News Archive

Johns Hopkins researchers have coaxed stem cells into forming networks of new blood vessels in the laboratory, then successfully transplanted them into mice, a technique that could potentially be used to make blood vessels genetically matched to individual patients, the investigators say.

Their research results appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Healthbox, a leading business accelerator focused on healthcare technology and technology-enabled companies, is expanding its accelerator program to Nashville this fall with anchor partner BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Healthbox is strategically building local partnerships in key cities to stimulate a pipeline of new solutions, while creating a global community of leaders passionate about improving healthcare. This is the second new Healthbox location revealed in 2013; another one was launched in Boston in April, preceded by one in Chicago in 2012.

“We have been planning our entrance into this market for the last year,” says Healthbox founder and CEO, Nina Nashif. “Nashville is the Silicon Valley of healthcare and the best place for us as we continue to expand the breadth and depth of our community.”

Monday, August 19, 2013 – Wednesday, August 21, 2013 

Time: 7:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Location:
Natcher Conference Center
45 Center Drive
Bethesda, MD 20892

Sponsored by:
Blood Diseases Program
Division of Blood Diseases and Resources
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
National Institutes of Health
Department of Health and Human Services 

The D.C. region raised $418 million in venture funding in April, May and June, according PricewaterhouseCoopers’ MoneyTree report, more than twice the total of second quarter 2012.

The “DC/Metroplex,” as defined by PWC, includes far-flung areas of Virginia and Maryland, not just the District and its suburbs. With the strong second quarter haul, the region has raised nearly as much in the first half of 2013 ($704 million) as it did all of last year ($735 million). For comparison, companies in the area raised $203 million in Q2 2012, and $286 million in the first three months of 2013.

Biotechnology companies can access financial and management resources through venture capitalist (VC) firms. An analysis of 1,490 VC investments shows that country-of-origin (CO) of biotech companies has an effect on the participation by VC firms in various biotech subsectors. Specifically, it is found that US biotech companies tend to have higher amount received per VC firm, greater number of VC firms investing in them and greater biotech investment experience of the investing VC firms. Asia-Pacific biotech companies have consistently less VC firms investing in them and these investing VC firms tend to have less biotech investment experience. VC firms with greater biotech investment experience are also investing in European biotech companies more than those from the Americas less US. CO also correlates with outcomes in the four of the six key biotech subsectors studied. These findings suggest a strong CO effect of VC investment in biotech companies.

Venture capitalists invested $318 million in young Maryland companies from April through June, an increase of 115 percent from the first quarter, according to a report released Friday by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

About half of that financing, or $150 million, went to Precision for Medicine Inc., a Chevy Chase company that provides services for medical drug discovery, the report said. That was the highest amount any business in the country raised in the quarter and was matched only by a New York e-commerce website.

Venture capital funding for health IT totaled $623 million during the second quarter of 2013, according to a report by Mercom Capital Group, FierceHealthIT, reports.

The report found that there were 168 health IT-related venture capital deals in Q2 2013, compared with 104 the previous quarter. At the half-year mark, health IT-related venture capital funding was nearly equal to all of such funding in 2012, the report found.

Students at the University of York are challenging what they see as the closed worlds of nanotechnology and healthcare by crowdsourcing funds to produce a new type of treatment for cancer using magnetic nanoparticles.

Atif Syed and Zakareya Hussein, students in the department of electronics and nanotechnology engineering, are using US-based funding site Microryza to find $3,000 to develop a pharmaceutical patch that delivers tiny nanoparticles into the body via hair follicles.