News Archive

Funding and Research Opportunities

The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:

NIH Guide Notices:

• NOT-OD-14-085: Transition Plans for Reporting Sex/Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Information in Non-Competing Type 5 Progress Reports
• NOT-OD-14-086: NIH Launching New System and Procedures for Reporting Sex/Gender, Race, and Ethnicity Information to the NIH
• NOT-OD-14-087: Notice of Change in Eligibility for RFA-OD-14-005 “NIH Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH) Awards (U01)”
• NOT-OD-14-088: Notice of Clarification of Career (K) Award Eligibility
• NOT-HL-14-223: Request for Information (RFI): Strategic Planning for Asthma Research 
• NOT-NS-14-029: Notice of NINDS Participation in NOT-HL-14-222 “Request for Information (RFI): Opportunities to Advance Clinical and Epidemiologic Research to Facilitate Aging in Place utilizing In-Home Monitoring “

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.

Two University of Maryland graduates have designed The Micro, a consumer-friendly, sub-$300 3D printer, and are quickly staging one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all-time to produce it, hauling in $3.3 million with more than 10,000 backers.

The Micro raced past its $50,000 goal in just 11 minutes and hit the $1 million mark in 25 hours, faster than the Pebble watch, which took 28 hours.

The number of people age 65 and older in the United States is expected to almost double by 2050, a shift that is expected to drastically alter the nation’s racial makeup and pressure its economy, two government reports released on Tuesday said.

Those older U.S. residents are expected grow from 43 million in 2012 to nearly 84 million over the next four decades as the baby boomer generation ages, the Census Bureau said in its latest estimate.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a contract to researchers at The Johns Hopkins University to launch a new center devoted to developing innovative ways to identify and track influenza viruses worldwide.

One top goal is to rapidly identify new influenza virus strains that may emerge as the next seasonal influenza or global pandemic that could threaten public health.

Michael Spinosa overflows with enthusiasm about the team that helped his Columbia company figure out new strategies for growth — at no charge.

That might not sound like economic development, if your conception of it is multimillion-dollar incentives to tempt big employers to move in. The assistance Spinosa got is a different approach with the same goal: more jobs.

Novavax Inc. believes it has created a vaccine against the Middle East Respiratory Virus, or MERS, which has been causing pandemic concerns.

The Gaithersburg biotech, working with University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers, said their vaccine candidate blocked MERS infections in laboratory studies. It is based on a platform for a vaccine candidate that is said to protect against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS; both MERS and SARS are coronaviruses.

Emocha, one of nine graduates of the first class of startups from the DreamIt Health Baltimore accelerator, announced at Demo Day on April 30 that it’s opening an investment round this summer.

The mobile health platform is already being used in three separate pilot programs to allow physicians and clinicians based at health organizations to monitor patients’ symptoms, recovery and rehabilitation from a variety of diseases via smartphone.

QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced that its artus C. difficile QS-RGQ MDx Kit has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to qualitatively detect Clostridium difficile, a widespread healthcare-associated infection (HAI). In addition, the FDA has granted 510(k) regulatory clearance for the QIAsymphony RGQ MDx system, QIAGEN’s flagship automation platform that is transforming laboratory workflows and driving dissemination of molecular diagnostics. The U.S. milestone for QIAGEN’s global rollout of its sample-to-result automation platform, together with the FDA clearance of the first in a portfolio of tests for HAI infections, supports the expected growth in QIAsymphony placements globally to more than 1,250 by year-end 2014 and 1,500 by year-end 2015.

“Our QIAsymphony RGQ platform is revolutionizing laboratory workflows with flexible, efficient automation from sample to result – and the U.S. clearance affirms that we are well on track with our targets for this important growth driver,” said Peer M. Schatz, Chief Executive Officer. “QIAGEN is now positioned to rapidly expand the menu of standardized, regulator-approved diagnostic kits running on QIAsymphony. Our FDA cleared artus C. difficile QS-RGQ MDx Kit provides reliable detection of both the Toxin A and Toxin B of the infection. artus C. difficile QS-RGQ MDx Kit is the first test of our planned HAI portfolio in the United States. As we continue to deliver on a deep pipeline for infectious diseases and personalized healthcare diagnostics, the growing menu adds value for customers and patients by allowing consolidation of more tests on this platform.”

The rising prevalence of smartphones and mobile phones has made their use as a way to help people manage their health more viable. So much so that the National Institutes of Health has started an mhealth grants program and is looking for submissions.

It plans to offer awards of up to $500,000. Self management of chronic conditions and improving patient-provider communications are among the sought-after areas. It begins accepting applications today through May.

Economic Gardening initiatives, including the Advance Maryland program, are gaining momentum across the State, but to understand the origin of the term, one must first look to Littleton, Colorado.

In the late 1980s, with the closing of a major missile manufacturing plant, the Denver suburb faced thousands of layoffs. Town leaders were left with two thoughts: What to do next and how to be less vulnerable in the future?