News Archive

Montgomery County failed in its bid lure Amazon, the e-commerce giant that opted to build its second headquarters in Arlington, Va.

But top county officials have an alternate vision for the area surrounding the White Flint Metro station — a “life sciences hub” that exploits the presence of the close-by National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration.

Image: A depiction of what the White Flint area could become. Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) has hired an Annapolis veteran to lead efforts to redevelop the region into a “life sciences hub.” Montgomery County Capital Budget photo. 

OTTAWA, ON, Nov. 24, 2021 /CNW Telbec/ – Health Canada

Health Canada has completed its onsite inspection of the Emergent BioSolutions   facility in Baltimore, Maryland. The European Medicines Agency and South African Health Products Regulatory Authority also participated in this inspection remotely. All three regulators found the facility to be compliant with Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs).

The Center for Innovative Technology is now known as the Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation. But it’s more than just a name change.

The rebranding is seen as a vital step in helping to propel Virginia forward as a nationwide leader in innovation, startups and technology, said Bob Stolle, president and CEO of VIPC

Baltimore leaders are coalescing around a big vision to build a more inclusive tech economy over the next decade, but there will be many small steps required to get there.

It means involving the whole community. That’s why ecosystem-building org UpSurge Baltimore rallied more than 200 partners this year to center Baltimore’s growth as a tech hub through the lens of equitech. UpSurge launched in April with equitech as a framework for prioritizing startups and companies with diverse leadership, teams and products that address societal barriers. It also partnered with Techstars to bring an accelerator to Baltimore focused around that vision. Around the same time, it also launched UpSurge Teams to convene.

Image: Photo by Flickr user Sue, used under a Creative Commons license

COLUMBIA, Md., Nov. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — TEDCO, Maryland’s economic engine for technology companies, announced its recent round of funding, including investments in 12 start-up companies and funding to 36 university projects through the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII). 

Established in 2012, the MII program was created as a partnership between the State of Maryland and five Maryland academic research institutions: Johns Hopkins University; Morgan State University; University of Maryland, Baltimore; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and University of Maryland, College Park. The program’s mission is to accelerate promising technologies with significant commercial potential to market while leveraging each partner University’s strengths.

ROCKVILLE, Md., Nov. 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ —

• Potential one-time gene therapy for the treatment of Duchenne, includes a novel, optimized microdystrophin transgene and REGENXBIO’s proprietary NAV^® AAV8 vector
• Commercial-scale cGMP material to be used in clinical development
• Company on track to submit IND by end of 2021

REGENXBIO Inc. (Nasdaq: RGNX) today announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted Orphan Drug Designation for RGX-202, a potential one-time gene therapy for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Duchenne). RGX-202 is designed to deliver a novel, optimized microdystrophin transgene with a unique C-terminal domain and a muscle specific promoter to support targeted therapy for improved resistance to muscle damage associated with Duchenne. RGX-202 uses REGENXBIO’s proprietary NAV^® AAV8 vector. 

In institutions and companies, investigators spent some two decades working on RNA-based drugs and vaccines before COVID-19 afforded many of them an opportunity to apply all that research into patients, with support from governments and regulators eager to fight the pandemic.

For two once obscure companies—Moderna, which went public in 2018, and BioNTech, which followed a year later—that opportunity has translated into multiple billions of dollars in new revenues. Not surprisingly as a result, both companies far outpace the other public companies ranked by GEN this year among top RNA-based biopharma companies.

BrainBox HeadSmart II Study Investigators Aim to Provide Clinicians with First-Ever Biomarkers and other Functional measurements for Acute Traumatic Encephalopathy (ATE.) A clinical trial of multi-modal diagnostic/prognostic test, already underway, is published in Frontiers in Neurology/NeuroTrauma.

Investigators in a major clinical trial of patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI or concussion) describe for the first time objective diagnostic criteria, based on blood biomarkers and neurologic testing, for acute traumatic encephalopathy (ATE), the immediate physiologic consequence the injury.

Acute Traumatic Encephalopathy (ATE) represents the condition of an objective measure of TBI associated symptoms or dysfunction that occur as long as 90 days following an acute head injury, according to the investigators. It may be manifest by neuropsychiatric dysfunction, imaging pathology, or biomarker abnormalities in a patient presenting with a history consistent with TBI. Objective criteria for ATE have the potential to advance the understanding of mild TBI and significantly improve its subsequent clinical management.