News Archive

At the University System of Maryland, January brings with it the chance to reflect on a year of accomplishment and anticipate a year of impact. Because, despite the challenges of the past several months, we’re still doing the work we were built to do. Our students are excelling. Our scholarship is making change. Our research is solving problems. Our service is improving lives.

This is a direct credit to the people of the USM. As COVID upended our academic enterprise and administrative operations, our people kept working harder, with a clarity of purpose and a devotion to mission that is, to me, breathtaking. The achievements and ambitions I share here honor their dedication.

The SEED Innovator Support Team helps NIH awardees build a business and explore their life science innovation’s potential. Learn about the aspects of product development beyond the science of the awards. 

Regulatory & Business Development Consultations

Our business development, intellectual property, regulatory, and reimbursement experts meet with innovators focused on topics including:

• Optimizing formulation or manufacturing operations 
• Establishing an advisory board  
• Layering intellectual property protection 
• Preparing for regulatory interactions 
• Gathering evidence to support reimbursement value 
• Engaging with investors or strategic partners

Gaithersburg, Md., January 25, 2022 – Cartesian Therapeutics, a fully integrated clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering RNA cell therapy in and beyond oncology, today announced that it has dosed the first patient in a Phase 1/2a multicenter clinical study evaluating Descartes-25 in patients with multiple myeloma.  To the company’s knowledge, Descartes-25 is the first off-the-shelf RNA cell therapy to enter clinical trials for any cancer and marks the company’s fifth FDA Investigational New Drug (IND) allowance in five years.  Descartes-25 is produced at Cartesian’s wholly owned cGMP manufacturing facility with the company’s proprietary RNA Armory® cell manufacturing platform.  This platform now includes an internally developed, Part 1271-compliant Master Cell Bank of human umbilical cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSC) that was used to engineer Descartes-25.

Bill visits BioTalk to talk about being a serial entrepreneur, biotech executive, and their recent acquisition of Avidea Technologies.

Listen now via Apple https://apple.co/3fTySQM, Google https://bit.ly/3KDPMkh, Spotify https://spoti.fi/3rI7UB3, Amazon https://amzn.to/33DwOtH, or TuneIn https://bit.ly/3fS8C9f.

UKidney™ procedure data published in the American Journal of Transplantation; the first such data published in a peer-reviewed journal

UHeart™ recipient patient reaches a two-week milestone post-transplant

UThymoKidney™ procedure represents a historic first preclinical human model study

SILVER SPRING, Md. & RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– United Therapeutics Corporation (UT) (Nasdaq: UTHR), a public benefit corporation with a purpose to provide a brighter future for patients, announced today that the world’s first recipient of an investigational genetically-modified xenotransplanted organ, UT’s UHeart™, reached a two-week milestone. University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) surgeons report continued post-operative cardiovascular improvement in the patient with normal organ function. In addition, the first peer-reviewed publication of a similarly gene-edited investigational xenograft, UT’s UKidney™, in a human preclinical model at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine (UAB) was published yesterday in the American Journal of Transplantation.

The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) provides a glimpse of economic development in the biosciences ecosystem at the state and regional levels. The report, which was developed in partnership with the Council of State Bioscience Associations (CSBA), was released as an industry analysis in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the overall economy. 

UMBC has received a $900,000 grant from the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) to develop and implement a new, short-term biomanufacturing training program. Four universities, all classified as minority-serving institutions (MSIs), received funding for similar programs, designed to meet critical national workforce needs. 

Image: Charmaine Hipolito ’20, and Titina Sirak ’20, right, alumni of UMBC’s TLST program at The Universities at Shady Grove, speak with visitors at a celebration for the opening of USG’s new Biomedical Sciences and Engineering Building in November 2019. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Proof-of-concept of exosomes manufacturing in scale-X™ bioreactor to demonstrate advantages of intensified and integrated platforms. RoosterBio to leverage scalable, continuous bioprocessing technologies to deliver regenerative therapies at reduced timelines and costs, improving access for patients.  

FREDERICK, MD. (PRWEB) JANUARY 20, 2022

Univercells Technologies, a leading provider of novel biomanufacturing technologies for flexible and scalable viral production, announces today a strategic partnership with RoosterBio Inc., a leading supplier of human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (hMSCs), highly engineered media, and hMSC bioprocess systems. This partnership will optimize manufacturing of extracellular vesicles (EVs) using scalable and continuous bioprocessing technologies to propel the commercialization of regenerative therapies at affordable costs.  

Time for a Concerted Effort to Explore Manufacturing in Microgravity Environments

Space is emerging as the next frontier for advanced manufacturing. The market alone for biomanufacturing in space is expected to reach nearly $3 billion by the mid-2030s. Similar microgravity markets exist in other engineering and technology areas.

Accordingly, the administration and Congress need a coordinated effort to take advantage of the incredible opportunity of manufacturing at scale in the microgravity environment. As a recent gathering of corporations, federal agencies, scientists, and engineers examining biomanufacturing in space noted: “The formation of a public-private consortium is needed to further prioritize opportunities, de-risk space-based research and development (R&D) and guide the translation of results into commercial applications on Earth.”

So, you just had a $5 billion venture capital year. Now what? With the final numbers for Q4 finally in, we can say with certainty that DC had a record-breaking year for investment across the board. To the tune of $4.9 billion, venture capital sang in 2021, with deals growing larger as the year went on.

For some scale, note that the DMV raised just under $2 billion in all of 2020, meaning it more than doubled its dollars in a year. It’s not alone in the bump, though. Nearby Baltimore had its best (albeit much smaller) year in recent history at $768 million and Philadelphia did, too, with a casual $8 billion raised.

Image: (Photo by Flickr user, used via a Creative Commons license)