News Archive

Maryland companies raised $64 million in venture capital funding this spring, with some of the biggest payouts flowing to Baltimore cybersecurity startups.

That’s according to the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. The report, which uses Thomson Reuters data, tracks money flowing to startups and later-stage firms across the country.

Former state economic development secretary Aris Melissaratos is leaving Johns Hopkins University for a job where he’ll have more power.

Melissaratos, who had been with Hopkins for seven years, on July 17 joined Stevenson University as interim dean of the Brown School of Business and Leadership. Melissaratos said he has always had an interest in academia and now will be able to play a leading role in preparing students to join the local workforce.

Baltimore-based Cerecor has gathered up the first half of a $33 million B round, with plans to devote much of that money to a midstage development program for an experimental depression therapy recently punted by a restructuring Merck ($MRK).

In documents filed with the SEC, the biotech noted that it has raised $16.2 million of a planned $33.2 million round. New Enterprise Associates, Apple Tree Partners and MPM Capital led the round, which is also going to fund R&D efforts on its catechol-O-methyltransferase inhibitor platform for conditions “characterized by impairment of executive function and working memory.”

Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has revealed proposed designs for its new corporate headquarters and global research centre in Cambridge, which is scheduled to open in late 2016.

The plans for the new facility, which will be located on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC), include designs for the global centre, an R&D enabling building and an energy centre.

Analytical Informatics, Inc,  a portfolio company of the New Ventures Department of the University of Maryland, Baltimore is one of the semifinalists in 43North, the world’s largest business idea competition.   43North will award $5 million in cash prizes and is setting out to turn the best new business ideas from around the globe into reality.  The top award is $1 million, with six $500,000 awards and four $250,000 awards. There were with 6,932 applications from 96 countries and all 50 U.S. states.  That got boiled down to 2,603 qualified submissions and 113 semifinalists.  Analytical Informatics, Inc was the only Baltimore and Maryland based company selected.  

More than 80% of U.S. consumers conduct online research prior to making everyday purchases. This is a statistic that is growing, and extends beyond products to include services and, finally, even healthcare. With the abundance of information available, consumers are empowered–they want to be as informed as possible when selecting physicians, but how does someone navigate through the overwhelming results of Google searches and decide how to best make a decision as important as selecting a healthcare provider? I think most people would agree that selecting a physician and selecting where to have dinner have highly differing degrees of importance when it comes to online research.

President Obama’s visit earlier this month to 1776, the startup hub in downtown Washington, D.C., shined a spotlight on entrepreneurship and innovative thinking nationwide. It was a good location because the contemporary, well-lit loft that incubates and supports area startups has grown from zero to 215 members in only a year-and-a-half.

The president’s visit highlighted two entrepreneurial stories, not only of 1776 but also of the early steps by American University involving its Masters of Arts in Media Entrepreneurship program (MAME) and two campus collaborators. We became the hub’s first university partnership in a fruitful relationship that could be repeated at other campuses across the country.

It’s  tough for medical device companies to get that stamp of FDA approval, but the labyrinthine regulatory pathway certainly doesn’t help things. Regulators want to change that:

“…we learned that the delivery of new therapies to patients can be accelerated if medical device innovators — including entrepreneurs and university students and faculty — understand FDA’s regulatory processes,” FDA researcher Francis Kalush wrote recently.

There’s a panoply of alternative funding streams for healthcare startups out there – fledgling companies are seeking out avenues like prepaid revenue models, grant funding in lieu of venture capital, and the ever-popular crowdfunding approach.

The outcomes can be a mixed bag, however, said a panel of speakers at MedCity News’ CONVERGE conference in Philadelphia today.