News Archive

Students across the University System of Maryland are graduating. But there are no auditoriums and arenas packed with people, cheering and taking photos as their children, grandchildren, spouses, parents and friends cross the stage. There is no stage. But there are virtual ceremonies online, produced with as much fanfare as our universities can create.

This isn’t the way graduates wanted to celebrate their enormous accomplishment. It isn’t how our universities wanted to celebrate their graduates. But COVID-19 has subordinated what we want to do in service of what we need to do — for the safety of our students, faculty, staff and neighbors.

Remote medicine. Telehealth. Digital medicine. Virtual visits.

Whatever it might be called, Children’s National Hospital (Children’s National) has been developing and deploying innovative telemedicine protocols, technologies and approaches for nearly two decades. 

So when the pandemic hit the region full force in mid-March 2020, Children’s National was ready. 

As COVID-19 took hold, the way patients engaged with medical professionals shifted nearly overnight. What was once seen as the future of medical treatment had suddenly, and perhaps irrevocably, been transformed into the standard of care for children and adults unable or unwilling to physically visit their healthcare provider because of the pandemic.

The National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps™) program uses experiential education to help researchers gain valuable insight into entrepreneurship, starting a business or industry requirements and challenges.

I-Corps enables the transformation of invention to impact. The curriculum integrates scientific inquiry and industrial discovery in an inclusive, data-driven culture driven by rigor, relevance, and evidence. Through I-Corps training, researchers can reduce the time to translate a promising idea from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Image: https://www.nsf.gov

“5 Questions With……” is a new BioBuzz series where we reach out to interesting people in the BioHealth Capital Region to share a little about themselves, their work, and maybe something completely unrelated. We’re happy to have NeoImmuneTech’s Byung Ha Lee as our 2nd guest.

Byung Ha Lee is the Director, R&D at NeoImmuneTech, Inc. With degrees from Korea University, and his Ph.D. in Medical Sciences-immunology and microbiology from the University of Florida College of Medicine. He has extensive industry experience over 15 years in translational research, business development, field KOL interaction, leading strategic and research planning of drug development. Byung Ha finished his postdoctoral training at the NIAID at NIH.

BARDA is dispatching another billion dollars-plus for the war on Covid-19, lining up 300 million doses for the US that could start arriving as soon as October.

Allied with researchers at Oxford University on one of the leading vaccines now in development for Covid-19, AstraZeneca reported that it has secured more than $1 billion from BARDA for the development, production and delivery of the vaccine, starting in the fall. The injection dwarfs the additional £84 million ($102 million) in funding for 30 million doses (up to 100 million doses) from the United Kingdom, which envisions inoculating at least half its population by September.

Baltimore, Md. (May 20, 2020) – University System of Maryland (USM) Chancellor Jay A. Perman and USM Board of Regents Chair Linda Gooden today announced that Dr. Stewart Edelstein, executive director of the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) and USM associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, has agreed to serve in his current position at USG through September 30, 2020, while the search for a new executive director continues. Dr. Edelstein’s existing contract would otherwise have expired on June 30.

Becker’s Healthcare is pleased to release the 2020 edition of its list of “100 great hospitals in America.”

The hospitals included on this list have been recognized nationally for excellence in clinical care, patient outcomes, and staff and physician satisfaction. These institutions are industry leaders that have achieved advanced accreditation and certification in several specialties. The list also includes industry innovators that have sparked trends in healthcare technology, hospital management and patient satisfaction.

The most promising Covid-19 treatments and vaccines being explored right now were made possible by a little-known law that encourages licensing agreements between private pharmaceutical companies and government-funded researchers.

Treatments such as Gilead’s remdesivir, Ridgeback Biotherapeutics’ EIDD-2801 drug, and Moderna’s vaccine candidate were all achieved through public-private partnerships that didn’t exist before the Bayh-Dole Act in 1980.

image:  A magnified coronavirus is displayed on a desktop computer monitor during coronavirus patient sample detection tests in the virology research labs at UZ Leuven university hospital in Leuven, Belgium, on Feb. 28, 2020.

The new rules come out of the recent public health emergency declaration, building on others announced in late March and early April. This round of changes, which take effect immediately, focuses on expanding testing capacity to help reopen the U.S. economy, according to CMS, along with delivering expanded care to seniors.

Image: https://www.healthcaredive.com

Our 3-day Digital RESI June Conference is coming up in less than 3 weeks, and we are very excited to announce our Innovation Challenge finalists. With a diverse representation across therapeutics, medical devices, diagnostics, and digital health, these companies were selected on the basis of innovative technology, strong management team, clear pathway to commercialization, and other positive factors that demonstrated high growth potential.