News Archive

I know what you’re thinking…it’s hard enough to raise venture capital for life science/healthcare startups in normal times, but throw a global pandemic and economic meltdown into the mix and even the best-laid plans will certainly go astray! So here are the questions that entrepreneurs would like answers to: Is there an inevitable slowdown in venture financing? How can VC firms conduct due diligence efficiently and thoroughly during a lockdown? Is a videoconference enough to establish a trusting relationship with a CEO and a Board? Does every startup have to take a hit on valuation if they want to get funding? Has the Coronavirus fundamentally changed expectations, time horizons, governance, and risk tolerance? What’s it gonna take to get someone to write a check?

I know what you’re thinking…it’s hard enough to raise venture capital for life science/healthcare startups in normal times, but throw a global pandemic and economic meltdown into the mix and even the best-laid plans will certainly go astray! So here are the questions that entrepreneurs would like answers to: Is there an inevitable slowdown in venture financing? How can VC firms conduct due diligence efficiently and thoroughly during a lockdown? Is a videoconference enough to establish a trusting relationship with a CEO and a Board? Does every startup have to take a hit on valuation if they want to get funding? Has the Coronavirus fundamentally changed expectations, time horizons, governance, and risk tolerance? What’s it gonna take to get someone to write a check?

Breethe, the medical device company founded by renowned University of Maryland School of Medicine surgeon and professor Dr. Bartley Griffith, has been acquired by Danvers, Massachusetts-based Abiomed, the companies announced this week.

Breethe’s system, which is designed to behave like a human lung, will become part of the Abiomed’s product portfolio. The device is designed to be portable, which can eliminate the need to use bulky oxygen tanks during ECMO therapy, which circulates blood from a patient’s body through an artificial lung. The device will help “to more comprehensively serve the needs of patients whose lungs can no longer provide sufficient oxygenation,” a news release states.

Image: Breethe’s machine is desgined to behave like a human lung. (Courtesy photo)

As the world anxiously awaits a coronavirus vaccine, a Maryland biotechnology company already has signed deals to do initial production of three candidates. If one of them works, the firm has a factory in place to manufacture hundreds of millions of doses a year.

Emergent BioSolutions of Gaithersburg has long been preparing for a global disease outbreak. The firm got started making a vaccine against anthrax, and since then has produced candidates for the Ebola and Zika viruses.

Image: Luis M. Branco, PhD Managing Director and Co-Founder

Emergent BioSolutions Inc.’s $135 million deal struck late last month to manufacture Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine candidate isn’t just a big financial win for the company — it’s also a key geopolitical move in the race to defeat the virus.

According to The New York Times, the Department of Health and Human Services made sure Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) — which is headquartered in New Jersey but has its research based in the Netherlands — joined a manufacturing partnership with the Maryland-based biotech to ensure the earliest available large batches of the vaccine, if approved, are produced stateside.

Grants for Technology Product Development

Market-driven new technology and innovation leads to new products and new jobs. Creating jobs in innovative Maryland companies is what the Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program has been doing for 32 years: bringing the inventive minds and extensive laboratory resources of the University System of Maryland (USM) to bear on creating the new products that feed the growth of Maryland businesses. Since the program’s inception in 1987, MIPS–enabled products have generated sales of $40 B.  MIPS is nationally recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a model program for best practices in transferring technology and is a proven program that contributes significantly to job creation and high tech product development in Maryland.

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB) is urgently soliciting proposals and can provide up to $500M across multiple projects to rapidly produce innovative SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic tests that will assist the public’s safe return to normal activities. Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx), is a fast-track technology development program that leverages the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Point-of-Care Technology Research Network (POCTRN). RADx will support novel solutions that build the U.S. capacity for SARS-CoV-2 testing up to 100-fold above what is achievable with standard approaches. RADx is structured to deliver innovative testing strategies to the public as soon as late summer 2020 and is an accelerated and comprehensive multi-pronged effort by NIH to make SARS-CoV-2 testing readily available to every American.