News Archive

GlycoMimetics, Inc. announced the addition of Timothy Pearson to its Board of Directors.

According to a release, Pearson most recently held the position of Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President and Treasurer at Catalyst Health Solutions, a publicly held pharmacy benefit manager with over $5 billion in revenues. Pearson led the company’s financial activities, including performance management, investor relations, SEC compliance, capital strategy and planning, until SXC Health Solutions (now Catamaran Corp.) acquired Catalyst in 2012. Pearson had previously served as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of MedImmune, the global biologics business for AstraZeneca PLC, where he had functional responsibility for finance, information technology, strategic planning and governance, and was a member of MedImmune’s Executive Team.

Leaving home: My father was a Chinese diplomat, posted in Peru. After Mao’s revolution, my parents opened a grocery store in Lima. They worked seven days a week, and we lived in the back. When I was 15, my parents sent me to America with $300. “Make a life for yourself,” they said.

Making the grade: In my first year at college in Iowa, I was learning a new language, attending school, and working 25 hours a week. When I got a C-minus, I told my professor Paul Uhlinger I wanted to return to Peru. He said, “Never let where you come from determine where you will go.” He had more confidence in me than I had in myself.

At Medgadget we love artificial organs, from kidneys to hearts to skin. The pancreas is no exception. We recently had the opportunity to speak with Medtronic Diabetes’ Chief Medical Officer and VP of Global, Clinical, and Health Affairs, Dr. Francine Kaufman, about the most recent step that Medtronic has taken towards developing a fully-functional artificial pancreas.

Shiv Gaglani, Medgadget: Can you describe how the artificial pancreas works?

Dr. Francine Kaufman: A fully automated “artificial pancreas” is a system that closely mimics the insulin delivery of a working pancreas using advanced technology that continuously monitors glucose levels and automatically adjusts insulin delivery with minimal or no patient interaction.

The IPO market for venture-backed companies is off to a much stronger start than last year, which didn’t really get going until the second quarter.

Castlight Health officials celebrate the company’s IPO at the New York Stock Exchange on March 14. Reuters There were 36 initial public offerings in the first three months of this year compared with eight a year ago, according to data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. It was the strongest quarter for IPOs since the third quarter of 2000.

The Johns Hopkins Technology Transfer Office is looking to fill a Portfolio Director position. The Portfolio Director will manage a team of licensing professionals and provide scientific, intellectual property, licensing and marketing expertise, mentorship, team building for members working within the portfolio and across portfolios, educational outreach, relationship management, organizational and communication skills to commercialize inventions resulting from research at Johns Hopkins University.

GlycoMimetics, Inc. announced today the addition of Timothy Pearson to its Board of Directors. Mr. Pearson most recently held the position of Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President and Treasurer at Catalyst Health Solutions, a publicly held pharmacy benefit manager with over $5 billion in revenues. Mr. Pearson led the company’s financial activities, including performance management, investor relations, SEC compliance, capital strategy and planning, until SXC Health Solutions (now Catamaran Corporation) acquired Catalyst in 2012. Mr. Pearson had previously served as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of MedImmune, the global biologics business for AstraZeneca PLC, where he had functional responsibility for finance, information technology, strategic planning and governance, and was a member of MedImmune’s Executive Team.

“Having completed our initial public offering in early 2014, it’s ideal for us to now be adding an experienced public company CFO to our Board roster,” said Rachel King, CEO of GlycoMimetics. “The addition of Tim to our Board of Directors comes at the perfect time for our company given his financial experience at MedImmune and Catalyst Health Solutions.”

Researchers at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have been awarded a research program contract from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sequence, assemble, and annotate a population of bacterial pathogens using two high-throughput sequencing (HTS) technologies in support of the expansion of a vetted public reference database.

The continued development of HTS technologies for accurate identification of microorganisms for diagnostic use will have significant impact on human healthcare, biothreat response, food safety, and other areas. Developing a comprehensive, curated database of microbial genome sequences and associated metadata will serve as a valuable reference to evaluate and assess HTS-based diagnostic devices. Leading the sequencing and analysis phases of the project, the Genomics Resource Center (GRC) at the Institute is a cutting-edge genomic sequencing and analysis center with a long history of high-quality microbial genomics research that has sequenced and analyzed more than 5,000 microbial genome sequences in just the past five years.

The Tech Council of Maryland (TCM), Maryland’s largest technology trade association for life science and technology, today announced the finalists for its 26th Annual Industry Awards. Winners will be revealed at a celebration on May 15 at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center.

“Our annual celebration is a phenomenal event, where our community can come together to recognize individuals and companies in the technology and life science industries that drive our state’s economy,” said Phil Schiff, TCM’s CEO. “Our finalists exemplify the spirit that propels innovation and makes Maryland a leader in tech sector nationwide.”

The National Security Agency (NSA) and University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) have announced a partnership to establish one of the first university-level hacking education and research programs in the United States.

The $750 million grant is the largest the university has ever received, and the amount dwarfs the $148.2 million total combined in extramural and federal funding received in 2013.

Seeking a university partner to cultivate their new education and research programs, the NSA has chosen UMBC after a competitive selection process. Along with developing new tools to secure the country’s cyberspace of the future, the programs are designed to train and round up armies of world-class hacking talent.

At this year’s BIO CEO and Investor Conference in New York, I had the opportunity to meet Annalisa Jenkins, EVP and head of global R&D, Merck Serono. Jenkins has been busy working on a game-changing, singlesource CRO collaboration model with Quintiles. Understanding how and why she did it first requires insight into the leadership approach of her risk-enabling CEO, Belén Garijo (see page 24), followed by Jenkins’ detailed explanation of creating the model, along with some pretty good advice on building game-changing collaborations (see page 30). Finalizing this collaboration model won’t make her schedule any less busy; in fact, it just got busier.

On the day of our meeting, the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association (HBA) publicized Jenkins as a 2014 Woman Of The Year (WOTY). Just two weeks later, TransCelerate BioPharma announced Jenkins as the new chairwoman of its board of directors. When you combine her positions with TransCelerate and HBA along with her advisory roles with the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) and PhRMA, you get a sense for her willingness to engage outside her own company. This is a pivotal first step toward embracing one of our industry’s major trends — the new innovation ecosystem, which is where Jenkins anticipates the next wave of life sciences industry R&D innovations will come from. She is not alone in her opinion.