News Archive

Across the world in 2019, UNICEF reports that over 2.4 million infants died in their first month of life, the vast majority in the developing world. 

The situation in sub-Saharan Africa is particularly dire: an infant born in that region is 10 times more likely to die during its first month of life than a child born in a high-income country. Most of these deaths are preventable. 

It was statistics like these that inspired biomedical engineers Sona Shah and Teresa Cauvel to found Neopenda in 2015.

Neopenda, a Cisco social entrepreneurship prize winner, is a social enterprise that develops innovative technologies for health systems in underserved populations. 

Children’s National Hospital has received 2020 Digital Health Most Wired recognition by The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) as a certified level eight. The CHIME Digital Health Most Wired program conducts an annual survey to assess how effectively health care organizations apply core and advanced technologies into their clinical and business programs to improve health and care in their communities. 

“Children’s National is honored to receive the Most Wired recognition for our inpatient and ambulatory venues,” said Matt MacVey, vice president and chief information officer at Children’s National. “We have made substantial investments in technology in support of our mission to provide a high-quality experience and optimal health outcomes for children regionally, nationally and internationally.”

ROCKVILLE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Oct. 5, 2020– GlycoMimetics, Inc. (Nasdaq: GLYC) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted the Company a Rare Pediatric Disease designation for rivipansel for the treatment of sickle cell disease in patients 18 years old and younger. This designation recognizes the significant needs in pediatric patients.

“The FDA’s designation recognizes the morbidity and mortality burdens of sickle cell disease as well as its significant impact during childhood with life-long implications. With this designation, the agency acknowledges the urgent need for improved treatment of children living with sickle cell disease,” stated Helen Thackray, Chief Medical Officer of GlycoMimetics.

In the early days of managing the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 dashboard, experts at the university and those at Esri, the company providing the mapping software for the real-time pandemic tracker, had a friendly rivalry.

“They would tell us, ‘Oh, your COVID map is big, but not as big as our Pokémon Go map,’ which was their most in demand,” says Reina Murray, an application administrator at JHU’s Sheridan Libraries.

By March, the volume of web traffic to the Hopkins map effectively shut down that conversation—the Hopkins dashboard now holds the record as Esri’s highest-used service of all time, drawing hundreds of millions of feature requests every day. At a peak in March, the dashboard saw 4.56 billion feature requests.

Image: https://hub.jhu.edu/

When Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan visited Novavax recently, President and CEO Stanley C. Erck shared some welcome news for the governor publicly: Novavax had more than doubled its workforce so far this year, adding 116 people to the 100 that it employed at the start of 2020.

“The plan is to double that again, to add another 200 in the coming six months just in the U.S.,” Erck said, part of an expansion plan by Novavax to grow its workforce to 1,000 people worldwide. Novavax recently expanded into a third building at its Gaithersburg, MD, headquarters, and is also in talks for an additional 200,000 square feet of lab space locally.

Image: Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (2d from left) chats with Gale Smith, PhD, Novavax Discovery and Preclinical Research and Chief Scientist, during a tour of the company’s Gaithersburg, MD, facilities. (Office of Governor Larry Hogan)

QIAGEN N.V. (Venlo, Netherlands) plans to launch a novel straightforward approach to viral RNA epidemiology that will significantly simplify and accelerate PCR analysis and remove key testing bottlenecks for SARS-CoV-2 and other RNA viruses.

QIAGEN’s innovative QIAprep& Viral RNA UM Kit combines a liquid-based sample preparation step completed in only two minutes with real-time PCR detection in a streamlined workflow that can be automated with standard lab equipment for any throughput, any assay and any reaction need from single to multiplex testing. The kit, which uses the most common transport media such as Universal Transport Media (UTMTM) as the starting material, includes both sample extraction components and optimized PCR reagents for only one procedure.

Image: QIAprep& Viral RNA UM Kit (Photo courtesy of QIAGEN N.V.)

GAITHERSBURG, MD — October 6, 2020 – NexImmune, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing a portfolio of unique non-genetically-engineered T cell immunotherapies, announced today that it has dosed the first patient in its Phase 1/2 clinical trial for NEXI-002. NEXI-002 is a patient-derived cellular product that contains populations of naturally-occurring CD8+ T cells directed against several multiple myeloma (MM)-specific antigen targets. It is the second clinical product NexImmune has generated with its AIM nanoparticle technology.

“While the primary objective in this trial with NEXI-002 is to demonstrate safety and tolerability, we also hope to see initial signs of immunological and clinical activity,” said Han Myint, MD, Chief Medical Officer at NexImmune. “The AIM technology gives us the unique ability to direct populations of natural T cells against a powerful combination of cell surface and endogenous anti-tumor targets specific to multiple myeloma. We believe this approach has potential to address primary tumor escape mechanisms, and provide deep and durable clinical responses.”

Maryland universities are home to lots of cyber researchers and technologists working on new ways to secure our increasingly technology-reliant society. Those higher education institutions are also home to graduate students looking for an entrepreneurial leap.

A new program is looking to connect the two, and form new startups in the process.

The Maryland New Venture Fellowship for Cybersecurity, created by University of Maryland, Baltimore County incubator bwtech@UMBC and the University System of Maryland, is launching this fall to support 10 early-stage teams. The program was recently awarded $594,000 in federal funds from the Economic Development Administration of the United States Department of Commerce. With matching funds from Baltimore County, the total funding reaches about $1.3 million.

Image: Welcome to bwtech@UMBC. – Courtesy Photo

Our allergy assets remain an underpinning of Immunomic Therapeutics’ success, and have enabled our pivot to focus on oncology.

In addition to our canine atopic dermatitis vaccine concept,  our vaccines using ITI’s lysosomal targeting technology have already been tested in several clinical studies in both allergy and oncology.