News Archive

Andrew Lees, Ph.D., is founder and scientific director of Fina Biosolutions, LLC (Rockville, Md.), a company focused on promoting affordable conjugate vaccines by making the technology available to emerging market vaccine manufacturers. Among his contributions in the field, Lees developed an efficient linking chemistry which is widely used in conjugate vaccines, a class that includes vaccines for S. pneumoniae and meningococcal disease. The chemistry has helped to reduce the cost of these vaccines.  

REGENXBIO Inc. (Nasdaq: RGNX), a leading clinical-stage biotechnology company seeking to improve lives through the curative potential of gene therapy based on its proprietary NAV® Technology Platform, today announced the first U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of a gene therapy that leverages REGENXBIO’s proprietary NAV Technology Platform, Novartis AG’s ZOLGENSMA® (onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi; AVXS-101). ZOLGENSMA was approved by the FDA as a one-time infusion for pediatric patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) who are less than two years of age.

How does the healthcare sector stack up on gender equality? To answer that question, we look at pipeline practices, employee experiences, and policies and programs the industry has implemented to promote diversity and inclusion. We also hear from industry leaders on what it takes to accelerate change across the sector.

A just-released study co-sponsored by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and AUTM provides new evidence of the significant contribution academic patent licensing makes to the U.S. economy. The report is the most recent in a series, and the numbers are astounding.

Gene therapies represent some of the most promising advancements in science and human health in recent history.  The BioHealth Capital Region, and Maryland in particular, is rapidly becoming a hub for companies in this field. With the NIH and the National Cancer Institute at the nucleus, some of the most advanced scientific research and technology development in the field is happening in a short 30-mile radius around Montgomery County, Maryland.

Ceres Nanosciences, Inc. (Ceres), University of Virginia (UVA), and George Mason University (Mason) today announced the receipt of a $600,000 award from the Virginia Catalyst for the development of a Nanotrap® liquid biopsy collection device. This award will be matched by $1.2 million in product development funding by Ceres Nanosciences.

Fortune 500 healthcare company Baxter International is planning to partner with a trio of Baltimore organizations.

The Chicago-based company plans to work with Johns Hopkins University, LifeBridge Health and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

Maryland state delegate Lily Qi shares her path to becoming a first-generation Chinese-American lawmaker. Qi is from Shanghai.

BRAINBox Solutions today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Device Designation for the company’s BRAINBox TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) test in development, the first to aid in both the diagnosis and prognosis of mild TBI (concussion). The BRAINBox TBI test is a multi-modality, quantitative test that combines injury-related blood protein biomarkers with computerized neurological assessments.

At the molecular level, we may not age gracefully; that is, we may not follow a continuous, linear downward slope. Instead, we may fall precipitously after we lose control of our exquisitely balanced anti-aging programs, sometime in our 50s. These findings, derived from a study of tissue-coding and noncoding RNA, may help explain why human disease burden increases so sharply from the sixth decade of life onward. They may also lead to therapies that enhance longevity, provided the natural termination of protective gene expression patterns does not indicate that they have outlived their usefulness.