News Archive

The Maryland Department of Commerce is seeking qualified candidates for the position of Senior Business Development Representative within its Division of Business & Industry Sector Development’s Regional Growth, Business Retention, Expansion and Strategic Rural Development Unit. This position is primarily responsible for attracting businesses, assisting with retention, relocation, and expansion needs and opportunities within the State of Maryland focusing on Montgomery County in the Capital Region. The incumbent will actively market and promote the region’s unique assets providing economic development assistance to businesses, Counties, or economic development organizations in Montgomery County.

BioAdvance, the operator of a $50 million early stage life sciences fund that work with health-care entrepreneurs in the mid-Atlantic region, invested $2.9 million in companies and technologies targeting human health during fiscal 2016

Subscription boxes are a growing business trend. About a year and a half ago, Fatima Dicko founded mybestbox, a subscription-based business which delivers boxes filled with $75-$100 worth of healthy living materials to subscribers nationwide for $25 each month.

On June 27, 2016, the SEC proposed amendments that, if adopted, would allow more companies to qualify for “smaller reporting company” (SRC) status. The proposed amendments are intended to promote capital formation and reduce disclosure compliance costs for smaller companies while maintaining investor protections.

New York City-based Transfix, an on-demand trucking provider, has raised $22 million in Series B funding. New Enterprise Associates led the round with participation from other investors that included Canvas Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures and Corigin Ventures. In conjunction with the funding, Scott Sandell of NEA has been added to Transfix’s board of directors.

At Human Longevity Inc. (HLI) in La Jolla, California, more than two dozen machines work around the clock, sequencing one human genome every 15 minutes at a cost of under $2,000 per genome. The whole operation fits comfortably in three rooms. Back in 2000, when its founder, J. Craig Venter, first sequenced a human genome (his own), it cost $100 million and took a building-size, $50 million computer nine months to complete.

We’ve tried to cure cancer before. Will this time be different?

Vtesse, Inc. a company committed to developing drugs that will benefit patients with extremely rare, life-threatening diseases, announced today that it has secured $17 million in additional Series A funding in support of its global, pivotal clinical trial of VTS-270 for Niemann-Pick Type C1 disease (“NPC”).

All Series A investors contributed to the financing extension, including Alexandria Venture Investments, Bay City Capital LLC, Lundbeckfond Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), and Pfizer Venture Investments. Together with proceeds from the original Series A announced in January of 2015, Vtesse has raised a total of $42 million to fund development of its lead product to treat NPC.

When downtown department stores were common, shoppers could head to 9073 Center St. in Manassas for household goods, or as an ad in a 1929 issue of the Manassas Journal said, for “show boat” dresses.