News Archive

On October 8, 2011, I said goodbye to my loved ones and didn’t know if I would ever see them again. 15 hours later I was in the ICU having become the 11th person in the United Kingdom to undergo an intestinal transplant at The Churchill Hospital, Oxford.

As part of transplant I had an ileostomy. This is where part of the intestine is brought to the outside of your body and your bodily waste is collected in a pouch known as an ostomy pouch. You lose control of the very thing you take for granted. On top of that, everyone wants access to output data and the only way of doing this is manually emptying into a jug. There had to be an alternative.

MedImmune, the biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, recently joined the Human Vaccines Project to develop vaccines and immunotherapies for infectious diseases and cancer, according to a press release.

The Human Vaccines Project aims to accelerate vaccine development by deciphering the human immune system with the support of leading academic research centers, governments and nonprofit groups.

Entrepreneur Office Hours: Get Answers Now! Two Locations: College Park and Baltimore  

Free, Open Entrepreneur Office Hours for University of Maryland Students, Faculty and Staff, and Regional Entrepreneurs with Bio or Tech-Based Startups or Ideas  

Get answers now from experienced entrepreneurs and legal/business professionals on how to build a successful startup company. Receive free and impartial advice, brainstorm business strategies, investigate funding opportunities and learn about the vast resources available to entrepreneurs.

The California Life Sciences Institute (CLSI), the non-profit partner of the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), today formally joined forces with the Bay Area BioEconomy Initiative (BAB), a non-profit organization committed to strengthening the life science economy of the San Francisco Bay Area by fostering innovation and collaboration.

Founded in 2013, under the leadership of Tony Coles, Una Ryan, and Matthew Hudes, BAB has worked with industry, universities, investors, medical centers, health insurers and payors, high-tech companies and government to advance several key strategic imperatives to support the Bay Area life sciences industry. As a result, BAB has emerged as a new model for cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Even more than usual, fragmented and redundant digital healthcare innovation threatens to frustrate the innovation ecosystem. Dave Francis of RBC Securities put it well: “There are a lot of zombie digital health start-ups that get $1.5 million and a customer from a regional health system, and go no further.” He spoke at the October, 2015 Health 2.0 Conference.

The start-ups whose pitches I attended at Health 2.0 illustrate this point well. Out of about 35 pitches that I attended, close to half were pursuing markets that I know several other companies are also pursuing, including a dozen or so that overlapped with other companies presenting at the conference, e.g.:

PURPOSE: 65% of registration proceeds will go towards the ROAR campaign to renovate vacant & abandon Baltimore homes for families, in need.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 20, 2015 | 6:30pm-8:30pm

WHERE: Johns Hopkins East, 1101 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 | 3rd Floor Conference Room.

PRESENTER: Dr. Jayfus Tucker Doswell | President/CEO Juxtopia

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Commercial Service is coordinating participation in the Hannover Messe, the world’s largest Industrial Trade Fair, to be held in April 25-29, 2016 in Hannover, Germany. This year, the United States is the official partner country for the first time and therefore will offer substantial visibility to U.S. based exhibitors who participate in any of the five trade shows, including one for Research and Technology, as well as an Investment Pavilion.

The Research & Technology trade show would be a great platform for U.S. Exhibitors, including Large and Start-up Companies, Academia, Technical Institutions, and Labs, to present their research activities in these fields .

AstraZeneca and Peregrine are expanding their ongoing onco-immunotherapy pact to allow for a Phase II trial of an experimental lung cancer combination treatment.  

The companies said they will test a combination of Peregrine’s phosphatidylserine-targeted immune-activator bavituximab and AZ’ anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab (MEDI4736) in a global Phase II study in patients with previously treated squamous or non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer. 

M Square, the University of Maryland Research Park, won this year’s Association of University Research Parks’ Outstanding Research Park award.

The award ceremony took place earlier this month during the AURP Annual Awards of Excellence at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus in New York.