News Archive

SHARE For Cures (SFC), a new Washington, DC-based non-profit that makes it easy for individuals to access and securely share their health data with researchers, announced today a new partnership with BioHealth Innovation, a Maryland-based innovation intermediary focused on connecting health technology innovators and entrepreneurs with government agencies and corporations.

Through the partnership, SHARE For Cures will become an affiliate of Relevant Health, a Rockville, MD-based technology accelerator supported by BioHealth Innovation.

It’s wise to think ahead when it comes to cancer, says William Nelson, one of the nation’s leading oncologists and director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University.

That includes taking steps like avoiding tobacco and tanning beds, especially when you’re young.

In his final State of the Union address, President Obama announced a “moonshot” program to cure cancer. Obama named Vice President Joe Biden, whose son Beau died from brain cancer last year, to lead the government effort, which could even have bipartisan appeal. In 2015, House Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly passed the 21st Century Cures Act, which raises funding and lowers barriers for audacious medical research. (The Senate is considering its own version.) The bill’s sponsor (and Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee), Fred Upton, tweeted his support for the Obama-Biden effort.

The Washington region could hit the billion-dollar mark in cybersecurity venture funding in 2016. Jonathan Aberman, managing director of Amplifier Ventures, a seed and early-stage venture capital fund based in McLean, said big fourth-quarter investments in cybersecurity companies helped boost overall venture funding in 2015 – and will continue to grow in 2016. He said the Washington region, a growing center for cybersecurity business and research overall, will see more big deals in 2016.

An ambitious effort to spark employment and redevelopment in Central West Baltimore is set for a public launch Monday.

The effort, called the Innovation Village, labels itself as Baltimore’s first innovation district and spans some of the areas hardest hit in April’s unrest.

Last year, three biomedical engineering (BME) MS students—Teresa Cauvel, Rebecca Peyser, and Sona Shah—took BME Lecturer Katherine E. Reuther’s new design course and came up with an idea for a health technology startup they called Neopenda. Their concept, born in January and shaped through Reuther’s class over the spring semester, was a low-cost, low-power, low-maintenance way to monitor neonatal vitals through engineered “hats,” a headband containing a small circuit that measures heart rate, respiratory rate, temperature, and blood oxygen saturation in critically ill infants and then sends the data to a centralized monitoring device.

It’s been a frenetic couple of weeks between Consumer Electronics Show and J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference so now it’s time to take a broader look at what investors took away from them. The latter conference has certainly evolved since its start as Hambrecht & Quist.

Our livers rested, our business cards sheathed – one more year of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference has come and gone. Given that the week was relatively quiet in terms of breaking news, the focus rested more solidly on trend analysis, moodiness – and what was not said. It also showed undercurrents of change.

Frederick software startup Luminal has raised $20 million and is changing its name to Fugue.

The Series C round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with investment from Core Capital. The new financing brings the company’s total funding to $34 million.

At the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) CEO Andrew Witty made headlines when he signaled that he might be open to splitting the pharma giant in separate parts, a move some investors say would unlock more value.