News Archive

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.

The Montgomery County, MD Department of Economic Development (DED) has invested $75,000 in Brain Sentry, makers of Brain Sentry Impact Sensors™, innovative helmet-mounted devices that alert when an athlete suffers a rapid – and potentially dangerous – acceleration of the head. These sensors, which the company began to produce four months ago, are now being utilized by football, ice hockey and lacrosse teams to help identify players who need to be evaluated for concussion.

The $75,000 Montgomery County DED’s investment (conditional grant) is part of a successful $1,000,000 capital raise for Brain Sentry, with additional funds coming from New York Angels, New Dominion Angels, Hull Street Capital and other private investors. According to the Montgomery County DED the typical amount of assistance – in grant or loan – is $5,000 to $100,000. Priority is given to “high technology companies” and “manufacturing companies” and Brain Sentry fits the bill on both counts. Brain Sentry also meets a third DED criterion as a “private employer providing public benefits.”

A handheld ‘bio pen’ developed in the labs of the University of Wollongong (UOW) will allow surgeons to design customised implants on-site and at the time of surgery.

The BioPen, developed by researchers from the UOW-headquartered Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES), will give surgeons greater control over where the materials are deposited while also reducing the time the patient is in surgery by delivering live cells and growth factors directly to the site of injury, accelerating the regeneration of functional bone and cartilage.

10. Our broken healthcare system defeats even the most empowered patients

Jess Jacobs and Donna Cryer are experts on the healthcare system — professionally and personally.

Jacobs has postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, and describes it best in her own words:

Know someone who drowned from jumping off burning water skis? Well, there’s a new medical billing code for that.

Michael Meistar Been injured in a spacecraft? There’s a new code for that, too.

Roughed up by an Orca whale? It’s on the list.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) officials announced a $1 million dollar prize for innovation in the emerging area of bioelectronics research. The prize will be awarded to the scientists who are first able to solve the challenge of creating a miniaturized, fully implantable device that can read, write, and block the body’s electrical signals to treat disease. It is hoped that finding a solution to this challenge will open and accelerate significant avenues of research in this field. The scientific challenge was developed and agreed by a group of approximately 150 leading scientists from around the world, brought together by GSK’S Bioelectronics R&D unit at a summit earlier this month in New York. Collectively, summit attendees agreed that if they create an implantable wireless device that can record, stimulate and block neural signals to a single organ, it will be a critical factor enabling the onward development of bioelectronic medicines as a future therapeutic reality.

GSK’s Bioelectronics R&D unit is pursuing a relatively new scientific field that could one day result in a new class of medicines that would not be pills or injections but miniaturized, implantable devices. GSK believes that these devices could be programmed to read and correct the electrical signals that pass along the nerves of the body, including irregular or altered impulses that can occur in association with a broad range of diseases. The hope is that through these devices, disorders as diverse as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, asthma, hypertension and diabetes could be treated.

A group of heavyweight biotech industry executives, including the former CEO of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., have formed a new Baltimore biotech company.

Centrexion Corp. has raised a total of $23.4 million since its incorporation in February, according to recent Form D filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In the same way that great advances in our understanding of the human genome sparked new opportunities for biotech companies in the early 2000s, growing knowledge about how microbes in the human body affect health has paved the way for a small class of biotech startups emerging now.

These companies are looking at ways to restore balance to populations of bacteria in and on the body that, when they become disrupted, may promote disease. Although these relationships are still not completely understood, researchers have been studying potential links between the microbiome and metabolic diseases, inflammation and a host of other conditions.