News Archive

SBA Awards Montgomery County Chamber Community Foundation grant
to conduct veteran small business training course

ROCKVILLE, MD – The Montgomery County Chamber Community Foundation (MCCCF) is pleased to announce that the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) will support MCCCF in providing technical training to veteran-owned businesses seeking federal procurement opportunities. Through a Cooperative Agreement with SBA, the Foundation’s National Center for Veteran Institute for Procurement (VIP) will expand and host three training sessions a year (over a twelve month period) to support up to 150 service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) and veteran-owned small businesses (VOSB) to attend the program.

Education technology, or ed-tech, is getting big in Baltimore and local experts think Maryland has a shot at being a leader in this technology niche.

But it won’t happen overnight.

“I think we have a unique opportunity to build an ecosystem,” said Frank Bonsal III, an ed-tech venture capitalist who leads Towson University’s business incubator. “An ecosystem takes 20 years to build. We’re on year three.”

Image: Jaclyn Borowski – Andrew Coy, executive director of the Digital Harbor Foundation, says students should play a bigger role in growing ed-tech. 

When it comes to raising capital for a tech startup, savvy entrepreneurs know how important it is to hustle. From trying to attract the attention of VCs to appearing on television shows like ABC’s Shark Tank, these days when it comes to raising cash, everyone is out to get their share.

However, you may be surprised to learn that in this high-tech world, one very traditional institution is looking for smart entrepreneurs to give money to. Aspiring entrepreneur, meet the Small Business Administration (SBA).

With plans to couple Johns Hopkins Medicine’s research cachet and Kaiser Permanente’s population health prowess, the two health giants announced a new “strategic collaboration” on Tuesday.

Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States and Hopkins officials say they will collaborate on patient care by sharing data from electronic medical records and developing better health care models based on evidence of what’s worked best. Kaiser will work closely with Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, which is part of the Johns Hopkins network.

Image: http://m.bizjournals.com 

A $10.7 million grant to the University of Maryland School of Dentistry and the University of Maryland School of Medicine will fund the collaborative study of biomarkers associated with sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, in hopes of finding new ways to predict the infection and developing new vaccines or treatments. The five-year grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is the renewal of a previous $12 million, five-year grant awarded in 2009, bringing the project’s total to $22.7 million.

Image: http://www.oea.umaryland.edu 

What do you need to turn a brilliant idea into a business? “A good morale boost,” says Abhishek Motayed, Founder and President of N5 Sensors, Inc. of Rockville. Motayed had that boost this month when N5 Sensors received two Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards totaling $250,000. The grants came from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) towards N5 Sensors work developing low-power, computer chip-size benzene, carbon monoxide, and ammonia sensors.

Image: http://umdtechtransfer.wordpress.com – Pasquale Ferrari, Ratan Debnath, Abhishek Motayed 

Maryland Health Secretary Dr. Joshua Sharfstein will step down in January to join Johns Hopkins University.

Sharfstein’s move comes as Maryland is trying to revamp its failed health exchange in time for November open enrollment and as Gov. Martin O’Malley’s administration winds down.

Image: Nicholas Griner Maryland Health Secretary Dr. Joshua Sharfstein is stepping down in January and will join Johns Hopkins University. 

The Montgomery County Council gave final approval Tuesday to an ambitious land-use plan designed to spur creation of a new science-focused town center in the county’s long-neglected eastern sector.

The White Oak Science Gateway Master Plan envisions housing, retail and a hub for medical and life-sciences research adjacent to the Food and Drug Administration headquarters at Route 29 and Industrial Parkway. The plan also adjusts zoning and land-use regulations with the goal of energizing new residential construction and commercial renewal in the White Oak and Hillandale communities.

The FLC planner visually communicates the outstanding research and development efforts of the federal laboratory system. Images and captions tell the story of the technology’s scientific relevance and potential impact.

Printed annually, the planner is distributed to over 10,000 recipients, including members of Congress, scientists, researchers, agency representatives, laboratory directors, technology transfer professionals, students, academia, and members of industry.

Image: http://www.federallabs.org 

QIAGEN (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt, Prime Standard: QIA) today announced a collaboration agreement with AstraZeneca PLC (LSE, NYSE and OMX: AZN) for the co-development and commercialization of a liquid biopsy-based companion diagnostic to be paired with IRESSA, AstraZeneca’s targeted therapy for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The project builds on a master framework agreement signed by both companies in 2013 and aims to develop and market a novel QIAGEN companion diagnostic that analyzes plasma samples to assess EGFR mutation status in NSCLC patients. The assay will be designed to guide the treatment of NSCLC patients with Astra Zeneca’s oral monotherapy anti-cancer treatment when tumour tissue is not available. QIAGEN already offers the therascreen EGFR RGQ PCR Kit (therascreen EGFR test) as a tissue-based companion diagnostic for lung cancer patients, which was approved in the U.S. by the FDA in July 2013 and in China in May 2014.