News Archive

The new president and chief executive officer of Virginia’s Center for Innovative Technology has roots in high flight and high finance and every intention to bring skills from both sectors to his new job. Ed Albrigo, appointed Nov. 2 by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to succeed Peter Jobse, who has returned to the private sector after 13 years with the nonprofit CIT, says his goals are lofty — maybe seeding Virginia companies to remotely mine for minerals on the moon and bring them back for use in fusion energy.

Pfizer has clinched a blockbuster merger with a fellow drug maker, one worth more than $150 billion, that can best be described in superlatives.

When it is announced — most likely on Monday, people briefed on the matter said — the deal to buy Allergan, the maker of Botox, would be one of the biggest ever takeovers in the health care industry. And it would be the largest acquisition yet in a banner year for mergers.

PHARMACEUTICAL majors AstraZeneca and Sanofi have agreed to swap 210,000 compounds from their proprietary libraries as part of efforts to encourage open innovation in drug development. No money will change hands between the two companies, in what is a relatively new collaborative approach. Both companies will be able to increase the diversity of their compound libraries. AstraZeneca and Sanofi have chosen compounds from each others’ libraries which plug gaps in their own, and will share chemical structures and the procedures to make them.

Dr. Robert L. Caret was inaugurated as chancellor of the University System (USM) of Maryland on November 19, 2015 at the Christopher Columbus Center in Baltimore, Md. The event featured remarks by several Maryland dignitaries and members of the USM community; musical performances by current USM students; as well as the following video tribute.

Imagine you’re back in high school and you’re sent on a field trip to a local pharmaceutical company. You spend the day talking to scientists, touring the labs and … making ice cream?

That’s what your day would look like if you showed up at Emergent BioSolutions Inc. as part of MdBio Foundation’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education opportunities.

This week, PricewaterhouseCoopers came out with a report on remaking primary care for what the consulting form called “the New Health Economy.” We would have covered it straight up on Wednesday, but a certain provider-focused health IT reporter at MedCity News was busy at the American Medical Informatics Association conference.

Since it’s not breaking news anymore, we have to take a different angle. A major component of the future of primary care, according to PwC, will be digital health.

On November 4 more than 400 regional business and government leaders joined us for our Annual Meeting to celebrate the people and companies that make this region great. Attendees heard from 20 individuals who share their stories about their connection to Baltimore.

Virtual reality is here, and brands of all stripes are embracing the tech. The New York Times and Google newly partnered to send more than 1 million cardboard VR viewers to Times subscribers at the beginning of November so they could watch the paper’s first VR documentaries on a smartphone. Magic Leap published video of its augmented reality system online in October, causing more buzz around VR’s potential. Even Tommy Hilfiger now offers VR sets to its in-store customers so they can watch its recent New York Fashion Week show.

OpGen, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPGN) and the District of Columbia Hospital Association (DCHA) today announced that Washington DC’s public health departments will oversee a comprehensive citywide evaluation, HARP-DC (Healthcare facility Antibiotic Resistance Prevalence-District of Columbia), to gauge the prevalence of the multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) in healthcare facilities throughout the District of Columbia. The DC Department of Health (DOH)-led study is being funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) Funding program for tracking healthcare-associated infections (HAI). The Department, in turn, has contracted OpGen to perform related laboratory services. The DC Department of Forensic Sciences-Public Health Laboratory (DFS-PHL) is also participating in the study by providing logistical support and by sequencing and banking isolates recovered from cultures.

In 2016, The University System of Maryland will break ground on a new Biomedical Science and Engineering Education Facility at the Universities at Shady Grove. The facility has been designed to meet the specific economic needs of this region, while expanding degree opportunities in healthcare, biosciences, engineering and computational sciences and STEM education. This facility will provide state-of-the-art teaching laboratories, active learning classrooms, clinical training facilities, academic offices, and an expanded level of student services necessary to support program and enrollment growth.