News Archive

BALTIMORE, MD (November 16, 2022) — Governor Larry Hogan today announced that MilliporeSigma, an international biosciences company, is growing its presence in Montgomery County with a $286 million investment to expand its biosafety testing capacity.

The company, known locally as BioReliance Corporation, currently has five locations in Rockville and is planning to consolidate in a new 250,000-square-foot facility at 9820 Darnestown Road at the Alexandria Center® at Traville Gateway campus, which is being developed and operated by Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. MilliporeSigma will maintain one additional facility at 9630 Medical Center Drive and will retain at least 600 full-time employees during the expansion, while creating more than 500 new jobs over the next four years.

BELTSVILLE, Md. and DAEJEON, South Korea, Nov. 15, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — NextCure, Inc. (Nasdaq: NXTC) and LegoChem Biosciences, Inc. (LCB, KOSDAQ: 141080) today announced a collaboration and co-development agreement focused on generating a B7-H4 antibody drug conjugate (ADC) and options for two additional targets. The B7-H4 ADC will utilize NextCure’s B7-H4 antibody and LCB’s ConjuAllTM ADC technology.

Under the terms of the agreement, both parties will equally share the costs to develop the molecules and profits on commercialized products. The parties will utilize their respective product development capabilities to generate the B7-H4 ADC and advance it to the clinic. In addition, there are options for the parties to nominate two additional targets for ADC development beyond B7-H4.

RICHMOND, Va., Nov. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — BRAINBox Solutions today announced that the company has enrolled the 1,000th patient in the pivotal, HeadSMART II study of its concussion diagnostic and prognostic test, BRAINBox TBI. The multi-national, multi-site, trial is designed to support an application for regulatory clearance by the U.S. FDA.

“We are developing the BRAINBox TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) test as the first objective test to aid in the diagnosis of concussion and to provide an assessment of the risk of post-concussive symptoms,” said Donna Edmonds, BRAINBox Solutions’ CEO. “We are now in the home stretch of this very important study for the field. We believe the test has great potential to change clinical practice in the diagnosis and management of concussion and will define for the first time, objective diagnostic criteria for this condition, termed Acute Traumatic Encephalopathy (ATE). As such, the trial has been rigorously designed in collaboration with leading experts in traumatic brain injury and emergency medicine. The study evaluates patients in multiple settings and includes state of the art expert adjudication panels.”

GAITHERSBURG, Md., Nov. 14, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) announced today a research award by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP) to evaluate efficacy of the company’s single-dose chikungunya virus virus-like particle (CHIKV VLP) vaccine candidate. Emergent will begin the planning phase, the first of two phases, in collaboration with the Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS) and academic partners, to enable a post-approval field efficacy study in areas with active chikungunya virus (CHIKV) transmission.

The University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State (MPower) has announced that it is establishing an Institute for Health Computing that will focus on artificial intelligence and advanced computing to further develop the field of precision medicine and improve health care for patients across the state.

The University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State (MPower) today announced a transformative partnership to establish the University of Maryland 3 – Institute for Health Computing (UM-3-IHC), which is being led by the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), in collaboration with the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) and Montgomery County, Md. This new Institute will leverage recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and computing to create a premier learning health care system that evaluates both de-identified and secure digitized medical health data to diagnose, prevent and treat diseases in patients across the state of Maryland.

Image: Bruce Jarrell, MD, FACS

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich signed Thursday a multiagency agreement to launch a new higher education institute in North Bethesda dedicated to artificial intelligence in health care, with the goal of establishing a magnetic academic-industrial complex akin to what’s envisioned for Northern Virginia’s National Landing.

The budding collaboration — dubbed The University of Maryland 3 – Institute for Health Computing, or UM-3-IHC — involves Montgomery County, the University of Maryland campuses in Baltimore and College Park and the University of Maryland Medical System Corporation (UMMS), a hospital network. 

Image: https://www.bizjournals.com/

November 9, 2022 — Johnson & Johnson Innovation, together with Johnson & Johnson Office of Military and Veterans Affairs, announced that AmacaThera, Hawkeye Bio, Inc., Garwood Medical Devices, LLC, Immunophotonics, Limax Biosciences, and Nanochon have been selected as the awardees in the Innovations for Vets QuickFire Challenge: Lung Cancer & Physical Trauma.

The challenge invited innovators to submit potentially groundbreaking ideas that aim to directly address the unique healthcare needs of the military community.

When London-based artificial-intelligence (AI) company DeepMind unveiled predicted structures for some 220 million proteins earlier this year, the trove covered nearly every protein from known organisms in DNA databases. Now, another tech giant is filling in the ‘dark matter’ of the protein universe.

Researchers at Meta (formerly Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, California) have used AI to predict the structures of some 600 million proteins from bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms that haven’t been characterized.

Image: The ESM Metagenomic Atlas contains structural predictions for 617 million proteins.Credit: ESM Metagenomic Atlas (CC BY 4.0)

November 08, 2022 08:30 AM Eastern Standard Time

ROCKVILLE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. (ITI), a privately-held clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of LAMP-mediated nucleic acid-based immunotherapy, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track Designation (FTD) to the ITI-3000 program for the treatment of patients with Merkel cell carcinoma. The company is currently enrolling a phase 1 study evaluating ITI-3000, a plasmid DNA (pDNA) vaccine targeting patients with Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a rare but aggressive form of skin cancer that is typically caused by the Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCPyV).

“The FDA’s decision to grant FTD underscores the potential for the ITI-3000 program to address a serious unmet need and serve as a meaningful therapeutic option for patients with Merkel cell carcinoma,” stated Dr. William Hearl, Chief Executive Officer of ITI. “We are committed to unlocking the full potential of ITI-3000 in patients with this aggressive form of skin cancer. We expect to report top-line data from our ongoing phase 1 trial of ITI-3000 in MCC patients next year and look forward to working closely with the FDA on a potential next phase clinical study design, while simultaneously continuing dialogue with possible partners.”