate and will create an endowment to fund a T. Boone Pickens Scholars program supporting scientists.
The Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute announced today that Randy W. Schekman, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at the University of California, Berkeley, Thomas C. Südhof, an HHMI investigator at Stanford University, and James E. Rothman of Yale University are the recipients of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discoveries of machinery regulating vesicle traffic, a major transport system in our cells.
According to the Nobel Assembly, this year’s Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine honors three scientists who have solved the mystery of how the cell organizes its transport system. Each cell is a factory that produces and exports molecules. For instance, insulin is manufactured and released into the blood and chemical signals called neurotransmitters are sent from one nerve cell to another. These molecules are transported around the cell in small packages called vesicles. The three Nobel Laureates have discovered the molecular principles that govern how this cargo is delivered to the right place at the right time in the cell.
Osiris Therapeutics shares rose Friday morning after the company said it is selling some of its stem cell therapy technology, including its transplant treatment Prochymal, to Mesoblast Ltd. in a deal that could be worth more than $100 million.
Prochymal treats bone marrow transplant cells that attack the recipient’s body, and it is approved in Canada and New Zealand but isn’t being sold. Osiris said it wants to focus on businesses with the greatest commercial potential. Its remaining products include Grafix, which is used to treat chronic and acute wounds, Ovation, which is used in tissue repair, and Cartiform, a treatment for acute cartilage injury.
There have been more than 30 initial public offerings of biotechnology companies so far this year, and there’s a line around the block of promising new entrants looking to debut on the public markets.
Angelika Warmuth/European Pressphoto Agency But don’t call it a bubble. Those in the know are calling it a boom, and saying the good times are likely to continue for biotech, even in the face of clinical setbacks and other bumps in the road.
Cleveland Clinic is in the midst of its annual Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit today at the new Global Center for Health Innovation. More than 1,100 entrepreneurs, investors, executives and clinicians have gathered for a show and tell of new ideas in the medical world. Cleveland Clinic Chief Information Officer C. Martin Harris talks about how the health system stays nimble on the innovation front.
Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the corporate venturing arm of Cleveland Clinic, was founded in 2000, and it has been hosting the Medical Innovation Summit since 2003. Since Cleveland Clinic Innovations was founded, it has:
There is one certainty about the current regulatory process for drug approval in the United States and Europe: No one likes it.
Manufacturers are frustrated by the need for large, complex, and lengthy clinical-development programs that often hinge on meeting a single endpoint in one pivotal clinical trial. As a result, the cost to bring a drug to market has been estimated to be well over $1 billion — and it may be much higher. Patients and providers are disturbed by lack of timely access to medicines that show early promise in addressing significant unmet needs. Even regulators, who are responsible for enforcing the current structure, chafe at what manufacturers typically present to them: successful trial results in patients who are carefully selected to show the drug offers benefits but who are not very representative of the broader population likely to receive it. Payers then have a mess on their hands: pressure to pay for premium-priced medications that, when broadly employed, don’t offer much therapeutic benefit over existing alternatives.
The research, by Gary Dushnitsky, Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School and his co-author Dr Alvarez-Garrido, is featured in the British Venture Capital Association’s report ‘The Missing Piece’ and finds that corporate venture capital is now the driving force behind cutting edge medical innovation.
Dr Dushnitsky, also Academic Director, Deloitte Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, said, “Biotech start-ups are increasingly turning to corporate venture capital arms, which are steadily on the rise, while traditional venture capital funds are partially drying out. In a recent Nature Biotechnology study, my co-author and I find that the shift in funding patterns is resulting in an increase in scientific publications as well as patenting output.
Nutty things are happening in biotech. Irrational exuberance has returned. Generalist investors with lots of money are suddenly buying these stocks first and asking questions later. Companies can fire off meaningless press releases, and be rewarded. I heard a big-time money manager talk the other day about a recent biotech IPO being one of the “best performers” in the market. It had a two-week track record, and had done nothing fundamental to earn its tag as a “best performer.”
If markets are driven by cycles of fear and greed, and I believe they are, we are in the greed cycle.
Investors are pouring venture capital dollars into the Washington region at a pace not seen in more than a decade.
Companies across the Washington region have attracted $1.15 billion in the first three quarters of the year, more money than the first three quarters of any year since 2001.
Investments in electronic health records, tools to help hospitals absorb physician practices anda group working with hospital systems to help them set up their own insurance plans. Those three health IT companies helped drive venture capital investment in the software sector, which hit a 12-year high in the third quarter. Medical device and biotechnology companies collectively marked their lowest investment for a nine month period since 2005, according to the MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. It is based on data from Thomson Reuters.
About $3.6 billion was invested in the software sector and there were 42o deals in the quarter.
You can purchase 14 gallons of organic milk or 396 lollipops. You can give her 33 rides on the Ferris wheel at the state fair, or you can get him a couple of violin lessons. You could put the money in a savings account, you could buy her her very own LeapFrog LeapPad Explorer digital learning tablet, or you could buy enough pizzas to feed all of her friends on the block. So many options, so many choices.
I took that money and got my daughter’s genes tested, ordering up an analysis of the composition of her very small self and its odds of living a long and healthy life. And in so doing, I in some small way tied her fate to the success of the company doing the analysis, a genetic-testing startup called 23andMe in Mountain View, California.
AstraZeneca and Taiwan’s National Research Program for Biopharmaceuticals (NRPB) today announced a collaborative program to support academic research proposals using open innovation as a catalyst for drug discovery. The program will connect expert physicians and scientists with a wide range of high-quality, small molecule compounds and biologics developed by AstraZeneca.
Successful research proposals submitted from academic institutes in Taiwan will be funded by the NRPB to explore new therapeutic uses for specific AstraZeneca compounds which may in turn lead to the development of novel therapies for patients. Further financial details were not disclosed. Areas of high interest include cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory, inflammation, autoimmune, oncology, infection and neuroscience diseases.
Each year, a committee of Cleveland Clinic doctors asks hundreds of their colleagues to weigh in on which emerging healthcare technologies they think will help shape their practice over the next 12 months.
Then, the committee evaluates nominations based on clinical impact, probability of commercial success, progress in commercialization and significant human interest, and produces a top 10 list announced at the end of the Clinic’s annual Medical Innovations Summit.
Biocrossroads, which provides money and support to Indiana’s life sciences industry, announced the seven finalists who stand to gain startup funding in its annual New Venture Competition. Six have biotech or healthcare in their sights. On Oct. 21, five of these companies will compete for $25,000 and access to the Indiana Seed II Fund‘s staff and network for early-stage business support at the Indiana Life Sciences Summit. Second and third place in this competition will rake in $15,000 and $10,000 respectively.
“The New Venture Competition has proven to be a great way for us to find and reward promising companies, and is an excellent opportunity for the competingcompanies to gain some exposure within Indiana’s life sciences community,’ David Johnson, president and CEO of BioCrossroads, said in a release.
StartUp Health, a New York-based incubator for health technology startups, admitted 14 new companies into its three-year development program this week. The program, which received 1,200 applications in the past year, aims to give new medical companies long-term mentoring and access to capital.
The new entrants include companies working on medication adherence, remote medical services and patient engagement in physical therapy. Cohero Health, a one-year-old company based in New York, aims to help kids with chronic asthma manage their condition.
Your liver could be “eating” your brain, new research suggests.
People with extra abdominal fat are three times more likely than lean individuals to develop memory loss and dementia later in life, and now scientists say they may know why.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
The National Capitol Area Local Chapter of SoPE in concert with the JHU Carey Business Schoo, MedChi, Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Center for Biotechnology Education, and the Medical Society of Northern Virginia present:
“The Health IT Explosion” What Big Providers Want: Value Proposition, Pricing & Closing the Deal!
Presenters:
Pete Celano, is an MBA from UVa, and has been in Digital Health for ten years. He was a co-founder of a start-up in Remote Patient Monitoring called BeClose.com (McLean, VA) and has been consulting primarily for big providers such as MedStar where he focuses on identifying solutions that Improve Outcomes, Reduce Costs, Enhance Revenue and Extend Access. He’s also consulted in Mobile Personal Emergency Response Systems, Home Testing for Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Holter Monitors, GERD drugs and Infusion Therapy.
Anand Iyer, PhD, currently serves as President and Chief Operating Officer of WellDoc Inc. WellDoc is a healthcare company that utilizes technology-based solutions to improve diabetes and other chronic disease outcomes and enhance a patient’s quality of life while systematically reducing healthcare costs. Prior to WellDoc, he was the leader of the global wireless solutions practice at PRTM Managment Consultants.
Joe Peterson, MD, is currently CEO of Specialists On Call (SOC), the nation’s premier provider of specialty physician consultations delivered via teleconferencing. Most recently a partner in United Westlabs, a hospital services company. Dr. Peterson has served on the Board of Directors of the Global Health Council, as a jurist for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awards in public health, and on the Board of Directors of the Aids Action Coalition.
The New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC, pronounced “Nice”) is a not-for-profit organization, working to improve healthcare for all New Yorkers through health information technology (health IT).
Founded in 2006 by healthcare leaders, in partnership with the New York State Department of Health, NYeC receives funding from state and federal grants to serve as the focal point for health IT in the State of New York. NYeC works to develop policies and standards, to assist healthcare providers in making the shift to electronic health records, and to coordinate the creation of a network to connect healthcare providers statewide. The goal of NYeC is that no patient, wherever they may need treatment within the State of New York, is ever without fast, secure, accurate, and accessible information.
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.
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.
Are you a Maryland biotechnology company or research organization working to commercialize a technology/product?
Apply by October 17th for the 2013-2014 BioMaryland Biotechnology Development Awards.
The BioMaryland Center annually awards $50,000-200,000 through its Biotechnology Development program to a fund life sciences projects which advance the movement of research and development toward commercialization.
More than $5 million has been distributed to 28 organizations through the Biotechnology Development Awards program since its inception in 2010. The program has yielded multiple success stories—including a university spin-out and a local company securing $25M in funding while quadrupling the number of its employees.
If Maryland is to meet the workforce demands of a growing cyber security industry, it’s going to have to offer students a hands-on experience in internships, one of the state’s top educators said on Tuesday.
“We need to start focusing on providing a significant amount of internships. It gives the students real-world experience,” said William “Brit” Kirwan said, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, to an audience at CyberMaryland 2013 in Baltimore.
Johns Hopkins University ranks 15th globally out of 400 research universities in the recently released 2013-2014 World University Rankings compiled by London’s Times Higher Education. The position marks a one-spot improvement over JHU’s ranking in the weekly publication’s 2012-2013 list.
The top 15 features 11 American universities—including the California Institute of Technology, which claimed the top spot for the third year in a row—and four foreign universities—Oxford (third), Cambridge (seventh), and Imperial College London (10th) in the U.K.; and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (14th) in Switzerland. Harvard, Stanford, and MIT joined Caltech and Oxford in the top five.
Shares of MacroGenics are surging in Thursday midday trading after the biotechnology company raised $80 million in its initial public offering.
MacroGenics sold 5 million shares of stock for $16 per share. It had expected to sell 4 million shares for $14 to $16 each. The $80 million total does not include expenses or underwriting discounts.
GlycoMimetics, Inc. announced today that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the proposed initial public offering of shares of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. GlycoMimetics has applied to list its common stock on the NASDAQ Global Market under the ticker symbol “GLYC.”
Jefferies LLC and Barclays Capital Inc. are acting as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering. Stifel is acting as co-lead manager and Canaccord Genuity Inc. is acting as co-manager.
The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. When available, copies of the preliminary prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained from Jefferies LLC, Equity Syndicate Prospectus Department, 520 Madison Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10022, by email at Prospectus_Department@Jefferies.com or by phone at 877-547-6340 or Barclays Capital Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by email at Barclaysprospectus@broadridge.com or by phone at 888-603-5847.
Bicoastal venture firm New Enterprise Associates owns 75.2 percent of GlycoMimetics Inc., making NEA by far the biggest beneficiary of the Gaithersburg biotech’s planned initial public offering.
The company revealed NEA’s outsized ownership in its IPO paperwork, filed on Friday. It is not yet clear whether the firm, which has a major office in Chevy Chase, plans to sell some of its 26.7 million shares in the offering.
BioMarker Strategies announced the appointment of Jerry Parrott as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director, effective immediately.
According to a release, Parrott will report to the Company’s Board of Directors, which will continue to be led by Chairman Jack Davis, a co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Dianon Systems.
Noble Life Sciences (Gaithersburg, MD), in collaboration with ImQuest BioSciences (Frederick, MD), has successfully developed a neutropenic mouse thigh model of infection and demonstrated its use in a study evaluating vancomycin for the treatment of Staphylococcus aureus infection. The model will serve as a new Noble service for the evaluation of the efficacy of novel anti-microbial compounds in the treatment of microbial infections.
Complicated skin and soft tissue infections are frequently encountered in clinical practice and are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in hospitalized patients. The neutropenic mouse thigh model of infection has been used extensively to test and benchmark antimicrobial drugs leading to a significant impact on our current knowledge of antimicrobial pharmacology. This model allows the quantitative comparison of different agents and different dosing regimes and the determination of the time-course of antimicrobial activity under conditions optimal for efficacy, i.e., neutropenia.
If UMD researchers are well on their way to creating a robot that can wiggle through the brain to root out the tumors deep within, then anything is possible. Plankton crawled through Spongebob’s cranium and now Dr. J. Marc Simard, a neurosurgeon at the University of Maryland School of Medicine; Jaydev Desai, a roboticist at the University of Maryland; and Rao Gullapalli, a radiologist, believe they’re developing something that can do the same.
It was Dr. Simard who fist came up with the idea after watching a show on TV featuring plastic surgeons using sterile maggots to root out damaged tissue from a patient. “It sounds strange, but it’s a real thing,” he said in an interview with NPR. That’s when the lightbulb went off. “If I could train maggots to resect brain tumors I would. I can’t do that, so robotic maggots are the next best thing.”
The University of Maryland (UM) BioPark announced today that the Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) Center for Translational Research (CTR) has signed a lease to relocate from its current operational base at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore County to the BioPark in West Baltimore. The CTR, one of three entities within the CHI Institute for Research and Innovation (CIRI), collaborates with biomedical researchers to focus on the intersection of biomedical advances in omics-based diagnostics and precision medicine. Under the terms of the signed lease, half of the CTR’s overall anticipated 50-person work force will occupy more than 11,000 square feet of laboratory and office space within the BioPark.
“It’s exciting to add the CHI Center for Translational Research to our growing list of BioPark occupants,” said Jim Hughes, President, Research Park Corporation, University of Maryland, Baltimore. “This organization is national in scope – and yet we are able to offer them an ideal location that allows the Center to stay local – moving from Baltimore County to the UM BioPark. Here, they have access to the University of Maryland School of Medicine and Medical Center, as well as the opportunity to be part of a growing life sciences community.”
Washington, D.C. has become one of the centers for high-tech innovation, spurring some of the biggest investments from venture capital firms in the country. In fact, according to The Atlantic Cities, D.C. ranks among the top 10 cities for venture capital funding.
With the influx of startups and entrepreneuers looking for funding, venture capitalists are beginning to leverage social media to brand their firm, position themselves as thought leaders, and attract the top talent in the city. With the help of Klout, an online-influence scoring site, we checked out which local VC firms are leveraging Twitter the best. Take a look at the factors involving Klout scoring here, and without furhter ado, here the highest ranking VC firms in D.C.
British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline will seek marketing approval for the world’s first malaria vaccine next year after trial data showed the shot significantly cut cases of the disease in African children.
The vaccine known as RTS,S was found, after 18 months of follow-up, to have almost halved the number of malaria cases in young children in the trial, and to have reduced by around a quarter the number of malaria cases in infants.
“Based on these data, GSK now intends to submit, in 2014, a regulatory application to the European Medicines Agency (EMA),” GSK, which has been developing the vaccine for three decades, said in a statement.
National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, Rockville, MD
Please join us for an enhanced networking reception with leaders from the Mid-Atlantic Region’s life science community. Take time to network with your peers and make new connections. After networking, Christopher Austin will give a short overview of the National Center for Advancing Translational Science (NCATS). He will speak more specifically on what NCATS will be doing, the goals and the impact of the life science community in terms of collaboration.
Wondering where the venture capital funding has gone in the healthcare industry? According to CB Insights, it’s the following 10 cities–for Q3 ’13 at least. (Listed in order of amounts of deals; note that though San Francisco saw more deals, San Diego saw more funding.)
I am sure many of you have watched an episode of Shark Tank on ABC. The show allows a startup entrepreneur to pitch their idea to a panel of five respected venture investors, who either like or don’t like the opportunity, and if they do, compete for the investment. Many of the times I have watched the show, I end up cringing watching these poor entrepreneurs become the victims of undermarket valuations or a rushed decision which makes for “good TV watching” for the viewers at home, but bad business decisions for the company. I wanted to compare Shark Tank to reality in the venture capital world, to confirm my assumption.
A total of 87 applicants from more than 30 cities across Russia sought to land one of just three residency openings in the U.S.-Russia Innovation Corridor (USRIC), a collaborative innovation initiative led by American Councils for International Education. Of the 12 finalists selected for interviews, two startups and one university technology transfer office will take on a renewable three-month residency in USRIC.
Through USRIC, the residents will collaborate with U.S. partners and develop new markets, using the resources of the Maryland International Incubator (MI2) housed at the University of Maryland at College Park (UMD).
DC Innovation Corps (I-Corps), the new, National Science Foundation-backed program aimed at translating the region’s vibrant research community into successful startups and licensed technologies, kicks off its first cohort this week at the George Washington University with 20 teams of inventors and current and aspiring entrepreneurs.
The cohort launches with a diverse mix of teams from the Children’s National Medical Center, Johns Hopkins University, University of Maryland, the George Washington University, Virginia Tech, George Mason University, and regional entrepreneurs from the Emerging Technology Center, Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) and bwtech@UMBC.
The HIMSS Innovation Center opens today in Cleveland, a city, known around the world for the Cleveland Clinic and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and one that prides itself on being a city of firsts.
HIMSS leaders who describe their 50,000-plus member organization of health IT professionals as “cause-based,” make no bones about their intent to shake things up in healthcare – more than a little bit.
Kids today … are actually doing some amazing stuff. Take 15-year-old Jack Andraka, who recently won the grand prize of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair for developing an early detection test for pancreatic cancer.
Andraka came up with the idea for the test after a close family friend died of pancreatic cancer. Using free online science papers, he formed a basis for the test, which looks for increased levels of a biomarker for pancreatic cancer in blood and urine. He contacted 197 scientists, seeking help with his research, and was rejected by each one, before Dr. Anirban Maitra at Johns Hopkins University agreed to donate lab space and help him develop his research.
Here’s what we know about the Affordable Care Act: 32 million Americans who would otherwise be uninsured will now have coverage. What you might not know is that Obamacare could also boost entrepreneurship by decoupling healthcare from employment.
How would that work? Existing research estimates that universal health insurance coverage could increase self-employment by as much as 3.5 percent. The reality is that many would-be risk-takers stay with their employers in large part due to the assurance of health insurance, in what economists refer to as “job lock,” or “entrepreneurship lock.” But, this pressure to be employed by a larger company is loosening as the Affordable Care Act makes it easier and less expensive to purchase individual coverage. Now, hopeful entrepreneurs can go out on their own in a far more efficient allocation of their skills, without gambling their own health coverage, or that of their family.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013 from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM (EST)
Join business, government and technology leaders for a high-level conversation on the transformation of health care through technology and innovation. Bloomberg Government’s first annual health care summit, “Mind the Gap: Connecting Health Care Policy with Next Century Innovation,” will convene health care innovators, medical professionals, and government officials who are helping to redesign U.S. health care during a time of innovation.
Panelists
The Honorable Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer, The White House
John Sculley, former CEO, Apple
Elli Kaplan, CEO and Co-Founder, Neurotrack
Dr. Keith Dunleavy, President, CEO and Chairman, Inovalon, Inc.
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.
This workshop on Oct 9th. had been cancelled due to the Government Shutdown and will be rescheduled at a later date.
With Fall approaching, everyone is preparing for their favorite things whether that’s football season, pumpkin carving, or more reasonable temperatures in Central Maryland. Fall is also a great time for the Small Business Innovation Research grant program throughout National Institutes of Health. In partnership with the NIH, BioHealth Innovation is sponsoring a fall gathering to talk about SBIR awards.
It’s useful to hear directly from NIH program officials on the current funding priorities per Institute. We have assembled program leads from NHLBI, NIAID, and NCI who can provide small businesses with more insight into their SBIR programs. They will also be available for one-on-one consultations at the conclusion of the event.
BioMarker Strategies announced the appointment of Jerry Parrott as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director, effective immediately.
According to a release, Parrott will report to the Company’s Board of Directors, which will continue to be led by Chairman Jack Davis, a co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Dianon Systems.
GlycoMimetics, Inc. announced today that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for the proposed initial public offering of shares of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. GlycoMimetics has applied to list its common stock on the NASDAQ Global Market under the ticker symbol “GLYC.”
Jefferies LLC and Barclays Capital Inc. are acting as joint book-running managers for the proposed offering. Stifel is acting as co-lead manager and Canaccord Genuity Inc. is acting as co-manager.
The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. When available, copies of the preliminary prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained from Jefferies LLC, Equity Syndicate Prospectus Department, 520 Madison Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10022, by email at Prospectus_Department@Jefferies.com or by phone at 877-547-6340 or Barclays Capital Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by email at Barclaysprospectus@broadridge.com or by phone at 888-603-5847.
Fyodor, a Baltimore-based biotechnology company, announced today that the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded the company a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 2 grant. The $729,000 funding will help accelerate Fyodor’s effort to develop and validate a noninvasive multi-disease urine-based diagnostic test for Acute Febrile Illness (AFI), enabling the differential clinical diagnosis of leading global health diseases like malaria, typhoid, dengue, and leptospirosis from a single urine specimen in patients with fever.
Berlin, Germany, and U.S.A. – Epigenomics AG (Frankfurt Prime Standard: ECX, OTC: EPGNY), the German-American cancer molecular diagnostics company, announced today that it has entered into a joint commercialization agreement with Polymedco Inc., a leading provider of colorectal cancer tests in North America. Both companies will jointly commercialize Epi proColon®, Epigenomics’ blood-based test for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, in North America.
Chevy Chase-based New Enterprise Associates has joined in a $10 million financing for Cydan LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based orphan drug accelerator.
The additional funding comes months after the project’s launch in April, and brings its total financing to $26 million. Lundbeckfond Ventures and Bay City Capital led the most recent financing.
As health systems and hospitals consolidate and battle for patients, they are starting to employ online consumer marketing efforts. A new Provider Web Presence Index is now available to track the success of providers.
Payer+Provider Syndicate has created the Provider Web Presence Index, which was released Tuesday, and evaluates the quality of the web presence of hospitals compared with competitors. The tool is based on a single indicator, which incorporates measures of web traffic, inbound linking and site relevance.
These days, having a strategic investor or partner has become almost a matter of survival for healthcare startups.
Corporate investing and partnering has really taken off over the last few years as pharma and medical device companies have opened their doors and wallets to find innovation outside of their four walls.
The University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Center for Vaccine Development announced on Thursday that it has received a renewed contract from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for its research and clinical studies.
“The University of Maryland’s Center for Vaccine Development has long been a partner of the federal government in the clinical evaluation of vaccines,” Karen L. Kotloff, a professor of pediatrics and medicine and the head of infectious disease and tropical pediatrics at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, said. “Renewal of our contract is a testimony to our expertise in helping protect people throughout the world against diseases that pose significant public health threats.”
After nearly 17 years, Elaine Amir, executive director of Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus, retired, effective Sept. 30. Elaine has been the face of Johns Hopkins in Montgomery County and a leader on several community boards and initiatives. Through her work, she touched many lives, both personally and professionally.
Before she left, Hopkins Happenings asked her to look back on her years leading JHU MCC:
Donald E. Ingber, a professor at Harvard University, has combined advanced electronics and biology to create a “lung on a chip,” a breakthrough device that could safely allow precise tests of risky new medical treatments before they are tried out on humans.
Just as eye-opening as his work, however, may be his source of federal financing.
It’s not the National Institutes of Health, the $30-billion agency that is the largest provider of federal basic-research money to universities. Instead it’s the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, an agency one-tenth as large as NIH and responsible primarily for meeting the military’s technological needs.
Cydan, LLC, an orphan drug accelerator that identifies and de-risks programs with therapeutic and commercial potential, today announced that the company has expanded its initial round of financing, bringing its total financing raised to $26 million. Cydan launched in April 2013 with a $16 million financing from New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Pfizer Venture Investments and Alexandria Venture Investments. New investors Lundbeckfond Ventures and Bay City Capital led the $10 million expansion of this round of financing and were joined by Cydan’s previous investors NEA and Alexandria Venture Investments. In conjunction with this investment, Lundbeckfond Ventures Managing Partner Mette Kirstine Agger, MBA and Bay City Capital Investment Partner and Managing Director Carl Goldfischer, M.D., are joining Cydan’s Board of Directors.
Sequencing the human genome seemed like a discovery so important that it couldn’t be overhyped—we had, after all, transcribed the blueprint for human life—but biotech executives somehow managed the trick. William Haseltine, the founder of Human Genome Sciences, predicted in 2000 that he would halve the time and money required to bring a drug to market. Randy Scott of Incyte Genomics claimed that, “In 10 years, we will understand the molecular basis for most human diseases.”
Not quite. The cost of bringing a drug to market has increased dramatically, quibbles about accounting methods notwithstanding. The process still takes more than a decade. We already had a thorough understanding of diseases linked to single genetic sequences, such as Huntington’s and cystic fibrosis, but if anything, exploring the genome has taught us how complicated the relationship between genes and diseases really is. Last year, for example, researchers in Canada linked 71 genetic regions to inflammatory bowel disease, bringing the total to 163 and counting.
An early-stage investment fund founded by Revolution has raised $200 million in commitments, blowing past its $150 million goal. The new fund, Revolution Ventures, will invest in technology firms, mostly under $10 million in revenue, that are seeking to disrupt traditional industries.
“We are doing the things that we’ve been doing for the last decade,” Revolution co-founder Steve Case said. “Trying to find early-stage companies that are using technology to disrupt traditional industries, create new business models and have all kinds of different aspects that we find interesting.”
Two days into a government shutdown over resulting from the Congressional showdown over funding Obamacare, funding is at the front of mind for many researchers who rely at least partially on grants from National Institutes of Health and other government sources. A survey of 608 translational researchers revealed that although insufficient funding is a significant barrier to the path to commercializing their work, there are other related challenges that are just as critical to their future.
How can translational researchers improve the rate of reproducible results? What other factors are undercutting funding? Where can they find collaboration opportunities?
The STEM workforce in the DC area is sizable and totals about 330,000 workers. Some of these employees are retiring, some are changing jobs, and others are getting promotions leaving positions open. The healthy STEM climate means that there are a lot of job opportunities at all levels. But where do your students find STEM jobs? On TCM’s targeted career center, CORE.
CORE is a comprehensive resource for finding all levels of biotechnology, technology, and business jobs in the Mid-Atlantic region.CORE provides detailed job and internship listings in 15 categories that are updated frequently and promoted through our social media channels for easy access. Many companies in the area that hire STEM workers are TCM members and are vested in hiring local talent. So prepare your students for success and direct them to CORE. In addition to job listings, we also offer timely career resource articles to help students meet the many challenges of their job search.
Want to show your students that you’re committed to their future? Purchase a banner ad on the CORE website to let local companies know about the courses, certificates, and degrees you offer to prepare your students for STEM jobs.
Even people without diabetes could be at higher risk of dying from disease
High blood sugar has been linked to a greater risk of dying from several types of cancer, a potentially worrying finding for countries with growing rates of obesity.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland, USA and Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea made the discovery by following more than 1.2 million Koreans for 10 years.
A veteran biotechnology reporter once complained privately that covering the industry was like watching grass grow—companies seemed to inch by slow degrees toward products and profits, sustained by a dwindling stream of funding.
For an antidote to that dreary picture, consider the swift developments at StartX Med, a life sciences accelerator program founded by Stanford University students in 2012. It’s a health care-oriented offshoot of StartX, the original student-initiated incubator program for researchers and others affiliated with Stanford.
BIO’s announced agreement with National Science Foundation (NSF) to bring SBIR-funded, early-stage biotech companies to present at BIO Investor Forum 2013. Presenting companies in NSF track include ADMdx, Biodesy, Carmot, CertiChem, Jade Therapeutics, Nano3D Biosciences, Nanofiber Solutions, Parabon Nanolabs, Stemina, and Tymora Analytical Operations. All are funded by NSF and focused on drug discovery, diagnostics, and other platform technologies.
When Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Intuitive Surgical hit the market in 1999 with its surgical robot, da Vinci, the company and many of its early adopters hailed the new technology as a revolution that would benefit patients, surgeons and the health care system as a whole. Da Vinci combines high-definition visual tools with robot-guided medical instruments that allow surgeons to do complicated procedures using a few tiny incisions. The da Vinci system, which is widely used in urologic surgeries such as the removal of prostate tumors, has been shown by Intuitive and outside researchers to reduce post-surgery complications and shorten hospital stays.
The Department of Health and Human Services isn’t the only federal agency interested in funding medical research.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense’s primary innovation engine that’s responsible for developing new technologies for use by the military, also frequently undertakes project in biology, medicine and neuroscience.
Improving health literacy and patient engagement and developing alternative ways to appraise apps and physicians are among the ideas that have reached the finals of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation competition. The people and companies behind these ideas are vying for the opportunity to get funding as part of a program to fund transformative innovations in healthcare.
Among the judges are Angel investor Esther Dyson (@edyson), PatientsLikeMe Co-Founder and President Ben Heywood (@patientslikeme), Rhode Island School of Design President John Maeda(@johnmaeda), IDEO Life Sciences Chief Strategist Rodrigo Martinez(@rodrigoatcg), Games for Health Co-Founder Ben Sawyer (@bensawyer), Fast Company Staff Writer Ben Schiller(@btschiller) and NPR Science Correspondent Shankar Vedantam(@hiddenbrain).
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.
University of Maryland, Baltimore and MedImmune are pairing up for a five-year, $6 million collaboration on bioscience research.
The Gaithersburg-based drug company and the university will both put money and scientists toward joint research projects. The projects will focus on medical conditions and diseases in MedImmune’s wheelhouse, such as cardiovascular disease, respiratory problems and inflammation.
The success of MenAfriVac shows vaccines can be developed outside Big Pharma’s walls, but, in most cases, the cost of late-phase trials is too great for charities. Recognizing this, JPMorgan Chase and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have set up a Big Pharma-backed investment fund.
GlaxoSmithKline ($GSK), Merck ($MRK) and Pfizer’s ($PFE) foundation are among the investors in the fund, which will back late-stage development of technologies to fight disease in low-income countries. Having raised $94 million from its initial backers, the Global Health Investment Fund (GHIF) will now start trying to give vaccines and other technologies the financial clout to navigate Phase III trials.
GL-2045 is Gliknik’s Lead Recombinant Stradomer™ Designed to Improve on Pooled Human Intravenous Immunoglobulin
Gliknik Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company, today announced that it has entered into an exclusive worldwide licensing agreement with Pfizer Inc. for GL-2045, Gliknik’s recombinant stradomer™, a drug candidate that is designed to replace and improve on pooled human intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG). GL-2045 has shown promising results in a broad range of preclinical tests and is being developed as a potential treatment for a wide variety of autoimmune diseases, including those in which IVIG is clinically used.
“GL-2045 is the first of several innovative drug candidates Gliknik is advancing for people with autoimmune diseases and cancer,” said Gliknik CEO David S. Block. “We selected Pfizer as our partner to progress GL-2045 from among several interested and capable parties because of its exceptional development, manufacturing and commercial capabilities.”
Emergent Biosolutions, the maker of the only FDA-licensed anthrax vaccine, is expanding its footprint in Montgomery County, with a little bit of financial help from the state and county. Emergent is taking 50,000-square feet (the precise number was reported by the Washington Business Journal earlier this month) at 400 Professional Dr., a 129,360-square foot, five-story building here, owned by Corporate Office Properties Trust. It will be moving 112 of its current employees to the building in early 2015. Emergent plans to purchase building, which is adjacent to its current research and development facility located at 300 Professional Dr.
What is interesting about the deal is the rare glimpse it reveals about the type of state and county incentives available for such transactions: the State of Maryland contributed $2 million, Montgomery County $750,000 and the City of Gaithersburg $250,000.
At a time when many states are looking to their research universities as sources of innovation and entrepreneurship, it is great to see that the University of Maryland is finally being recognized nationally. Howard Marks, an experienced entrepreneur, created the 2013 StartEngine College Index and identified the University of Maryland College Park as the top public university. I might add that the top private university is Northwestern, a fellow member of the BIG 10, which UM is joining as of 2014.
-Brian Darmody, Associate Vice President for Corporate and Foundation Relations, University of Maryland
As the Managing Director at a tech accelerator, I face a dilemma. I need to fund the most talented people, because they’ll be most likely to build great companies. But I also need to find the hidden gems. I’m the sort of person who’s always looking for the best deals. Let me tell you, great deals almost always come from unexpected sources.
Here’s the problem: If I look for talent in the same places everyone else does — at Stanford, Harvard, and MIT — I’ll have to fight crowds of investors and even other accelerators who are trying to do the same thing I am. I don’t like lines, and I hate waiting, so I don’t go with the crowd. I try to create value where others don’t recognize it.
Anyone can have a great business idea, and now students don’t have to be enrolled in the business school to get help making their ideas a success. This semester, the business school’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship expanded its Innovation Fridays program to reach students of all majors. The program, which used to be advertised only to business school students, gives student entrepreneurs free consultations with successful business owners to get advice for starting their own small businesses, promoting social causes or creating new technology.
Earlier this year Sun Yat-sen University, a well-regarded institution in Guangzhou in the Guangdong province of China, announced that the university and affiliated hospitals were entering into a novel collaboration with Johns Hopkins Medicine. The agreement would see Hopkins faculty working bilaterally with Sun Yat-sen’s medical faculty both in China and at Hopkins in order to help the university become a world-class biomedical research institute. The deal has significant implications for U.S. hospitals because, facing declining revenues, international collaborations like these offer a new path for growth.
It was the 30th major, revenue-producing, international healthcare collaboration for Johns Hopkins Medicine, with several more currently under negotiation — when the rest of the world combined has perhaps a few dozen similar partnerships. One reason Hopkins is outpacing others is because it created an agile satellite unit – Johns Hopkins Medicine International (JHI) – within the much larger parent organization solely dedicated to these projects.
Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Research Park Corporation – also known as bwtech@UMBC – hosted a ceremony today for the first graduating class of the Cyber Cync Program: AccelerEyes, Five Directions and Oculis Labs.
The event also marked the expansion of bwtech@UMBC’s Cyber Incubator program, a sign of the program’s success and the positive economic impact both initiatives are making on the region.
Newt Fowler looked across Baltimore’s Renaissance Hotel ballroom and noted who was missing from the tables.
Sure, there are plenty of leaders in today’s innovation economy in Baltimore, Fowler told the crowd Thursday at the Greater Baltimore Committee’s Economic Outlook Conference.
Baltimore’s Sage Growth Partners sees opportunity where others see a headache.
Over the past few years Sage, a health care technology consulting firm, has seen business pick up as more health care providers look for help installing and managing the new electronic record systems. CEO Don McDaniel declined to disclose the company’s revenue but said Sage has seen 50 percent annual growth for the past five years. That’s a trend he expects to continue as the company makes a move to break into consulting for startup companies in the health IT sector.
As mobile health advocates clamor for scientific proof to support their emerging field, Johns Hopkins University has introduced mHealth Evidence, an online reference tool designed to help researchers quickly locate literature demonstrating the feasibility, usability and efficacy of mobile technologies in healthcare.
After a soft launch in June, the Center for Communication Programs at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore this week formally introduced mHealth Evidence via the school’s federally funded Knowledge for Health (K4Health) project. “We wanted to have one, designated site to bring together mHealth evidence,” Heidi Good Boncana, a program officer for strategic communication, ICT and innovation in the Center for Communication Programs, told MobiHealthNews.
The National Institutes of Health has launched a major initiative to improve how basic science advances and discoveries are translated into commercially viable products that improve patient care and advance public health.
The NIH Centers for Accelerated Innovations (NCAIs), funded by the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), will target technologies to improve the diagnosis, treatment, management, and prevention of heart, lung, blood, and sleep disorders and diseases.
mHealth advocates are giving good early reviews to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s final guidance document on the regulation of mobile medical apps, with one expert calling it “an expansive document that truly seeks to deregulate our nimble and innovative industry, while ensuring patient safety.”
“The guidance goes much further than I thought it would,” said Robert Jarrin, senior director of government affairs for Qualcomm, who noted that the agency has taken a new and novel approach in launching a consumer-facing website with an adjoining list of regulated apps that may be updated on a regular basis. In addition, he said, the FDA is creating a team that will be tasked with answering public inquiries about mobile medical apps submitted through mobilemedicalapps@fda.hhs.gov.
Now on its eighth run, the NIH SBIR Phase I Program for First-Time Applicants is a very practical step-by-step, four-hour online “How-To” workshop over two evenings to help researchers, faculty members, graduate students, post-docs and entrepreneurs create a SBIR company and apply to the NIH SBIR program in December of 2013. This workshop includes a post-course review of the applicant’s proposed SBIR application by our experts before submission to the NIH. As an added benefit, your SBIR companies will be included on NCET2’s newsletters that is sent out to VCs, angel investors, Global 1000 companies, and government funders.
The NIH SBIR/STTR program is one of the federal government’s best mechanisms to continue funding innovative life science research after traditional research funding has been exhausted. The objective of the program is to dramatically increase the impact of innovations derived from original federally funded R&D, and as such is an ideal program to fund university commercialization of research through new university/faculty/student startup companies. Phase I can be for up to $150,000 for 6 months. Phase II can be for up to $1 million for 2 years. After Phase I and II, the company should have eliminated enough technical and scientific risk of the original research that the company is ready for outside investor funding or product sales in the company sustainability final Phase III of the SBIR program.
Something as mundane and common as giving and receiving compliments may be a serious challenge if you are an immigrant.
Over the years, I have learned, often the hard way, the essential importance of receiving and giving compliments, at home, at work, and in social or semi-social environment. Generally speaking, East Asian cultures tend to be more reserved in expressing appreciations or affection toward others compared to the American culture (some generalization here). We have all heard of such jokes about Asian parents singling out the only “B” in the child’s report card amidst all other “A”s and demand to know why the child had failed to get straight “A”s, while American-born parents would emphasize on the progress or efforts rather than the outcome.
Health IT groups and mobile application developers’ reaction to FDA’s release of final guidance for mobile health apps is mixed, the Baltimore Sun reports (Wells/Clarke, Baltimore Sun, 9/23).
Details of Final Rule
According to the final guidance issued Monday, FDA will focus oversight on apps that:
Were developed to be used as accessories to regulated medical devices, such as apps that allow health care providers to make diagnoses by viewing medical images on smartphones or tablets; or
Can transform mobile devices into regulated medical devices, such as apps that allow a smartphone to be used as an electrocardiography machine (iHealthBeat, 9/23).
The United States Food and Drug Administration has finally released guidelines on how it plans to regulate thousands of new health-related smartphone applications.
After months of delaying its decision, the agency has determined that the vast majority of these health-related apps pose a negligible threat to consumers. Most of these “mobile medical” apps do not need federal regulation, the FDA found, so developers and investors can breathe a bit easier.
These days, having a strategic investor or partner has become almost a matter of survival for healthcare startups. Corporate investing and partnering has really taken off over the last few years as pharma and medical device companies have opened their doors and wallets to find innovation outside of their four walls.
Bureaucracy is one of the dirty words in business. Nobody wants to publicly admit their company is bogged down with too many layers of management, or needs a dozen committees to sign off on every little decision. For a couple years now, I’ve been hearing entrepreneurs complain about suffocating bureaucracy in pharma.
A new investment fund structured by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will, for the first time, allow individual and institutional investors the opportunity to finance late-stage global health technologies that have the potential to save millions of lives in low-income countries.
With $94 million committed by a pioneering group of investors – including anchor support from Grand Challenges Canada (funded by the Government of Canada), the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (acting through KfW) and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation – the Global Health Investment Fund (“GHIF” or the “Fund”) will help advance the most promising interventions to fight challenges in low-income countries such as malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and maternal and infant mortality. To help mitigate the risk of investing in the clinical development of new technologies, the Gates Foundation and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency have committed to partially offset potential losses in the Fund, which will seek a financial return for investors by targeting high-impact technologies with public health applications in both developed and emerging markets.
President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act into law on April 5, 2012. BIO advocated strongly for this new law, which includes several important policies designed to stimulate capital formation for growing businesses, including those in the biotech industry. Some of the new policies were self-effectuating, while others are awaiting rulemaking at the SEC. Below is a summary of the relevant provisions in the new law, along with a status update on the implementation process for each.
Companies spent $294 billion on research and development performed in the United States during 2011, compared with $279 billion during 2010 (table 1). Funding from the companies’ own sources was $222 billion during 2010 and $239 billion during 2011; funding from other sources was $57 billion in 2010 and $55 billion in 2011 (table 2). Data for this InfoBrief are from the Business R&D and Innovation Survey (BRDIS), which was developed and cosponsored by the National Science Foundation and Census Bureau.
The National Institutes of Health is making available approximately $3.7 million for awards to enhance training opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars to prepare them for careers in the biomedical research workforce that could take them outside of conventional academic research.
The first set of NIH Director’s Broadening Experience in Scientific Training (BEST) awards are supported through the NIH Common Fund’s Strengthening the Biomedical Research Workforce program.
Venture capital for early-stage medical device companies is drying up. At Advamed 2013, I was able to sit down and talk to Paul Grand, managing director at Research Corporation Technologies Ventures, a life sciences firm focused primarily on medical devices. When I asked him what the three main mistakes startups make when pitching him, he sighed. His first response: “Only three?”
Ouch. So be sure to avoid these blunders when pitching VCs, startup CEOs:
Covidien President and CEO Joe Almeida said in a little more than a decade, sub-Saharan Africa could be the big opportunity for medical device companies’ solution investments.
“It is a 10- or 15-year play. . . . The middle class will rise and you will have an opportunity,” Almeida said during the CEOs Unplugged series at Advamed 2013.
At Rock Health, entrepreneurs are developing innovative products to keep us healthier, and lower medical care costs.
Ten health startups in Rock Health’s current accelerator class presented to a roomful of investors and the press today. Rock Health is a startup accelerator that focuses on health care technology.
The current class of startups are tackling huge challenges in health care, such as cancer treatment or eating disorders.
Do you love health technology? Do you want to learn more about it? Do you want to teach others and collaborate with local experts?
Call it what you want–mobile health, digital health, health IT–it’s all about using innovative technology to improve the lives of you, me, and the people we care about. Let’s build an ecosystem dedicated to making health technology part of everyday life and the standard of care! Being located in the Maryland area, we have all the pieces to the puzzle to promote innovation, collaboration, and investment in an industry that will revolutionize healthcare and impact the lives of all 7+ billion people around the world.
Join our ecosystem for the MD HealthTech Coalition Kickoff Event and hear from a panel of experts about the challenges, opportunities, and innovative solutions. More details to follow…
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.
Partnership with Johns Hopkins and BioHealth Innovation, Inc. will speed 10 healthtech startups to market
Ronald J. Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins
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.”
Johns Hopkins University and BioHealth Innovation are partnering with Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures to bring a new health IT accelerator to Baltimore. The accelerator, called DreamIt Health Baltimore, is being supported by a portion of a $520,000 federal grant awarded to BioHealth Innovation and the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore.
A health IT accelerator is launching in Baltimore with the aim of pulling more technology out of Baltimore’s biggest research university and drawing more companies into the city. DreamIt Health Baltimore will host a class of 10 startup companies for a four-month accelerator program in Baltimore beginning in January. The accelerator is part of DreamIt Ventures outside Philadelphia.
Aris Melissaratos is being replaced as Johns Hopkins University’s top technology commercialization adviser, as the university looks to delve deeper into entrepreneurship. Christy Wyskiel, an entrepreneur and investor, has been named senior adviser to the president for enterprise development at Hopkins. Beginning Jan. 1, Wyskiel will oversee Hopkins’ efforts to commercialize technology and research of faculty members.
DreamIt Health, the healthcare-focused branch of Philadelphia startup accelerator DreamIt Ventures, is launching a Baltimore, Maryland class in partnership with Johns Hopkins University. BioHealth Innovation, an organization geared toward bringing more innovation and entrepreneurship to Maryland, is co-sponsoring the class with Hopkins.
With Fall approaching, everyone is preparing for their favorite things whether that’s football season, pumpkin carving, or more reasonable temperatures in Central Maryland. Fall is also a great time for the Small Business Innovation Research grant program throughout National Institutes of Health. In partnership with the NIH, BioHealth Innovation is sponsoring a fall gathering to talk about SBIR awards.
It’s useful to hear directly from NIH program officials on the current funding priorities per Institute. We have assembled program leads from NHLBI, NIAID, and NCI who can provide small businesses with more insight into their SBIR programs. They will also be available for one-on-one consultations at the conclusion of the event.
As a result of a strategic collaboration among the Maryland, Montgomery County and City of Gaithersburg economic development offices, Emergent Biosolutions – maker of the only FDA-licensed anthrax vaccine to protect against anthrax disease – will expand its headquarters in Montgomery County.
“Montgomery County was thrilled to partner with the State of Maryland and the City of Gaithersburg to provide Emergent Biosolutions with strategic funding to assist with their significant headquarters expansion in the County,” said Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett. “Emergent has the only FDA-licensed anthrax vaccine on the market, 235 current jobs, plans to add 133 new jobs over five years and was in the top 20 on the Washington Business Journal’s recent list of top 100 largest publicly traded companies; they are a poster-child for smart government investment, investment that will support both their continued contributions to global health and their continued contributions to the health of our local economy.”
The University of Maryland has once again made The Princeton Review’s list of the country’s top entrepreneurship programs. In the 2014 list of the “Top 50 Schools For Entrepreneurship Programs,” published in Entrepreneur magazine, UMD ranks No. 15 for its undergraduate program. The university also ranks No. 16 for its graduate program, up eight spots from the 2013 rankings.
The University System of Maryland played a role in launching or propelling about 180 startup companies in fiscal 2013, according to a new report from the university system.
The companies’ ties to a state university varied — some licensed technology developed at a university, others leased office space at a university research park and took advantage of the resources there, and still others were heavily coached and mentored by university experts.
Sure, Johns Hopkins University is known for its medicinal prowess, but what better way to increase the university’s influence on the health care sector than by cosponsoring an accelerator aimed toward spurring the growth of more health information technology companies.
Johns Hopkins announced its plans to work with DreamIt Health Baltimore on Wednesday, a four-month long boot camp for innovators in the health IT business. Teaming up with BioHealth Innovation and DreamIT Ventures, Johns Hopkins will be powering the accelerator designed to fast-track promising ideas aimed at solving problems in America and abroad.
The University of Maryland, Baltimore, has broken ground on its largest building ever, a $305.4 million, 10-story, 428,970-square-foot biomedical research facility called the Health Sciences Facility (HSF) III. University of Maryland President Jay A. Perman, MD, was joined by Gov. Martin O’Malley, Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, University of Maryland School of Medicine Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, and several hundred invited guests at a groundbreaking ceremony Sept. 17 on the site of the new building ý the old dental school facility on North Pine Street.
“This is a proud day for the University of Maryland, Baltimore,” Dr. Perman told the crowd. The campus has expanded from 1.9 million square feet in 1975 to occupy 5.9 million square feet in 2013, he noted. “The University of Maryland, Baltimore, the University System of Maryland’s founding campus, has experienced robust growth in recent years. The Health Sciences Facility III further strengthens our footprint in west Baltimore and, as a result, our economic impact on the city and the state. We’re privileged to be able to help revitalize our critical important Baltimore neighborhoods and the state of Maryland as a whole, and at the same time, enable biomedical research and education that has the potential to save lives.”
The University of Maryland (UMD) and Siemens Corporation announced today the largest ever in-kind software grant from Siemens PLM Software. The in-kind grant has a commercial value of more than $750 million. Siemens’ product lifecycle management (PLM) software will provide UMD students and researchers with a uniquely valuable and sophisticated design and simulation tool for course work, research, academic projects and team-based competitions.
This in-kind grant from Siemens gives students and faculty access to the same technology that companies around the world depend on every day to develop and manufacture innovative products in a wide variety of industries, including automotive, aerospace, biotechnology, machinery, shipbuilding, and high-tech electronics, among others.
When GlaxoSmithKline made a clean sweep of Human Genome Sciences execs last year following its $3.6 billion buyout of the Rockville biotech, one big question (among many) was where would they land?
At least two have found their way back into Maryland biotechs. Last month, former HGS chief commercial officer Barry Labinger joined Anthrax-vaccine-maker Emergent BioSolutions as head of its bioscience division. And on Thursday, pre-IPO biotech MacroGenics announced the appointment of David Stump, formerly executive vice president for research and development at Human Genome, to its board of directors.
To us, biomedical research is not an abstract idea funded by wasteful government spending. It is work done by driven and passionate young people like ourselves who want to save lives — but that work requires money, resources, and time.
We are a group of graduate students at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Medical Scientist Training Program, earning our joint MD-PhD degrees with the goal of becoming physician scientists. We aim to be well versed in both scientific research methods and clinical practice so that we can expand and improve medical care, save lives, decrease the cost of health care and drive medicine forward. Thus far, the discussion surrounding the sequestration has lacked the perspective of trainees in biomedical research and the implications that budget cuts have had on our training and future careers.
Rockville biotechnology company Emergent BioSolutions plans to buy a Gaithersburg building and move its 112 employees at its headquarters there, as well as add 133 jobs over the next five years, executives said Monday.
As part of the deal, the Gaithersburg City Council was expected to consider awarding a $250,000 economic development grant to Emergent during its meeting Monday evening.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today announced that the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, Inc. and BioHealth Innovation, Inc. of Montgomery County have been awarded a combined $520,000 grant through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DOC) Economic Development Administration (EDA). The federal funding will be used to establish the Healthcare Regional Innovation Cluster (H-RIC) initiative which will combine the strengths of Maryland’s cutting-edge health research institutions and unique federal assets to speed the development of new treatments and cures, supporting Maryland jobs and keeping families healthy.
Arizona State University and Mayo Clinic announced today that Mayo will become a technology transfer participant to join Arizona Furnace, the startup accelerator that supports entrepreneurial teams using designated research discoveries and intellectual property as the basis for new companies.
As ASU and its current partners prepare to launch the second application season for AZ Furnace, Mayo Clinic will provide access to high potential technologies in their extensive intellectual property vault. These technologies, as well as those from ASU, Northern Arizona University and Dignity Health in Arizona, will be made available to entrepreneurs interested in using those discoveries to create products, services and new companies.
Fenwick & West LLP, one of the nation’s premier law firms providing comprehensive legal services to high technology and life science clients, today announced the results of its First Half 2013 Life Science Venture Capital Survey.
The survey analyzes the valuations and terms of venture financings for 149 life science companies headquartered in the United States that reported raising capital during the first half of 2013, as well as trends in venture capital financings, fundraising and exit events.
A report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), “Health IT-Enabled Quality Measurement: Perspectives, Pathways, and Practical Guidance,” outlines experts’ viewpoints on how information technologies are advancing the science of quality measurement. Over the course of the 2-year project, diverse perspectives were identified regarding how to operationalize quality measurement as well how to prioritize iterative advancements in health IT-enabled quality measurement.
Stakeholders agreed on the importance of addressing measure development, implementation, and testing; data elements and data capture; data access, sharing, aggregation, and integration; patient engagement; and collaboration and education. They also agreed that they would like to see quality measurement move beyond “checking the box” to truly support the quality improvement process. They suggested that quality measurement should be actionable and timely to allow patients and providers opportunities to improve care.
The idea that technology will change medicine is as old as the electronic computer itself. Actually, even older. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, the man with the vision for the National Institutes of Health, foresaw a Memex computer program that would allow access to past books and records. A lone physician searching for a diagnosis in far-flung case histories was one of the applications Bush imagined.
Medicine is an information intensive industry. Yet there’s still no medical Memex. Even though the Internet teems with health information, study after study shows that medical care often differs greatly from what the guidelines say—when there are guidelines. Doctors frequently rely on their own experience, rather than the experience of millions of patients who have seen thousands of doctors. Not only is the past lost, the present is missing. How many times has a patient received a drug that causes an allergic reaction, just because that information is not available at the time it is needed?
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.
With Fall approaching, everyone is preparing for their favorite things whether that’s football season, pumpkin carving, or more reasonable temperatures in Central Maryland. Fall is also a great time for the Small Business Innovation Research grant program throughout National Institutes of Health. In partnership with the NIH, BioHealth Innovation is sponsoring a fall gathering to talk about SBIR awards.
It’s useful to hear directly from NIH program officials on the current funding priorities per Institute. We have assembled program leads from NHLBI, NIAID, and NCI who can provide small businesses with more insight into their SBIR programs. They will also be available for one-on-one consultations at the conclusion of the event.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today announced that the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, Inc. and BioHealth Innovation, Inc. of Montgomery County have been awarded a combined $520,000 grant through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DOC) Economic Development Administration (EDA). The federal funding will be used to establish the Healthcare Regional Innovation Cluster (H-RIC) initiative which will combine the strengths of Maryland’s cutting-edge health research institutions and unique federal assets to speed the development of new treatments and cures, supporting Maryland jobs and keeping families healthy.
A sizeable portion of a federal grant will go toward launching an intensive, 16-week accelerator program for health information technology entrepreneurs in Maryland.
Rich Bendis, president and CEO of BioHealth Innovation, said participants in the competitive program will come to Baltimore, meet with potential investors and partners and access the resources of Johns Hopkins Medicine, one of the partners in the accelerator. Officials will unveil more details of the program within a couple of weeks.
BioHealth Innovation, a Rockville-based group that acts as an intermediary between research institutions and the private sector, was one of two Maryland organizations that received a combined $520,000 grant, announced Wednesday, to help grow the state’s burgeoning biotechnology industry. The Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, an economic development group, was the other recipient.
United Therapeutics Corporation announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has acknowledged the resubmission of the new drug application (NDA) for treprostinil diolamine extended release tablets (oral treprostinil) for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. The FDA classified the resubmission as a complete, class 2 response to its March 22, 2013 complete response letter, and set a user fee goal date of February 16, 2014.
About United TherapeuticsUnited Therapeutics Corporation is a biotechnology company focused on the development and commercialization of unique products to address the unmet medical needs of patients with chronic and life-threatening conditions.
The University of Maryland and Northrop Grumman will jointly announce the launch of the Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES), the nation’s first cybersecurity honors program for undergraduates, at a special event on Wednesday, September 25, 2013, from 10:30-11:30 a.m. in the Stamp Student Union Atrium on the University of Maryland College Park Campus.
The ACES program is designed to educate future leaders in the field of cybersecurity through rigorous, hands-on learning experiences, an intensive interdisciplinary curriculum, collaborative projects, and professional insight from industry and business leaders. The four-year honors program offers students a living-learning experience, giving them the opportunity to collaborate and work closely together as they pursue their advanced program of study in cybersecurity. The inaugural ACES cohort is comprised of 57 students. The ACES program is supported by a major grant from Northrop Grumman. For more information about the program, visit aces.umd.edu.
The Abell Foundation underwrote a comparison of Baltimore’s innovation ecosystem with that of Boston. Sean Pool and Matt Van Itallie, of Canterbury Road Partners, undertook the work and their report is telling of the challenges in front of us, but also reveals great promise of the resources we already have and what Baltimore’s innovation ecosystem can become. The full report can be found on the Abell Foundation website.
This video is the first in a series about Startup Shell, the first student-founded, student-run venture incubator at the University of Maryland.
The Startup Shell is a vibrant co-working space at UMD where talented students guide their colleagues through ideation, research and development, product prototyping, business model creation and more.
Startup Shell is located in the Technology Advancement Program (TAP) incubator, an initiative of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) in the A. James Clark School of Engineering.
University System of Maryland increased the number of new companies formed out of university technology by 29 percent in fiscal 2013 and is aiming to keep up the pace this year.
The university system credits the growth in new businesses in part to its heightened focus on entrepreneurship and transforming university research to commercial technology. Assistant Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Suresh Balakrishnan said the university system will look to continue adding new companies by looking for new ways to support startups, such as an investment fund.
The Johns Hopkins University edged closer to the top 10 of national universities on the U.S. News and World Report annual rankings, which were released Tuesday.
U.S. News moved Hopkins up one spot to No. 12, just behind Dartmouth University and tied with Northwestern University, in the most-often cited of numerous college rankings. It was the highest ranking for Hopkins in 14 years. As expected based on prior rankings, Princeton, Harvard and Yale remained in the top three spots, in that order.
Cars entering UMBC’s campus from I-195 will pass by a collection of nice looking buildings and a Subway restaurant. When temporarily stopped to obey the four-way stop before crossing the intersection, passengers may notice the sign that says bwtech@UMBC.
While the buildings and the sign are a familiar sight to many, their significance may remain unknown to those who pass by. These buildings house part of a research park run by UMBC named bwtech@UMBC.
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is interested in fostering communication between eligible small businesses and prime contractors.
The event, held in Rockville MD, will provide information about upcoming subcontractor opportunities for eligible small businesses, while assisting primes with meeting their subcontracting goals. NCI is interested in identifying a variety of small businesses that have expertise and capabilities in a range of specific NAICS codes listed.
University of Maryland Received a 2013 NIH Grant for $219,084 for Age-Related Changes in Renal Morphology and Function in Chronic Kidney Disease. The principal investigator is Yu Chen. The program begain in 2012 and ends in 2014. Below is a summary of the proposed work.
This application is in response to PA-09-166 “Renal Function and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) in Aging (R21)”. CKD is a growing problem among the aging population. According to the United States Renal Data System, the number of older patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) has almost doubled over the last 25 years.
Two Washington region tech companies — Clarabridge Inc. and Virtustream Inc. — rolled out a combined $120 million in funding on Tuesday, another sign of an improving venture ecosystem. Both rank among the Top 10 biggest D.C. Tech investments thus far in 2013
Not all of the fundings on this list qualify as “venture,” of course. Some of the larger ones could just as easily be called private equity, or at least the hybrid term “growth.” Like we see with Clarabridge’s $80 million, big-ticket financings like these often go partly toward cashing out earlier investors. And not all came from traditional VC. In Virtustream’s case, the entire $40 million Series D round came from a single corporate source: SAP AG.
Maryland entrepreneurs are getting the chance to bring their small business plans directly to a panel of angel investors who could bring those ideas to life.
“The one thing we want to do is bring your story back with us,” said Mike Binko, founder and co-chair of Startup Maryland. “We want to put a big spotlight and a big megaphone in your hands to tell your story in your words.”
In investing, comedy, and business, timing is a key component of success. It’s not enough to have a sense of where the future is going, directionally – you have to have some sense of when it’s likely to arrive.
In investing, this challenge is perhaps seen most vividly in bubbles, as Gregory Zuckerman details in The Greatest Trade Ever, providing example after example of exceptionally smart people — from Isaac Newton to Stanley Druckenmiller — who were able to correctly perceive a bubble, but who nevertheless lost huge sums of money by inaccurately estimating when it would burst.
Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) has launched the first cyber-security technology startup accelerator program in the U.S. The Mach37 Cyber Accelerator is intended to locate and leverage the wealth of cyber security talent in Virginia to create companies that will develop and launch new products.
Mach 37 represents 37 times the speed of sound, which is approximately the same as the Earth’s escape velocity.
I don’t think I’ve ever (in 20+ years of writing) reprinted a press release verbatim. Often I don’t even get to the end of them because of all the PR speak. However, today the Mayo Clinic sent out this list. It is concise, compelling and I can’t think of any way to improve it. The 10 ways the human genome map can affect diagnosis and treatment is an important reminder that we have come a long way in a short time, and that healthcare in the United States is not all about arguing about who gets care and who pays for it.
In case you had any doubts that the $3.8 billion investment in the genome mapping project was worth it, consider these 10 advancements compiled by the Mayo Clinic.
Normal adult cells have been reprogrammed to become stem cells inside live mice for the first time.
As stem cells can be coaxed into developing into almost any kind of cell, being able to prompt this behaviour in the body could one day be used to repair ailing organs including the heart, liver, spinal cord and pancreas.
“By doing it in situ, the cells are already there in the tissue, in the right position,” says Manuel Serrano at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre in Madrid, and co-leader of the new work.
Roche’s move to skip over Inovio’s (NYSE: INO) late stage drugs for cervical cancer and Hepatitis C and make a beeline for its preclinical DNA vaccines for prostate cancer and Hep B was initially a little puzzling. Investors have preferred to park their money further upstream when products are in the clinic and they’ve been derisked. Big pharma is always looking for ways to take costs out of research and development. But the prospect of utilizing new technology with the potential to improve treatment is appealing for drug developers that want to build up and strengthen their drug pipeline.
Target has joined one of the growing trends in healthcare: innovation challenges. It announced on Monday two contests: one will seek a solution that helps people make positive lifestyle and prevention choices, while the other will gather ways to help people live well with a chronic condition.
The Target Simplicity Challenge will reward the creators of the winning ideas $25,000 apiece, their own Target-branded flip camera, and a chance to partner with Target to develop the concepts. The deadline for ideas is Oct. 24 and winners will be announced by January.
Harvard University has partnered with several venture capital firms to launch The Experiment Fund. The Experiment Fund is starting with $10 million and was co-founded by Harvard alumni Patrick Chung (New Enterprise Associates) and Hugo Van Vuuren. Accel Partners and Polaris Ventures is also associated with The Experiment Fund.
Two of the world’s most prolific technology entrepreneurs, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, are known for being Harvard University dropouts. Why did they drop out? Possibly due to lack of resources at the University. Mark Zuckerberg moved to Silicon Valley from Harvard University to raise VC funding for Facebook in May 2004 and never looked back.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
The information contained in this website and newsletters is for general information purposes only. The information is provided by BioHealth Innovation via its newsletters, but not written or endorsed in any way by BioHealth Innovation unless otherwise noted. While we endeavor to keep the information up to date and correct, we make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the website or the information, products, services, or related graphics contained on the website for any purpose. Any reliance you place on such information is therefore strictly at your own risk.
The 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.
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.
The Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore (EAGB) is pleased to announce Wes Moore as the keynote speaker at its Annual Meeting. The event will take place December 11, 2013 at the Hilton Baltimore. Year after year, this celebration attracts the region’s top leaders from industry, higher education and government.
Towson University is getting more serious about entrepreneurship on campus, and Frank Bonsal III will play a big role in that new focus.
Venture capitalists invested $1.12 billion to U.S. mobile companies in last quarter, making it the biggest venture capital financing quarter in history for this sector.
The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Beacon Community program, established under the HITECH act, gives grants to local communities to explore health IT innovations. Three Beacon Communities that have been piloting text-message-based diabetes interventions published a paper in the Journal of Medical Internet Research detailing some challenges and best practices for implementing a mobile health intervention.
Wyskiel is the new senior adviser to the president for enterprise development at Johns Hopkins University. Wyskiel has previously worked as an investor in early stage and startup companies. She has also provided business and management support to startups, such as Hopkins spinout GrayBug.
Our Entrepreneur-in-Residence ![BioCentury 10.13.13 - [1] Stuck in the Lab](http://www.biocenturytv.com/images/marquees/marq_101313_play.png)
With Fall approaching, everyone is preparing for their favorite things whether that’s football season, pumpkin carving, or more reasonable temperatures in Central Maryland. Fall is also a great time for the Small Business Innovation Research grant program throughout National Institutes of Health. In partnership with the NIH, BioHealth Innovation is sponsoring a fall gathering to talk about SBIR awards.
These days, having a strategic investor or partner has become almost a matter of survival for healthcare startups. Corporate investing and partnering has really taken off over the last few years as pharma and medical device companies have opened their doors and wallets to find innovation outside of their four walls.
Bureaucracy is one of the dirty words in business. Nobody wants to publicly admit their company is bogged down with too many layers of management, or needs a dozen committees to sign off on every little decision. For a couple years now, I’ve been hearing entrepreneurs complain about suffocating bureaucracy in pharma.
A new investment fund structured by JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will, for the first time, allow individual and institutional investors the opportunity to finance late-stage global health technologies that have the potential to save millions of lives in low-income countries.
Johns Hopkins University and BioHealth Innovation are partnering with Philadelphia-based DreamIt Ventures to bring a new health IT accelerator to Baltimore. The accelerator, called DreamIt Health Baltimore, is being supported by a portion of a $520,000 federal grant awarded to BioHealth Innovation and the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore.
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, today announced that the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore, Inc. and BioHealth Innovation, Inc. of Montgomery County have been awarded a combined $520,000 grant through the U.S. Department of Commerce’s (DOC) Economic Development Administration (EDA). The federal funding will be used to establish the Healthcare Regional Innovation Cluster (H-RIC) initiative which will combine the strengths of Maryland’s cutting-edge health research institutions and unique federal assets to speed the development of new treatments and cures, supporting Maryland jobs and keeping families healthy.
don’t think I’ve ever (in 20+ years of writing) reprinted a press release verbatim. Often I don’t even get to the end of them because of all the PR speak. However, today the Mayo Clinic sent out this list. It is concise, compelling and I can’t think of any way to improve it. The 10 ways the human genome map can affect diagnosis and treatment is an important reminder that we have come a long way in a short time, and that healthcare in the United States is not all about arguing about who gets care and who pays for it.
