News Archive

University of Maryland Ventures (UM Ventures) announced today that Dr. Martha J. Connolly has been named director of bioentrepreneurship, a new program supported by the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) and the A. James Clark School of Engineering, designed to enhance collaboration between the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) as part of the MPowering the State initiative.

“UM Ventures creates an integrated innovation ecosystem that includes entrepreneurial support resources,” said James Hughes, Chief Economic Development Officer and Vice President at UMB. “Experts like Martha help turn novel ideas into sustainable businesses, and I’m pleased to have her as part of our enterprise.” 

With billions to be made on the back of ill health and notable scandals and cover-ups in its history, it’s fair to say that many see the public face of the pharmaceutical industry as a mask for darker machinations. We rely on the drugs for myriad conditions, but do we trust big pharma?

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is no stranger to accusations of unethical drug marketing tactics. But recent news coverage has included its support for the AllTrials campaign – which calls for clinical trials to be registered and results to be published – and a package of other initiatives, including a new commitment to end direct payments to doctors (and other key opinion leaders – KOLs) that have been one of the industry’s most powerful marketing tools.

Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University and Stanford University are among six institutions sharing a $540 million grant for cancer research from funds established by late real estate magnate Daniel K. Ludwig.

Each center will receive $90 million in new grants from the fund established in 2006, bringing the total bequest to each institution to $150 million, said Ed McDermott, president and chief executive officer of New York-based Ludwig Cancer Research, in a press conference. Other centers getting money are Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, University of Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

2013 has been another banner year in seed financing for U.S. tech startups.  In aggregate, 2013 saw $893 million invested across 843 seed VC deals. In fact, 2013 saw the highest amount of seed VC deals since 2009. Seed VC deal activity in 2013 jumped 11% from 2012 levels and a whopping 173% from 2010 as the number of active seed venture investors continued to stay strong.  By way of definition, seed venture capital rounds included in this brief are early stage investments (typically less than $1.5 million) that specifically include the participation of a venture capital and/or corporate venture capital investor (angel rounds were excluded from this analysis).

Ask any investor what they think about Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ  ) , and you’ll probably hear that it’s a diversified pharma company, a blue-chip stock that pays a hefty dividend, and it’s a relatively safe investment for investors looking for exposure to the health-care sector. But you might also hear investors criticize its size. With a market cap of almost $260 billion, Johnson & Johnson is one of the largest companies in the U.S., and it edges out both Merck and Pfizer as the largest pharma company in the Dow. Can a company this massive be nimble and entrepreneurial enough to innovate? Is its size holding back its long-term potential to bring new products to market?

The National Cancer Institute opened NCI Shady Grove next door to the Johns Hopkins Montgomery County Campus buildings. Employees started arriving in late December 2012, two years after the September 2010 groundbreaking ceremony. The move was completed in Spring 2013. Approximately 2,400 NCI employees work at NCI Shady Grove. Coinciding with the arrival of the NCI employees, six new retail shops opened along the parking garage: Shady Grove Cleaners, Freshii, Subway, West Wing Café & Bakery, Blue Fin and Natural Market.

Meanwhile, 11 new companies decided to locate their businesses on campus. These entrepreneurs and researchers focus on health care research and information technology.

Happy New Year! This week’s Top of the List is from our first-ever List of “Largest incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces in Maryland,” ranked by current number of members or tenants.

Here they are, counting back from No. 5:

The disease detectives at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention named the top five global health threats they expect to tackle in 2014:

1. The emergence and spread of new microbes

While it’s rare, CDC scientists do come across new diseases each year. In 2013, the new Heartland virus carried by ticks was confirmed in northwest Missouri. Federal health investigators collected samples in the state after two farmers from St. Joseph were sickened by the virus that carried a novel genetic profile.

By Rock Health’s count, 302 investment firms and “notable angels” put money into a digital health startup in 2013. Twenty-seven of them did it three or more times.

That’s a big jump from the eight who did three or more deals in 2012. An influx of digital health exits, final guidance from the FDA on mobile apps, more good opportunities or any number of other factors may have led investors to pony up capital for more of these companies last year.

Most people know what marketing executives do every day. They try to catch people’s attention through email, ads, tweets, and press releases. As for data scientists, well, their work is not nearly as well understood.

That’s been slowly changing this year as companies slowly loosen up about letting their hard-won data scientists talk about their work.