News Archive

As we embark on our third fund at LionBird, we believe that proactively thinking deeply about what will drive the next decade of healthcare will help us both filter through the noise of digital health, and quickly identify the right investment opportunities. We believe that 2020 represents an unprecedented inflection point in digital health (due to both the COVID-19 global pandemic, as well as many other factors) and we aim to define the trends for the coming decade and their implications for our investment strategy.

Facial temperature detection, campus heatmaps: They’re among the tools in a collection of apps created by teams from within the University System of Maryland over the last month to help limit the spread of COVID-19 — and navigate a society that has changed quickly in the pandemic.

In all, six apps were selected as winners of the USM COVID App Challenge, which was issued at the end of May to galvanize the creation of new tools to respond to the pandemic.

Image: AnTech, developed by Andrew Karam of University of Maryland College Park. (Screenshot via YouTube/AnTech)

Altimmune Inc. is making progress on its Covid-19 vaccine more than four months after jumping into that arena.

The Gaithersburg biopharma said Monday it has emerged from preclinical trials with positive results, positioning the clinical-stage company to start manufacturing the candidate, called AdCovid, in the third quarter of this year and start a phase 1 clinical trial in the fourth quarter.

Image: Dr. Vipin Garg is president and CEO of Altimmune. COURTESY ALTIMMUNE

The search for a cure for Covid-19 is lining the pockets of some landlords.

While the pandemic wreaks financial havoc on hotels and retailers, landlords who cater to biotech and pharmaceutical tenants are seeing increased demand as companies research treatments for the coronavirus, according to the Wall Street Journal. The work of those tenants, too, is more difficult to replicate in a work-from-home setup than the typical office employee.

Drugmakers around the world are scrambling to develop a COVID-19 shot, and Emergent BioSolutions has already signed on to help produce doses for some major players. Now, the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based biopharma has scored a contract update to deploy future vaccine doses for a wholly different kind of health crisis. 

Image: Emergent launched a phase 3 trial on NuThrax in March last year; that study is on track to finish by the year’s end. (FiercePharma)  – https://www.fiercepharma.com

NEW YORK — The US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on Monday approved a roughly $5.5 billion increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health in fiscal 2021, with budget increases for every institute and center.

The committee recommended a total of $46.96 billion in NIH funding for FY 2021, representing a nearly 13 percent increase over its current $41.68 billion budget. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump called for trimming the NIH’s FY 2021 budget to $38.37 billion.

Fourteen businesses in New Jersey’s technology, life sciences, and clean energy sectors received a combined $12.3 million from 50 investments approved through the state’s Angel Investor Tax Credit Program during the first half of 2020, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) announced yesterday. Two of the approved companies benefited from legislation signed by Gov. Phil Murphy last year expanding the program.

The theme of the 25th CBA Annual (Virtual) Conference is “Innovations amid Crisis: A Productive Year of Biopharma Industry”. We will invite biopharmaceutical industry leaders, regulatory and scientific experts from US, China, and Canada to discuss recent research advances on COVID-19, and new trends in biopharma industry. The detailed conference program will be available at www.cba-usa.org shortly.

Time:

Day 1: 8 am – 11 am (EST), August 29th, 2020 (Saturday)

Day 2: 8 am – 11 am (EST), August 30th, 2020 (Sunday)

Registration link: https://bit.ly/2WfpRrR

The finalists are sourced from nominations and editorial coverage, and selected by the DC Inno team.