News Archive

In 1837, entrepreneur and philanthropist Johns Hopkins bought a Federal-style mansion located on 300 acres in northeast Baltimore. Henry Thompson, a businessman and War of 1812 cavalry captain, had built the estate in 1803 and named it Clifton after his ancestral home in England. It became Hopkins’ summer home, where he liked to entertain family and friends, until his death in 1873. It’s where he welcomed the Prince of Wales, who became King Edward VII. It’s where he held a clandestine meeting that included Salmon Chase, secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln; his friend John Work Garrett, the B&O Railroad president; and other B&O officials, who offered to use the rail for Union Army troop movements. And it’s where he hoped the university that would bear his name would be located

The fiasco with the $600 million federal health insurance website wasn’t all bureaucratic. Forcing slow and disparate databases run by government and insurance companies to work together in real time—and then launching the service all at once—would have challenged even technology wunderkinds.

In particular, the project was doomed by a relatively late decision that required applicants to open an account and let the site verify their identity, residence, and income before they could browse for insurance. That meant the site would have to interface in real-time with databases maintained by the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies.

The Evan Burfield of June 2000 was the archetypal startup wunderkind, the kind of overachiever who naturally invites unfavorable comparisons to yourself at the same age.

There was his skinny, almost teenaged face on The Washington Post’s website, accompanying a reader Q&A on how he built a financial software company, netDecide, instead of rowing at Dartmouth.

Peter DeComo raised $20 million from investors for Renal Solutions Inc. in 2002, when the Pittsburgh medical device company had only a working prototype for an artificial kidney and no money.

During the next five years, he brought in $20 million more in capital before selling Renal Solutions to a German outfit in 2007 for nearly $200 million.

“That company couldn’t even get funded today,” lamented DeComo, the CEO of South Side-based ALung Technologies Inc., because venture capital investors have pulled back from startup companies in his industry.

You’ve cracked open the crate of cranberries, stuck the turkey in the oven and are well into filling your second muffin tin with cornbread batter. And just in time for dinner, MedCity is here to talk about innovative obesity treatments, both pharmaceutical options and medical devices.

The Netherlands has retained its position at the top of the annual Euro Health Consumer Index (EHCI) which compares healthcare systems in Europe.

On 48 indicators such as patient rights and information, accessibility, prevention and outcomes, the Netherlands secured its top position among 35 European countries for the fourth year in a row, scoring 870 of a maximum 1,000 points.

Last summer when we were still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the Affordable Care Act, many people I talked to said that regardless of the decision, the wheels were in motion. Too much had already happened for the Court to get the horse back in the barn.

That may be true, but President Obama and the ACA got everything started on a national scale: the focus on reducing readmissions, on care coordination, on patient engagement. When would hospitals have started revamping the discharge process or getting serious about follow-up care without the stick of reduced reimbursements? When would doctors and hospitals and long-term care facilities have started really focusing on any of these serious problems without real incentives to do so?

Trevigen Inc. has been awarded $252,000 for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I Contract, 261201300042C, from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop a tumor-aligned 3D coculture system. Dr. Gabriel Benton is the Principal Investigator.

“Many anticancer drugs fail in human trials despite showing efficacy in in vitro studies and animal models. It has become clear that 2D in vitro monoculture assays do not reflect the complex cellular composition and microenvironment of the tumor tissue, and this may explain their failure to predict clinical efficacy” says Dr. Hynda Kleinman, former NIH PI.

Jason Hardebeck, whom many in Baltimore’s tech community know as the executive director of gb.tc, has been picked to lead DreamIt Ventures‘ new accelerator for health IT startups here.

Hardebeck will take on the role of managing director of DreamIt Health Baltimore, which will shuttle early-stage health care startups through a four-month program beginning in January, providing them with stipends of up to $50,000 in addition to other professional services. The program will be based out of Bond Street Wharf in Fells Point, a Johns Hopkins University property that DreamIt is leasing from the university.

Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and US-based VC Avalon Ventures have announced the creation of the first of up to ten San Diego-based biotech firms as part of a $495m alliance signed in April.

Sitari Pharmaceuticals, which is using technology licensed from Stanford University, will receive a total of $10m from Avalon and GSK to get the San Diego-based company off the ground. The company will investigate treatments for celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder which targets the small intestine. Avalon also created COI Pharmaceuticals, a support firm which will supply people and infrastructure to Sitari and other firms to emerge from the alliance.