News Archive

Julie Lenzer, Chief Innovation Officer, The University of Maryland, joins Rich Bendis on BioTalk to discuss Ventures, Collaborations and growing the Quantum footprint in the BioHealth Capital Region.

Listen now via Apple https://apple.co/3on1a9C, Google https://bit.ly/3ovfj4M, Spotify https://spoti.fi/2Qn44hY, and TuneIn https://bit.ly/3w3Au0i.

Julie Lenzer is the Chief Innovation Officer at the University of Maryland and Acting Director for the newly-launched Quantum Startup Foundry. In these roles, she is charged with fostering and deploying innovation to drive economic and social impact from both university-affiliated and community based innovators. She currently oversees UM Ventures, the university’s tech transfer office, the Maryland Small Business Development Center (SBDC), the Maryland International Incubator (MI2), the Mixed/Augmented/Virtual Reality Innovation Center (MAVRIC), as well as university engagement with the Discovery District (UMD’s 150 acre research park). An active angel investor, she is also on the investment committee of the $10M Maryland Momentum Fund.

Gaithersburg, MD, May 4, 2021 – Cartesian Therapeutics, a fully integrated, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering RNA cell therapy in and beyond oncology, today announced a $2 million competitive R&D award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support its clinical development for Descartes-30, the first RNA cell therapy for respiratory diseases.

This is the fourth Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant awarded to Cartesian to support its clinical-stage investigational therapies developed with the company’s proprietary RNA Armory® combination therapy platform.  Cartesian previously won research grants from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for Descartes-11 in multiple myeloma ($2.3 million) and from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for Descartes-08 in generalized myasthenia gravis ($2 million).

The rapid development of new COVID-19 vaccines and treatments over the past year is a triumph of innovation. Billions of vaccine doses are being manufactured and should be distributed to all adults globally over the next 18 months. But some argue that suspending intellectual property (IP) rights to allow any company to manufacture vaccines will mean faster access for developing countries. These arguments have culminated in a proposal at the World Trade Organization for a temporary global waiver on COVID-19-related IP rights. 

Montgomery County and the region’s booming life sciences ecosystem is reaping the benefits of a talent pipeline being developed by the Universities at Shady Grove, a unique higher education campus in Rockville that brings together approximately 80 undergraduate and graduate degree and certificate programs from nine different institutions within the University System of Maryland.

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A Johns Hopkins University-led team has created an inexpensive portable device and cellphone app to diagnose gonorrhea in less than 15 minutes and determine if a particular strain will respond to frontline antibiotics.

The invention improves on traditional testing in hospital laboratories and clinics, which typically takes up to a week to deliver results—time during which patients can unknowingly spread their infections. The team’s results appear today in Science Translational Medicine.

GERMANTOWN, Md. & HILDEN, Germany–(BUSINESS WIRE)–QIAGEN N.V. (NYSE: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced it has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the fast and easy-to-use QIAreach® Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Total Test.

In a news cycle dominated by vaccines and an economy focused on innovation, cities see life sciences as not just a good bet but a critical piece of their economic development future. But while many metros believe they can attract jobs with increased investment in lab space, only a relative handful can become new centers of industry growth.

Image: Courtesy Hines Levit Green, a forthcoming development in Houston, exemplifies the spread of life sciences campuses across the U.S.

Breakthrough discoveries and unprecedented capital funding have heightened the dynamic nature of the life sciences industry. This surge of resources should fuel a new level of growth in research & development (R&D) and accelerate the demand for quality manufacturing space.

A longtime pediatric anesthesiologist at Children’s National Hospital, Dr. Julia Finkel has long wanted a more objective way to measure how much pain patients are feeling.

“For pain, we do it very empirically,” Dr. Finkel said. “The patient says they hurt, we give them a drug. They either feel better or they don’t…It’s done in a very empirical way without a physiologic measure, and there are consequences for that.”

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