News Archive

April 4, 2019 3pm-6:30pmUniv. Shady Grove Convention Center 9630 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, Maryland 20850

Welcome to the Spring 2019 Meeting of the Metro DC Chapter of the Laboratory Research Interest Group! Although we have deep roots in Laboratory Automation, we also invite you to learn about other research technologies, new tools, and projects that are available and ongoing in the Capitol Bioscience hub!

This years theme is Emerging Technologies at the Forefront of Bioscience, with emphasis on 3D Cell Printing, Organoids, Tissue-On-Chip models, and Artificial Intelligence in Bioscience.

Attendance is free with your Eventbrite reservation, and we encourage you to register early.

– Winner to be announced during 2019 BioHealth Capital Region Forum –

Five innovative companies focused on the diagnosis or treatment of Multiple Sclerosis, TBI, Autism, Spinal misalignment, and Metastatic Cancer will present their innovative technologies to a panel of judges and industry leaders on April 9^th during the 2019 BioHealth Capital Region Forum, at the AstraZeneca campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Founded by BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) and AstraZeneca in 2016, the annual Crab Trap Competition highlights biohealth companies with strong commercial potential. The five finalists were selected from a competitive field of almost fifty entries. The 4^th Annual Crab Trap Competition is sponsored by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. The grand prize this year is $10,000.

In 2016, the initial prize was awarded to Sonavex, a commercial stage Johns Hopkins spin-out focused on Empowered Patient Care.  The company’s first technology is a dual-component system comprising an FDA-cleared bioabsorbable implant (EchoMark) and an FDA-cleared custom automated ultrasound (EchoSure) to detect post-operative vascular complications prior to catastrophic surgical failures that represent a $3B annual market and cost hospitals up to $577,000 per instance. The company closed a $4.5M Series A in 2018, recently secured a $3M NIH grant and is currently raising its Series B. In 2017, the winner was another Johns Hopkins (JH*) spinout, LifeSprout, developer of a suite of products to address soft tissue needs in the aesthetic and reconstructive markets. Last year’s winner, Galen Robotics, is developing, in partnership with JHU, a surgical robot to make minimally invasive surgeries faster, safer and more precise. The company plans a 510k submission next year, is raising Series A financing, and will be relocating the HQ team in CA to join their engineering experts in Baltimore.

The 2019 BioHealth Capital Region Crab Trap Finalists presenting at the forum at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday, April 9^th, are:

BeCareLink – Predictive Artificial Intelligence Digital Therapeutic Mobile Platform for Multiple Sclerosis and other neurological conditions.

BRAINBox Solutions – Multi-Modality capability to diagnose and provide prognostic information for mild Traumatic Brain Injury. 

Floreo Inc. – Leveraging the power of virtual reality to develop a subscription platform that delivers immersive, fun, and affordable lessons for children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). 

Spine Align – Spine Align is a medical device company developing technologies that enable spine surgeons to make real-time intraoperative measurements of spinal alignment.

Unleash Immuno Oncolytics – Developing armed, oncolytic viruses to treat metastatic cancers.  Our platform combines tissue-specific control of both viral replication and the expression of human cytokines to provide a dual punch in cancer cells.

AstraZeneca is spearheading the creation of a new life sciences park, in Wuxi, China, that aims to nurture innovation by bringing together local and international companies, government, and medical and academic institutions to help create a world-class healthcare innovation ecosystem.

AstraZeneca signed a global development and commercialization deal with Daiichi Sankyo for trastuzumab deruxtecan (DS-8201), an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC).

An ADC is a chemotherapy agent attached by a molecular linker to an antibody focused on a specific cancer marker. This way, the antibody delivers the toxic chemical directly to the tumors, minimizing the effects of the chemotherapy on healthy cells.

Pediatric orthopedic and spine medical device innovators –good news—the deadline has been extended until Tues., April 9 at midnight EST to apply for the NCC-PDI “Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!” competition with $250K in awards.

This is your chance to capture up to $50,000 in funding and gain access to the first-ever NCC-PDI “Pediatric Device Innovator Accelerator Program” led by MedTech Innovator.

Innovators earning a spot at this one-of-a-kind pediatric accelerator will receive mentorship and support from NCC-PDI’s network of medtech executives, investors, specialty pediatricians and FDA regulatory and business consultants. All finalists will be offered pitch perfect coaching by Entrepreneurs-In-Residence at BioHealth Innovation.

The competition will be held April 30, 2019 at the University of Maryland, College Park. Be part of it!

Jump start your journey to commercialization. The first step is applying here before the April 9, 2019 midnight EST deadline.

Creatv MicroTech, detecting and diagnosing cancer when it matters most, will present its latest findings on cancer diagnosis and treatment at the Annual American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Meeting at Atlanta, Georgia, March 29 – April 3, 2019.  Two posters will showcase the clinical utility of cancer-associated macrophage-like cells (CAMLs) biomarker.

Abstract No. 437 / 9: “Combining circulating stromal cells with cell free DNA for increased sensitivity in profiling oncogenic mutations and indicates highly aggressive non-small-cell lung cancer,” investigating the clinical potential of Circulogene’s Patient Mutation Load (PML) analysis from matched cfDNA, CAMLs, and tumor tissue to evaluate progression free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

AstraZeneca has signed on to be a founding partner for a new life sciences research hub in China, to be housed just west of Shanghai.

These are boom times for gene therapy, an innovative type of medicine that works to treat disease at the genetic level to offer a longer-lasting treatment and potentially even a cure.

BrainScope®, a medical neuro-technology company focused on concussion and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) assessment, announced today that it had concluded both algorithm development and clinical validation studies in adolescent and young adult populations using its objective, EEG-based technology. The purpose of the studies was to create and validate an objective, personalized capability for assessment of concussion and readiness to return to activities in males and females between the ages of 13-25. The studies conducted from 2015 through 2019 at 52 clinical sites included nearly 1,700 patients and healthy controls, with over 4,000 evaluations. Funding sources for the studies included a $9.9 million research contract from the U.S. Department of Defense, award funding from the NFL-GE Head Health Challenge (in which BrainScope was a two-time awardee), and BrainScope private funding.

Outside of the private sector, colleges and universities perform the vast majority of R&D in the United States – but where do these funds come from? An SSTI analysis of data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NSF NCSES) finds that, across the country, the federal government was the source of more than half (53.5 percent) of all R&D performed at colleges and universities in 2017. Institutional funds (25.1 percent), nonprofit organizations (6.8 percent), businesses (5.9 percent), state and local governments (5.6 percent), and other sources (3.0 percent) comprised the remaining sources of higher education R&D funding. The interactive chart below shows the breakdown of funding sources for research and development at colleges and universities for each state.