News Archive

Rockville’s MacroGenics Inc. is moving deeper into the cancer immunotherapy space with a new big pharma partnership.

The clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, which focuses on antibody-based therapies for cancer treatment and other diseases, announced it will work with Merck to study one of its molecules to treat stomach cancer. The companies will evaluate the antibody created by MarcoGenics in combination with Merck’s immunotherapy drug Keytruda in a Phase 1b/2 clinical trial, officials said.

The Startup Maryland bus rolled around the state for three weeks last month.

Mike Binko and company cruised through Baltimore with Steve Case’s Rise of the Rest tour, and made it over the Bay Bridge to Eastern Shore coworking space hotDesks.

One day featured a stop at Spark in Baltimore’s Power Plant Live! and the University of Baltimore. The bus was in Montgomery County, before heading back up to Charm City for Baltimore Innovation Week’s Beta City.

Has venture capital always been a bad model for the life sciences?

Andrew Lo, director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, dismissed the sector outright on stage Sunday at the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit. His rationale:

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2016 FLC awards. One of the most coveted honors in the technology transfer field, the FLC awards have been presented to over 200 federal laboratories since their inception in 1984. To reflect the diversity in scope and number of technology transfer efforts undertaken by federal laboratories and their partners, seven categories of awards will be presented.

138 Startups Now Compete for Fan Favorite and Finalist Designations Until Midday on Friday, November 6

Startup Maryland™ unveils the 138 video pitches from the participants in the 2015 Pitch Across Maryland competition. After posting the video pitches from Maryland entrepreneurs that were captured during the three-week Pitch Across Maryland bus tour, Startup Maryland is proud to announce that the two Video Pitch Competitions are now underway. You can find the various Playlists for each tour stop location where companies pitched on the Startup Maryland YouTube Channel.

Vtesse, Inc. announced today the addition of Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Neurological Sciences and Biochemistry at Rush University Medical Center to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and that Michael Massaro has joined the company as Vice President, Clinical Operations. Today’s news comes on the heels of Vtesse’s recent announcement that Rush University Medical Center has enrolled three patients in its pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial with VTS-270 for treatment of Niemann-Pick Type C1 Disease (NPC). Vtesse expects up to 20 sites (across the United States and the European Union) to participate in this clinical trial.  

“We seek SAB members who are both experienced clinicians and diligent researchers, and who also possess a strong passion to develop new treatment options and compassion for patients and their safety,” said Ben Machielse, Drs., President and Chief Executive Officer of Vtesse, Inc. “Dr. Berry-Kravis brings this unique combination to our SAB, which will support the clinical development of VTS-270. Her clinical research experience in rare diseases, such as Fragile X Syndrome, will help us advance our efforts with VTS-270. Dr. Berry-Kravis is serving as a co-lead principal investigator in our Phase 2b/3 clinical study of VTS-270 in addition to joining our SAB.”

Enthusiastic, animated, and innovative, Christopher Meenan left no doubt why he was among UMB’s 2015 Founders Week award winners with an insightful and entertaining Entrepreneur of the Year presentation “Health Informatics: A New Frontier for Innovation in Medicine” on Oct. 21.

Meenan, a faculty research associate in the School of Medicine’s Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, recalled tales of his early career in the finance industry when Y2K was feared to be an “apocalyptic event” and later when he worked at America Online, which was striving “to be innovative” by putting 30 million people on the Internet.

Like Disney and the Dodgers before it, Cedars-Sinai is partnering on an industry-specific technology accelerator in Los Angeles. The nonprofit hospital in the Beverly Grove neighborhood has teamed on the first-ever Techstars Healthcare Accelerator.

The program will offer 10 entrepreneurs and startups in the global healthcare industry $120,000 in funding plus mentorship and guidance from senior leadership at Cedars-Sinai and access to Techstars’ network of more than 7,000 founders, mentors, investors and corporate partners. At the end of three months, the participating companies will participate in a demo day, presenting their work to investors, mentors, company executives and the community at large.