News Archive

When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz founded their namesake venture firm in 2009, they laid out a clear-but-narrow vision for investing in a new wave of Web-based innovation.

Andreessen, in particular, espoused a net-centric view that was absolute. “No clean tech, no rocket ships, no electric cars. No China or India,” he told Fortune magazine at the time. Biotech likewise was out of the question. In the six years since then, Andreessen Horowitz has grown into a $4 billion VC, and established itself as a leading tech investor. Andreessen’s observation that “software is eating the world” has become an industry axiom, as Web-based services have invaded and taken over financial services, education, and a host of other sectors.

How would you engineer a baby? I mean really, actually do it.

Last April, Chinese researchers reported that they had tried genetically editing human embryos for the first time to correct a disease gene. Out of more than 80 embryos, however, only a handful came out correctly. In the rest, the gene didn’t get fixed properly, or they ended up with unintended alterations to their DNA (see “Chinese Team Reports Gene-Editing Human Embryos”).

Construction is complete on a new 700-spot parking garage at Universities at Shady Grove, clearing the way to begin moving dirt on a planned $162 million biomedical sciences building on its Rockville campus.

Work will start on that facility in June, said Stewart Edelstein, associate vice chancellor of the University System of Maryland, the state’s public university network that includes USG. The full project, which included the $20 million garage and a new entrance onto campus, will be completed by fall 2018, said Edelstein, who is also USG’s executive director.

With the cost to sequence a human genome dropping by the day and medical records finally going digital, public health experts are excited for a new era of personalized, or “precision,” medicine—a big data future in which there is no “average” patient, only individual patients with unique genes, environments, and lifestyles. As a measure of this excitement, this year, President Obama launched a $215 million initiative that will create a health database from 1 million volunteers that is unprecedented in detail. Breakthroughs in prevention, understanding, and treatment of disease are hoped.

Following the Maryland Venture Fund’s transition under TEDCO’s purview last month, there’s now a new director of the quasi-public, early-stage funding resource.

Andy Jones is now the Managing Director of the Venture Fund, tasked with “defining MVF’s strategy and leading team members,” according to a news release. TEDCO chief Rob Rosenbaum made the announcement at last week’s Entrepreneur Expo event, and the organization made the formal announcement Tuesday.

The Food and Drug Administration late Monday broadened the use of an already available anthrax drug from Emergent Biosolutions Inc. EBS, -0.57% to a larger treatment population. The agency approved Emergent’s BioThrax for use in people 18 to 65 years old who have had suspected or confirmed exposure to anthrax. Previously, the indication for the drug was for people who were at a high risk of exposure to the bacteria. Emergent Biosolutions shares rose 1% to $38.10 after hours.

Real estate giant Alexandria Real Estate Equities has unveiled sweeping plans to transform a 56-acre Research Triangle Park site into a campus for life science and agricultural technology companies.

Plans for the campus call for more than 1 million square feet of space.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ vision to turn a mostly undeveloped property in Research Triangle Park into its latest life science cluster is moving forward with a first phase intended to boost offerings for early-stage startups.

Pasadena, CA-based Alexandria (NYSE: ARE), which operates science and technology campuses across the country, announced the RTP plans today. Alexandria will start by refurbishing an existing building and laying the groundwork for development expected to reach 1 million square feet of space. Those RTP plans put the property shy of similar Alexandria science campuses in San Francisco; Cambridge, MA, and New York. But Alexandria CEO Joel Marcus says each site reflects its market.

Hot biotech startups are attracting increased venture funding, and venture investors are ensuring a slot in the financing of these types of companies by starting the company themselves, Brian Gormley reports for Dow Jones VentureWire. The latest venture firm to do so is SR One, the venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline PLC.GSK.LN +1.16% The group, which invests in medical technologies, has added an entrepreneur in residence to its Cambridge, Mass., offices and has seeded its first startup through the effort, a company formed to develop drugs for cancer and inflammatory diseases. The firm’s launch of its own company comes after 30 years of funding existing companies.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015 | 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
The Observation Gallery at Baltimore Washington
International Thurgood Marshall Airport

Meet with over 30 companies and learn about their technology and relationship to Maryland.

Keynote address by Mike Gill, Secretary, Maryland Department of Commerce

Economic Development in Maryland…the Next Chapter
New Addition! Immediately after the Showcase join OurCrowd for an update on The Startup Nation: Israel’s Vibrant Economy.