News Archive

This request for information (RFI) seeks comments regarding early translational research activities supported by NHLBI.

Background

NHLBI seeks to facilitate and accelerate the development of new clinical interventions by bridging the gaps between mechanistic, discovery, and early translational research. This includes providing appropriate mechanisms to support investigator-initiated research, addressing resource and knowledge gaps, and creating initiatives to support career development of translational scientists and biomedical entrepreneurs.

Alexandria Real Estate CEO Joel Marcus on the company’s deal to develop Merck’s new research facility in California.

America’s entrepreneurial economy is the envy of the world.  Young companies account for almost 30 percent of new jobs, and as we have fought back from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, startups have helped the U.S. private sector create 15.5 million jobs since early 2010—the longest streak of private-sector job creation on record. 

Today, in celebration of National Entrepreneurship Month, the Administration is releasing a Top 10 list of President Obama’s most significant specific actions to promote American entrepreneurship, as well as announcing new efforts to build on these successes. The President’s unprecedented focus on the role of startups in the United States’ innovation economy is exemplified by his launch of Startup America in 2011, a White House initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the Nation.

MedImmune and Abpro said today they will partner to develop a preclinical, novel, bispecific antibody targeting angiopoietin-2 and vascular endothelial growth factor (Ang2-VEGF).

Through the collaboration—whose value was not disclosed—several potential therapeutic areas will be explored where inhibition of the Ang2 and VEGF pathways with the bispecific antibody may provide clinical benefit, MedImmune and Abpro said.

The emergence of big data, as well as advancements in data science approaches and technology, is providing pharmaceutical companies with an opportunity to gain novel insights that can enhance and accelerate drug development. It will increasingly help government health agencies, payers, and providers to make decisions about such issues as drug discovery, patient access, and marketing. From our unique vantage points at Genentech, a leading biotechnology company with a major data science practice, and The Data Incubator, a data-science education company that places and trains data scientists, we have seen how the pharmaceuticals industry has leveraged big data for some potentially revolutionary advances and the challenges it has faced along the way.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures and CoapTech, LLC, announced today that the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has granted CoapTech exclusive licensing rights for the commercial development of a platform technology called Coaptive Ultrasound.  CoapTech will use the technology, initially, to bring to market a medical device allowing non-surgical providers to safely perform feeding tube placement at the bedside through a novel procedure termed PUG (Percutaneous Ultrasound Gastrostomy).  PUG is a minimally invasive and more cost-effective method for the placement of permanent gastrostomy (feeding) tubes into stomachs of patients who need long-term nutritional supplementation.

Stephen Moret, the head of LSU’s major fundraising arm and a former key adviser to then-Gov. Bobby Jindal, is leaving Louisiana for Virginia.

Moret has been tapped to lead the embattled Virginia Economic Development Partnership after less than two years leading the private LSU Foundation.

In its third year of mentoring and investing in cybersecurity start-ups in Northern Virginia, state-funded start-up accelerator Mach37 is starting to show it can churn out self-sustaining businesses.

Venture capital has been on a good run over the past few years across a range of sectors; even with recent slowdown relative to 2014-2015, venture-backed investments remain above historic averages. In fact, the first three quarters of 2016 alone are already higher than the annual rate of venture investing in all but two years since 2002.

Quasi-public venture capital firm MassVentures reports that its SBIR Targeted Technologies (START) program has invested $12 million into 50 companies that need more time to commercialize high-risk, high-reward technologies — and those companies have leveraged that state investment to raise an additional $278 million in outside capital.