News Archive

Baltimore startups were not among the winners of this year’s InvestMaryland Challenge and its more than $1 million in cash and in-kind awards.

Gov. Martin O’Malley announced the winners May 19 at an award ceremony at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Top winners in each of the four categories receive $100,000 from the Maryland Venture Fund and BioMaryland Center, plus other in-kind prizes.

More than 250 companies applied to the competition. Four Baltimore companies — ZeroFox, Staq, Foodem.com and Light Point Security — were among a dozen finalists announced in March. Vasoptic Medical in Columbia and Dinnertime in Lutherville were also in the running.

AstraZeneca on Monday rejected a “final” $119 billion buyout offer from Pfizer, possibly sinking a pharmaceutical mega-merger that could have jeopardized jobs at AZ’s Maryland subsidiary, MedImmune.

Pfizer, which would have created the world’s largest drug company through the deal, on Sunday evening increased its earlier $106 billion cash-and-stock bid. In a statement, AstraZeneca Chairman Leif Johansson called that new offer “inadequate” and said it would have “serious consequences for the company, our employees and the life-sciences sector in the U.K., Sweden and the U.S.”

Cybersecurity is a major growth engine in the region. Get on board by joining over 200 cyber leaders from the private, government and academic sectors at the 2014 CyberMontgomery Forum. Plus, hear a keynote address by The Honorable Thomas J. Ridge, the first Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and former two-term Governor of Pennsylvania.

Attendees will also get an update on the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence and hear from other industry experts and guest speakers including Congressmen Ben Cardin and Chris Van Hollen, Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett and representatives from Lockheed Martin, Discovery Communications, DMI, Triumfant, Koolspan, Inc. and many more.

Pharmaceutical behemoths New York-based Pfizer and London-based AstraZeneca are waging a trans-Atlantic battle over a potential multibillion-dollar buyout that has put both companies and their respective governments on the defensive.

The kerfuffle raises questions about the future of 3,100 scientists and manufacturers employed in the Maryland offices of MedImmune, a biotechnology company that local officials worry could be gutted if its corporate parent, AstraZeneca, gets bought.

Pfizer has again raised its offer for AstraZeneca, making what it said was a final effort to bring the giant British drug maker to the negotiating table.

The latest offer, made Sunday evening, is worth about $119 billion. It comes after AstraZeneca’s rejection of several private and public offers from Pfizer.

University of Maryland is well-known across the nation and internationally as a forward-thinking research institution, which is why it wasn’t too surprising to hear that UMD is now home to one of the nation’s fastest university-owned supercomputers.

Put simply, the supercomputer going by the name of Deepthought2 (appropriate, eh?) will help to support advanced, high-performance computing and research with the ability to do things like simulate fire and combustion. The contraption has a processing speed of about 300 teraflops, which is crazy fast. How fast? Absurdly speedy.

Research labs closed by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer dot the country: Illinois. Michigan. New Jersey. New York. North Carolina.

Maryland officials don’t want this state to join that list.

After Pfizer declared its desire to buy AstraZeneca — which employs 3,100 in the state — Gov. Martin O’Malley and six members of Maryland’s congressional delegation fired off concerned letters, even though the purchase is by no means a done deal. So far, London-based AstraZeneca has rebuffed its New York suitor.

Johns Hopkins announced on May 6 its plans to build a new cancer treatment building in Baltimore. The facility will be constructed with the help of a $65 million gift. It will be named after the late Albert P. “Skip” Viragh, Jr., a philanthropist and a former cancer patient treated at Johns Hopkins, who died in 2003, at the age of 62.

The Skip Viragh Outpatient Cancer Building is scheduled for completion in 2017. It will be constructed on the southeast corner of Fayette Street and North Broadway, in East Baltimore, and will feature about 50 exam rooms, advanced cancer imaging, a specially designed cancer diagnostic and treatment planning center, and many other facilities and services.

Translating Ideas from Bench to Bedside

June 3rd, 2014, from 6 to 8:30 pm  

Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Advanced Academic Programs   

Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus, Rockville, MD   9601 Medical Center Drive (A&R Building, Room 106-110)

Connect with physician entrepreneurs and other stakeholders in healthcare innovation as we explore the winning formula for successfully advancing new medical devices and technology to commercialization.

AstraZeneca’s boss said on Wednesday he would engage with Pfizer if the price was right and the risks posed from forcing the British drugmaker’s operations into the U.S. company’s new three-unit model were addressed.

Chief Executive Pascal Soriot stressed his company had a bright future as a stand-alone firm but acknowledged that shareholders would expect AstraZeneca’s board to negotiate if terms were sufficiently attractive in a sweetened offer.