News Archive

The BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) experienced significant change in 2019 that has set the table for an intriguing 2020.

How 2020 plays out across the region is unknown.

However, if you’ve followed BioBuzz throughout the past year, it is abundantly clear that workforce development strategy, investment, and support will be a critical issue for the next decade in the BHCR. In addition to change and growth across more traditional life science sectors, the ascension of personalized medicine within the region, which includes a host of new and growing regenerative medicine, cell therapy, and gene therapy companies, has transformed the region’s workforce needs.

A Baltimore business incubator has been named among the best in the world.

Emerging Technology Centers in Baltimore has been recognized by UBI Global as one of the 10 best public business incubators in the world.

The ranking was created based on a world benchmark study that included a total of 1,580 programs worldwide assessed on 21 key performance indicators including economy enhancement, talent retention, access to funds, post-graduation performance of companies and more to create lists of the top university, public and private incubators.

Image: The ETC is located at the King Cork & Seal building in Highlandtown. CONTROL TEC INC, & METRO DEVELOPMENT LLC

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — USA News Group – A new study published in the journal Molecular Therapy reports that researchers found a drug used in the treatment of HIV that may also suppress Zika virus infection. Zika virus disease is caused by a virus transmitted primarily by Aedes mosquitoes, which bite during the day.

Research and developments with multidisciplinary approaches are proving vital to the treatment and defense against viral and infection diseases as they become more aggressive and deadly. Companies preparing to offer new treatments to deal with the onslaught may become some of valuable over the next decade. Leaders in this space are anticipating strong revenue from collaborations including NGM Biopharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: NGM), Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE: EBS), and SIGA Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: SIGA)

SAN FRANCISCO—Roche has inked a 15-year partnership with Illumina in oncology, which will include collaborating on new companion diagnostic indications for the DNA sequencing giant’s pan-cancer assay.

Announced during the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the nonexclusive pact will also enable Roche to develop and distribute in vitro diagnostic tests for Illumina’s current and future hardware lines—such as the NextSeq 550Dx and the upcoming NovaSeqDx system. The deal’s financial terms were not disclosed. 

Image: Roche and Illumina, as well as Roche’s Foundation Medicine division, will work to secure regulatory approvals for Illumina’s TruSight Oncology 500 assay as a pan-cancer companion diagnostic for different targeted therapies. (Illumina)

GERMANTOWN, Md., Jan. 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Precigen, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company specializing in the development of innovative gene and cellular therapies to improve the lives of patients, today announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted orphan drug designation (ODD) to PRGN-3006, a first-in-class investigational therapy using Precigen’s non-viral UltraCAR-T™ therapeutic platform for patients with relapsed or refractory acute myeloid leukemia (AML) (clinical trial identifier: NCT03927261). Precigen announced in Q3 2019 that it had completed enrollment for the first cohort of this clinical trial and expects an initial data readout in the second half of 2020.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is seeking public feedback on its plan to revamp the Interagency Edison (iEdison) System, an online portal where companies that receive federal government funding report their inventions.

The project is part of NIST’s increased focus on federal technology transfer as part of the Lab-to-Market Cross-Agency Priority Goal under the President’s Management Agenda. Every year the federal government invests more than $100 billion in research and development, and in return grantees report the inventions that come out of this funding to the government through iEdison.

The Maryland Department of Commerce has created a new role focused on the state’s startup ecosystem and tapped a former investment banker and angel investor to head up the effort.

Allyson Redpath, who previously worked at Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, started as the department’s entrepreneurship director on Dec. 18, Secretary Kelly Schulz announced Thursday. In her new role, Redpath will work to attract and retain early-stage companies in Maryland. She will also help facilitate connections between these businesses and available resources, such as access to capital, company counseling and other small business workshops and events.

Image: Joanne S. Lawton

Rockville, Maryland-based Hememics Biotechnologies Inc. has secured a $2.5 million investment from AMVI Partners, an international investment firm with offices in McLean, Virginia.

The startup is working on developing a handheld device equipped with a multiplex panel chip that is able to rapidly test a blood sample to detect bacteria or proteins in less than a minute. The initial device in development, named HEMEMICS, is a point-of-care panel to test for sexually transmitted diseases.

IBT Vaccines, a wholly owned subsidiary of Integrated Biotherapeutics Inc., announces it has received $3.9 million to advance the development of the IBT-V02 vaccine for Staphylococcus aureus induced recurrent skin and skin structure infections (SSSI). The funding is part of a $48 mil. investment in 8 companies by Novo Holding’s REPAIR Impact Fund, established in 1999 to support the discovery and early development of therapies targeting drug resistant microorganisms. IBT-V02, which is currently in late pre-clinical development, is a unique and potentially first-to-market multivalent toxoid vaccine with broad coverage. S. aureus produces a remarkably large number of toxins that modulate host immune response. The goal is to harness the growing knowledge about its complex relationship with the host to develop effective prophylaxis and immunotherapy for S. aureus/MRSA disease.

When Daria Mochly-Rosen discovered a compound in her lab that promised to lessen the effects of heart attacks, she set out to convince pharmaceutical companies to develop it.

She couldn’t.

So the professor of chemistry and systems biology at Stanford University’s School of Medicine took a leave of absence and started her own company to further test and potentially commercialize the drug.

It seemed the obvious next step. After all, universities often speak of their success in turning research into products that make life better, with the added bonus of contributing to the economy. There are seemingly countless examples, including Gatorade, invented at the University of Florida; Google, which began at Stanford; web browsers and plasma screens, both created at the University of Illinois; and the drug that became the allergy medicine Allegra, developed at Georgetown University.