News Archive

June 13, 2017 – 6:00pm – 9:00pm

Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and County Conference Center 5701 Marinelli Road, North Bethesda, MD 20852

Tuesday, June 13 MCCC 58th Annual Dinner honoring Dr. Martine Rothblatt and United Therapeutics as the Visionary of the Year United Therapeutics Corporation is a bio-tech company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative products to address the unmet medical needs of patients with chronic and life-threatening conditions. They have five approved products on the market today and are in relentless pursuit of “medicines for life”®. Their overarching commitment to environmental sustainability is reflected in their new corporate office facility in Silver Spring. This seven-story, 108,000-sq.-ft., cutting-edge collaborative workspace aims to inspire people think out of today’s box and into the realm of tomorrow.

Immigration advocates claim that about half of the most lucrative startups in America were founded by immigrants. But it’s complicated for a foreigner to start a company in America — there’s no such thing as a startup visa.

That’s why some entrepreneurs are “hacking the system” through a workaround that started as an experiment in Massachusetts and has expanded to five other states.

VentureApp, a professional chat platform, today announced VentureMap New York City, an interactive network visualization of the city’s tech ecosystem, in partnership with RRE Ventures. The map displays 3,043 investments into tech startups by angel investors, venture capitalists, incubators, accelerators, and more.

Sitting around a table before class, Shane Yeager talked about one of his two startups.

“Short Clips is a technology service where brands and agencies can take their media files — videos, audio, photos — put them into our platform, and then within 24 hours, get a professionally cut 15-second to one-minute video,” he said.

QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced the formation of a joint venture with Maccura Biotechnology Co., Ltd., a leading in vitro diagnostics (IVD) company in China. The joint venture, named MAQGEN plans to accelerate local adaptations, development and commercialization of the GeneReader NGS System in the rapidly growing clinical and clinical research markets in China. QIAGEN’s GeneReader NGS System is the world’s first complete Sample to Insight solution and makes the benefits of next-generation sequencing (NGS) accessible to any laboratory.

Pieris today announced a strategic collaboration in respiratory diseases with AstraZeneca to develop novel inhaled drugs that leverage Pieris’ Anticalin® platform, including its lead preclinical drug candidate, PRS-060.

Anticalin molecules are engineered proteins which can mimic antibodies by binding to sites either on other proteins or on small molecules. They are smaller than monoclonal antibodies, offering the potential of direct delivery to the lung.

Medicine is a field slow to adopt an innovation; after all, you are dealing with people’s lives and there is a very high bar for discarding old ways. That said, a huge percentage of the medical community will agree that tradition has often hampered the adoption of new technologies that can significantly improve communication, collaboration, and community.

Healthcare companies (device manufacturers, payors, and providers, among others) have long relied on technology as a core utility—for tracking R&D efforts and patient information, scheduling payments and services, launching new care options, and generally keeping the lights on.

Look out Silicon Valley, there’s a new innovation hotbed in town.

For the second year in a row, Central Texas Angel Network (CTAN) has won the coveted #1 ranking at the Angel Capital Association’s annual ACA Summit in San Francisco.

AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN) and its global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune, today announced that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approval to Imfinzi (durvalumab). Imfinzi is indicated for the treatment of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC) who have disease progression during or following platinum-containing chemotherapy, or whose disease has progressed within 12 months of receiving platinum-containing chemotherapy before (neoadjuvant) or after (adjuvant) surgery. Imfinzi is approved under the FDA’s accelerated approval pathway, based on tumour response rate and durability of response. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.