News Archive

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.

NexImmune, an early stage biopharmaceutical company, today announced it has secured $3 million USD in financing led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA).  Other investors include Pfizer Venture Investments and Amgen Ventures. In association with the financing, Jim Barrett of NEA and Janis Naeve of Amgen Ventures were named to NexImmune’s board of directors.

NexImmune is developing immunotherapy products from its proprietary Artificial IMmune (AIM™) nanotechnology. The AIM technology, which was first developed by Drs. Mathias Oelke and Jonathan Schneck at The Johns Hopkins University, has several potential applications for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune disorders, and infectious disease. Proceeds from this financing will be used to support pre-clinical development of the company’s first product, AIM 101, an artificial Antigen Presenting Cell (aAPC) for the treatment of cancer.

The head of a young Baltimore cyber security company says a New York investor nixed a deal after discovering Maryland’s new cyber security tax credit wouldn’t transfer to investors.

Suzanne Magee, CEO of Bandura LLC, said the credit should go to the investor. That’s how it works with the state’s biotech tax credit.

That was my question when I spoke with DreamIt Health newbie BioBots, specifically co-founder Ricardo Solorzano. He has spent three years working on technology to develop low-cost 3D bioprinters that research scientists can use to develop biomaterials. The company was formed by a couple of University of Pennsylvania graduates They view it as a way to change the way people think of regenerative medicine.

Solorzano and fellow co-founder Danny Cabrera joined Hive 76 in Philadelphia so they could learn more about developing these 3D printers.  They also work with intern Eric Wamakima. They spoke with MedCity News at DreamIt Health’s launch party for its second class

Maryland has a future in being the perennial powerhouse in cyber security but it’s lacking something that will help the state’s industry take off like a rocket — and that’s depth.

In Friday’s print edition cover story I wrote about how colleges and universities are scrambling to change curriculum to prepare more students for success in the cyber world post graduation. Industry executives have lamented that colleges aren’t doing enough to prepare students to fill vacant positions — more than 10,000 across Maryland in 2013, according to career services firm Burning Glass.

Baltimore-area companies took home 12 percent of the money venture firms invested in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., region in the second quarter.

Greater Baltimore companies raised a total of $29.5 million in venture capital during the period, according to a MoneyTree Report by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. Venture capitalists invested a total of $247.3 million in 58 companies in Baltimore and D.C. during the quarter.

Stanford University scientists say they have developed a new test for type 1 diabetes that will cost a fraction of the current price and could speed up diagnosis from days to hours. That could be useful anywhere, but especially in poorer countries where many people with diabetes go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed because the existing tests are too expensive to be widely offered.

In current tests, blood samples are sent to a lab, where radioactive materials are used to detect the cause of the disease: a so-called auto-antibody that attacks the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. This test is labor-intensive and costs hundreds of dollars.