The head of a state-funded business accelerator on Monday said Kansas will soon be recognized worldwide as a place to bring bioscience businesses.
“Our mission is for Kansas to become a global destination for bioscience. That is closer to a reality today than many realize,” said Duane Cantrell, chief executive officer of the Kansas Bioscience Authority.
Johns Hopkins Medicine is joining with a company in Saudi Arabia to form a health care company.
The Baltimore medical institution said it and Saudi Aramco, an energy and chemical company with a health care arm, will open the Johns Hopkins Saudi Aramco Healthcare Company Feb. 1.
In a little more than two months, about 1,000 people will flock to Cole Field House, but the occasion won’t have anything to do with basketball.
From April 4 to 6, this university’s first-ever Major League Hacking-sanctioned hackathon will take place in the form of a 36-hour marathon competition called Bitcamp.
Event director Shariq Hashme said he expects anywhere from 750 to 1,250 participants from more than 100 universities, with more than 100 of those participants hailing from this university.
Six startup companies have been selected to participate in AccelerateBaltimore’s 2014 program.
The accelerator program is run by the Emerging Technology Centers (ETC) and the Abell Foundation. Each company receives $25,000 in seed funding, office space and mentorship resources. The program runs for 13 weeks.
On a recent press tour of New Jersey I was introduced to PTC Therapeutics, a fascinating company that is developing ribosomal readthrough drugs for several indications.
What I find so interesting about this company and their technology is that it is a sort of magic bullet. Drugs that can modulate ribosomal activity can potentially treat hundreds of diseases (indeed, PTC told me that they are looking at thousands of diseases).
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and The Commonwealth Fund have concluded that electronic health record systems and other digital tools are likely to curb the demand for physicians in the future.
Based on their analysis of recent trends in digital health care and a review of the scientific literature, the authors conclude that patients’ future use of physician services will change dramatically as electronic health records and consumer e-health “apps” proliferate. The findings appear in the issue of the journal Health Affairs.
Primary care physicians’ adoption of electronic health records increased significantly between 2009 and 2012, but there continues to be a “digital divide” between large and small physician practices, according to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund, FierceHealthIT reports.
Study Findings
The study found that EHR adoption by primary care physicians increased from 46% in 2009 to 69% in 2012 (Hall, FierceHealthIT, 1/26).
Using tiny biodegradable particles to disrupt the body’s normal immune response after a heart attack could help save patients from tissue damage and certain long-term health problems that often follow. Researchers have shown that injecting such particles into mice within 24 hours of a heart attack not only significantly reduces tissue damage, but also results in those mice having stronger cardiac function 30 days later. The inventors of the new technology now plan to pursue human trials.
Much of the tissue damage that results from a heart attack is the result of inflammation, the body’s natural response to harmful stimuli such as damaged muscle. But in the case of a heart attack, these immune cells do more harm than good, explains Daniel Getts, inventor of the new therapy and chief scientific officer of Cour Pharmaceutical Development. The system’s weaponry is “fairly generic,” he says. While the toxic compounds that the immune cells secrete can be beneficial in defending the body against an infection, they also cause tissue damage. This phenomenon occurs not only after heart attacks, but also in a range of other diseases, including West Nile Virus, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis.
Image Courtesy of thampapon1 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Investing in activities that support the creation and expansion of high-growth companies and jobs is at the forefront of technology-based economic development (TBED). TBED fosters a climate where new and existing companies that develop technology and continuously innovate will thrive. Understanding the trends that are affecting and influencing TBED can help guide investment priorities for practitioners and policymakers across the nation.
A slow yet stable national economic recovery gave rise to many new initiatives across states and regions with a shift toward targeted and refined investments in the high-tech economy for quicker returns – a continued trend from 2012.
Millennial Media Inc. founder Paul Palmieri has stepped down as chairman and CEO of the publicly traded Baltimore mobile advertising firm, effective immediately.
He will join venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates as a venture adviser focused on technology out of its Chevy Chase office.
