Business is booming for Emergent BioSolutions as it has assisted in the country’s push to create COVID-19 treatments and vaccines. Emergent is developing two plasma-based treatments for COVID-19 and has partnered with four companies on vaccine candidates. It is additionally partnering with the Federal Government to develop and manufacture COVID-19 vaccines. As a result of this wave of new business, the company is hiring approximately 300 new employees in Baltimore and Rockville.
Emergent BioSolutions has unveiled plans to strengthen its contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) capabilities by expanding into viral vector and gene therapy. The company will invest $75 million in its Canton, MA facility, which is focused on the development and manufacturing of drug substance for live viral vaccines, including the company’s smallpox vaccine.
Lockheed Martin Ventures — the defense company’s technology startup investment arm — has backed two companies through separate avenues announced this week.
In a release Tuesday, quantum computing company IonQ said it grew its total fundraising amount to $84 million through a new Series B round that represents its second significant round of investments since the 2015 founding with $2 million in seed money.
Image: https://washingtontechnology.com
BALTIMORE, June 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Glyscend Therapeutics, a privately held biopharmaceutical company developing novel treatments for type 2 diabetes (T2D) and related metabolic conditions, today announced the closing of a $20.5 million Series A financing round. Healthcare investors Brandon Capital Partners, through its Medical Research Commercialisation Fund (MRCF), and Santé Ventures led the round of funding, which will be used to support the development of the company’s novel oral polymer therapy for patients with T2D and other metabolic diseases. Breakout Labs (a fund in the Thiel Foundation) provided seed funding in 2019.
The BioHealth Capital Region featured at last week’s Redefining Early Stage Investments Conference (RESI) where speakers from the region discussed a range of topics of interest to early stage companies including:
For more information, check out the RESI Conference site or contact BHI.
ROCKVILLE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Creatv Microtech, a privately-held biotechnology company has pioneered a blood test to predict treatment response in patients with stage II-III NSCLC treated with chemoradiation therapy (CRT) and consolidated immunotherapy. Clinical data presented at the ASCO 2020 virtual annual meeting shows the ability to predict which NSCLC patients will benefit from anti-PD-L1/PD-1 immunotherapies. “We are delighted to present a method to stratify patients responding to immunotherapy by a single tube of blood collected after completion of CRT,” said Dr. Cha-Mei Tang, CEO of Creatv. “Early identification of patients that do not respond to immunotherapy will reduce unnecessary patient suffering from ineffective and costly treatment, allowing patients to proceed to alternative therapies.” Currently, no other blood test can predict immunotherapy treatment response for lung cancer.
Fina Biosolutions recently received a $25,000 Montgomery County SBIR/STTR Phase I matching grant to support its NIH SBIR grant focused on “Genetically detoxified tetanus toxin for use in vaccines.” The grant comes from a subprogram of the Montgomery County Economic Development Fund. Andrew Lees, Fina Biosolutions’ Scientific Director said, “we are very grateful for the County’s support for our research. We intend to use the funds to hire a part-time employee who we expect will transition to full-time. We also are appreciative of the assistance we received from BioHealth Innovation in guiding us through the County grant process”. Fina Biosolutions is developing the genetically detoxified tetanus toxin as a carrier protein for peptide and glycan conjugate vaccines. Montgomery County, Maryland is the first county in the U.S. to offer matching grants to NIH SBIR/STTR awardees to further leverage the public and private investment in their R&D and job growth activities.
Regarding the June 4 front-page article “Cold War echoes in race for vaccine,” about the “race” among nations, notably the United States, China, and Russia and other European nations for development of a vaccine against the novel coronavirus:
When communicating about vaccines and dates, leaders should be careful to note that this means candidate vaccines. We actually have a vaccine only after it is proved effective and safe over a long period, requiring time (years, not months), durability (e.g., the measles vaccine lasts a lifetime whereas some others are much shorter), a formula that covers all or most strains (especially those recurring seasonally) and feasibility (cost, global availability, etc.).
Once upon a time, developing a new vaccine was a step-by-step process that went from concept, to design, to tests in humans, to regulatory approval, to manufacturing.
It was a process that could take a decade or more.
But the urgent need for a COVID-19 vaccine has radically changed all that. Now, the hope is the entire process can be completed in a year or less.
Image: Cell culture operators prepare a 2000-liter single-use bioreactor to produce proteins used to make vaccines. Philip Taciak/Emergent Biosolutions
The National Institutes of Health has launched a $1 million Technology Accelerator Challenge (TAC) to spur the design and development of non-invasive, handheld, digital technologies to detect, diagnose and guide therapies for diseases with high global and public health impact. The Challenge is focused on sickle cell disease, malaria and anemia and is led by NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is cooperating with NIH to help accelerate the transformation of design concepts into products for low-resource settings.
