News Archive

More Funding in Phase I –

We posted new Phase I funding opportunities for small businesses (Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer). The Phase I award amount increased from $225,000 to $256,000.  

Project Pitch Update –

The Project Pitch allows startups and small businesses to get quick feedback at the start of their application for Phase I funding. Each company can only submit one Project Pitch at a time and up to two Project Pitches per submission window (see dates below). Once invited, a Pitch expires after a year. For more information, please refer to the updated Frequently Asked Questions.

A Bedford-based nonprofit, MITRE, is the powerhouse beyond a new initiative called Bridging Innovation, designed specifically to play matchmaker between startups and government agencies.

For the program, MITRE has partnered with essentially all of Massachusetts’ major players: MassRobotics, MassChallenge, Gov. Charlie Baker’s cybersecurity advisory panel, the Massachusetts Military Asset Task Force, Techstars’ Air Force Accelerator, Harvard Innovation Labs, MIT Engine and the UMass Lowell Innovation Hub.

AstraZeneca plans to invest $520 million in its manufacturing site in Dunkirk, France, over the next five years and create roughly 150 jobs, Bloomberg reported. 

Of the total, $230 million will be dedicated to building assembly lines and modernizing the drugmaker’s equipment in the Dunkirk facility, which focuses on developing and manufacturing asthma treatments. The new lines could create about 100 highly skilled jobs, according to Bloomberg. 

Psychedelic drugs—once promising research subjects that were decades ago relegated to illicit experimentation in dorm rooms—have been steadily making their way back into the lab for a revamped 21st-century-style look. Scientists are rediscovering what many see as the substances’ astonishing therapeutic potential for a vast range of issues, from depression to drug addiction and acceptance of mortality.

Johns Hopkins University is blowing up its business-school curriculum.

Starting in the fall of 2020, the university’s traditional two-year master’s of business administration degree will take a hard turn toward health, with a particularly heavy focus on quant skills, from exposure to coding to data analysis, said Alexander Triantis, dean of the Carey Business School.

Image: Brian Gunia, an associate professor at the Carey school, plans to tweak aspects of his class to fit the new health and analytics focus. PHOTO: MATT ROTH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

How has a health system with a 323-bed hospital and a three-person innovation team built connections with more than 100 startups around the globe and attracted a Johnson & Johnson innovation lab to collocate on its campus? And how does it simultaneously challenge its own academic faculty to tackle the quandary of pediatric device innovation?

The federal government has tapped a local company to help defend against superbugs.

Gaithersburg’s Adaptive Phage Therapeutics Inc. has earned a $10.2 million contract with the Department of Defense to help advance PhageBank, APT’s collection of viruses that target specific pathogens and kill drug-resistant bacteria. The ultimate goal is to make its therapy for drug-resistant infections available to the U.S. military and the public, APT said Wednesday.

Image: Dr. Carl Merril, third from right, with his son Greg, CEO and co-founder of Adaptive Phage Therapeutics, and other members of the team. ADAPTIVE PHAGE THERAPEUTICS INC.

China’s viral outbreak is straining the resources of front-line hospital staff in epidemic-stricken Wuhan, who have been forced to turn away patients because of a lack of beds and basic medical supplies.

Image: Chinese authorities are building a new hospital in the city of Wuhan following the outbreak of a virus that has infected more than 800 people and killed 26, aiming to complete it within six days. Photo: CCTV

About a month into the new gig, the former investment banker is nailing down her priorities for this year. On her list: Improving access to capital.

Image: Allyson Redpath is the Maryland Department of Commerce’s new director of entrepreneurship and small business. JOANNE S. LAWTON