News Archive

The University of Maryland will be a key partner in a new institute to advance U.S. leadership in pharmaceutical manufacturing that was announced by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker on Friday, December 16, 2016. The National Institute for Innovation of Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL) will be the 11th Manufacturing USA Institute, and includes the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.  A team of more than 150 companies, educational institutions, nonprofits and state governments will operate NIIMBL under a newly formed nonprofit.

New research suggests it is possible to slow or even reverse aging, at least in mice, by undoing changes in gene activity—the same kinds of changes that are caused by decades of life in humans. By tweaking genes that turn adult cells back into embryoniclike ones, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies reversed the aging of mouse and human cells in vitro, extended the life of a mouse with an accelerated-aging condition and successfully promoted recovery from an injury in a middle-aged mouse, according to a study published Thursday in Cell.

Sometimes lab research leads to a discovery that’s commercially viable enough to start a company. But for scientists with little business experience, making the jump to the private sector can be intimidating without support. In an effort to address this issue, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has partnered with the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) (link is external) to award a new round of N-STEP grants, which support early-stage entrepreneurs in ways that other grants do not. 

Medigene AG (http://www.medigene.de) (FSE: MDG1, Prime Standard, TecDAX) announced today that it has granted an exclusive, worldwide license for the development and commercialization of its preclinical stage adeno-associated virus like particles (AAVLPs) technology to the Swedish biotech company 2A Pharma AB, located in Malmö, Sweden. Under the terms of the agreement, Medigene is eligible to receive clinical, regulatory and commercial milestone payments in addition to royalties on net sales of future AAVLP products by 2A Pharma AB. Further financial details were not disclosed.

MaxCyte, Inc. announced today a strategic collaboration with leading academic research institution, Washington University in St. Louis (“Washington University”) to advance next-generation Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR)-based cell therapies for acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

MaxCyte and Washington University will develop unique immunotherapy drug candidates, based on MaxCyte’s proprietary cell engineering platform technology, CARMA.

This collaboration builds on MaxCyte’s efforts with The Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center around pre-clinical development of CAR therapy for solid cancers.

Michael Lewis’s 2003 book, Moneyball — later made into a movie starring Brad Pitt — tells the story of how predictive analytics transformed the Oakland Athletics baseball team and, eventually, baseball itself. Data-based modeling has since transcended sport. It’s used in hiring investment bankers, for example. But is academe really ready for its own “moneyball moment” in terms of personnel decisions?

Astellas Pharma Inc. (President and CEO: Yoshihiko Hatanaka, “Astellas”) and Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. (Founder & CEO: William Hearl, Ph.D., “Immunomic Therapeutics”) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation for the drug candidate ASP0892 for the mitigation of severe hypersensitivity reactions due to peanut allergy. ASP0892 is a new DNA vaccine program based on the investigational LAMP-Vax platform. A Phase I clinical trial to evaluate the safety, tolerability and immune response of ASP0892 in adults allergic to peanuts has been initiated.

Cambridge Innovation Center has signed onto 127,000 square feet at UCity Square in Philadelphia.

Known as CIC, the Boston-based company will occupy space at 3675 Market St. in University City. It operates in a similar fashion as a co-working space and incubator, providing flexible space to entrepreneurial startups and other companies. Since its founding in 1999, companies that have been housed in CIC space have raised more than $2.5 billion and added an estimated 40,000 jobs to the economy, according to the company’s website.

Students attending classes in the Paul Peck Academic and Innovation Building may not realize it, but just upstairs, researchers are changing—and saving—lives. Home to the Germantown Innovation Center (GIC), approximately 24 life science companies and more than 100 employees are hard at work on the second floor. One company—Zalgen Labs—played a key role in the development of a test to rapidly diagnose Ebola. Another firm created a pediatric anthrax vaccine.

The NIH has awarded MIMETAS and the University of Pittsburgh a prestigious SBIR grant to develop a Liver-on-a-Chip platform for high throughput discovery and development. Accurate prediction of hepatotoxicity is a major problem in the development of new drugs leading to high development costs.  Animal hepatotoxicity testing is expensive, unsuited to high throughput and overall has unreliable concordance with human hepatotoxicity.