News Archive

As groups of high-net-worth individuals continue to band together in the form of angel investment networks and funds, they’re creating new opportunities for funding for mid-stage startups. But to some entrepreneurs, they’re also starting to look an awful lot like VCs.

There are about 350 angel investing groups in the U.S. today, according to Marianne Hudson,executive director of the Angel Capital Association. Although most of the U.S.’s more than 300,000 angel investors still work as individuals, the influence of their networking is growing. The median angel round size in 2012 was somewhere around $600,000, according to the 2012 Halo Report, up from $500,000 in 2010.

Hard to understand, slow to exit and more than enough risk to go around.

Not many investors are brave and smart enough to fund startups working to get new pharmaceuticals, medical devices and therapeutics on the market. To highlight this breed of investors, and to give healthcare entrepreneurs a way to find them, we have compiled a list of venture capital firms with a track record of healthcare investing.

Savara Pharmaceuticals needed several million dollars to take its inhalable drug for troublesome infections in cystic fibrosis patients through Phase 2 clinical trials. So CEO Rob Neville, naturally, began talking with venture capitalists. But in the end, he didn’t end up needing any of their money.

Over the course of about a year, Savara raised a $16 million Series B round – in two tranches – led by a quartet of angel groups from central Texas to southern California.

Medical schools have been preparing for the changes health care reform is bringing. Many have framed their education around iPads and other tablets and are encouraging more of their students to focus on primary care as physician shortages are expected to worsen. From accelerated programs to a technology focus, the description of some of the innovative approaches proposed to obtain some of the $11 million in grants being offered by the American Medical Association over the next five years offers a window to their thinking about health care reform.

Combined primary care degree Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School is setting up a dual degree in primary care and population health. “The goal is to educate a new type of physician with a primary care background,” its proposal said.

The Department of Defense last week announced the establishment of the world’s first brain tissue repository on the Walter Reed Campus to help researchers better understand traumatic brain injury (TBI).

TBI is common among veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which led to the opening of The Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine Brain Tissue Repository for Traumatic Brain Injury at the Uniformed Services University on the campus.

The University Economic Development Association (UEDA) is currently seeking nominations for its annual Awards of Excellence program, which recognizes leading edge university-based economic development initiatives from across the country. The Awards of Excellence Program recognizes higher education institutions and their partners who are transforming their campuses into engines of economic prosperity through creative initiatives in five categories: 

1. Community Connected Campus: initiatives that promote the physical development of quality connected campuses and their surrounding communities;
2. Research and Analysis: initiatives that enhance the capacity of colleges and universities to provide new forms of research and tools for community, economic and workforce development practitioners;
3. Leadership and Collaboration: initiatives that support the development of collaborative economic development strategies and the leaders required to implement them;
4. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: initiatives designed to support startups, high-growth companies and clusters within a region; and
5. Talent Development: initiatives that promote the development of 21st-century skills.

June 27th, 3:30-5:30pm

Join Nicholas P. Jones, Benjamin T. Rome Dean, Whiting School of Engineering to celebrate the launch of FastForward.

There are a few spots left.
RSVP today!
410-516-8723 / engineering@jhu.edu

Get a preview of the innovative technologies created by Johns Hopkins faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students in the FastForward accelerator and see examples of entrepreneurship from across the university. Learn how FastForward, a unique innovation system, can increase the probability of a startup’s success.

The University of Maryland (UM) BioPark announced today that Ocular Proteomics, LLC (OPL), a startup biotechnology company leveraging a new class of biomarkers found in vitreous fluid of the eye to more accurately diagnose and treat retinal diseases, has recently relocated to Building One of the BioPark from Baltimore County. Led by world-renowned and internationally respected retinal surgeon Bert M. Glaser, M.D., OPL is a spin out of the National Retina Institute. OPL’s move to the BioPark comes on the heels of the company’s $1.2 million dollar Small Business Innovation in Research (SBIR) phase 2 grant from the National Institutes of Health. In its new space, OPL will be conducting the research phase of a multi-center clinical trial, which will include 200 patients with macular degeneration.

Said Jim Hughes, President, Research Park Corporation, University of Maryland Baltimore, “The BioPark has once again attracted an innovative and important start-up to our location. We’re pleased to welcome Dr. Glaser and Ocular Proteomics to our roster of commercial tenants. Dr. Glaser founded Ocular Proteomics to use personalized medicine to drastically change the way blinding diseases are diagnosed and treated.”

AstraZeneca (STO:AZN)(LSE:AZN) today announced that MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, and NGM Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. have entered into an exclusive agreement to discover, develop and commercialise novel therapeutics from NGM’s enteroendocrine cell (EEC) programme for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and obesity.

EECs represent less than 1% of all gastrointestinal (GI) cells, but produce virtually all of the known GI hormones, including GLP-1. EECs are an underexplored source of novel hormones that could play a major role in the positive and negative regulation of metabolism and glucose homeostasis. NGM has established a proprietary platform capable of isolating and analysing EECs in order to identify novel secreted peptide hormones that are potentially linked to the profound metabolic effects of bariatric surgery and serve as potential targets for the treatment of metabolic diseases.