News Archive

Attracting mid- to large-sized medical device companies through established innovation hubs is the biggest key to growing Baltimore into a major medical device technology sector, according to a report released today by the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech).

“Baltimore already has many of the pieces in place to support innovation hubs and a thriving medical device community,” said Martha Connolly, director of Mtech Baltimore. “This study is important because we believe Baltimore is well-positioned to be a leading center for medical devices. The expertise of the University System of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University in engineering and medicine provide great capabilities for this sector.” 

WHEN: Tuesday, October 20, 2015 | 6:30pm-8:30pm WHERE: Johns Hopkins East, 1101 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 | 3rd Floor Conference Room.

Learn how to secure National Institutes of Health SBIR/STTRs for your high-tech bio-innovation.

Dr. Doswell lead JUICE Money wins for high-tech minority companies and HBCUs such as: 3 NIH SBIR/STTR grant awards in 2015.

• 3 NIH SBIR/STTR grant awards in 2015.
• 1 DOD RIF grant award in 2015.
• 1 CASIS grant award for testing innovation onboard the International Space Station in 2015.
• 1 Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) Phase II award for Morgan State University in 2015.
• 1 Maryland Space Grant Consortium Award for Morgan State University in 2015.
• Secured Maryland TEDO awards.
• Secured a Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) award
• Secured NSF STTR Phase I/II awards.
• Helped fund the Robotics Technician Program at Baltimore City Community College

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.

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield will award $3 million to nonprofits or government organizations to develop new programs using telemedicine to improve health care access in the Maryland, Northern Virginia and D.C.

CareFirst’s request for proposals is looking for innovative programs that can address gaps in access to telemedicine services. The money will be awarded to programs over the next three years.

OpGen, Inc. an early-stage commercial molecular testing and bioinformatics company, today announced that new data from a study with its Acuitas [(R)] Resistome Test were presented on October 10 as an oral abstract at IDWeek 2015 by Michael Lin, M.D., M.P.H., an infectious disease physician and assistant professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. The conference was held October 7 to 11 in San Diego. Dr. Lin and fellow researchers demonstrated how an Acuitas Resistome-based surveillance system can identify potential outbreaks to improve infection control, underscoring the need for healthcare facilities to implement use of molecular-based surveillance systems to detect potential outbreaks that may be caused by multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs). The research was conducted under the support of the CDC Prevention Epicenters Program and affiliated with the REALM project, a multi-hospital voluntary surveillance network for monitoring multidrug-resistant organisms among Chicago hospital intensive care units and long-term acute care hospitals.

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals, announced today that it has awarded the 2015 Outstanding Corporate Innovator (OCI) Award to BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX).

BD’s focus on innovation has provided a framework to integrate the business, make acquisitions and coordinate actions vertically, from the top through operating levels of the company.

Every startup is built on a number of assumptions and undoubtedly some of them will be incorrect. At Dreamit, I’m always stressing the importance of accurately identifying those assumptions and de-risking them as early in the process as possible.

A simple example I like to use involves the e-commerce shoe company Zappos. One of the key assumptions Zappos was built on is the idea that people are willing to buy shoes online. From our 2015 perspective that sounds glaringly obvious but in 1999 that wasn’t the case. The founders tested the market early on and determined there was a demand for the service. It would’ve been a waste of energy and resources to develop the idea if that base assumption had turned out to be wrong.

Madison healthcare IT startup Redox won a prestigious award at a national healthcare technology conference this week.

Redox, which helps app developers get access to electronic health records and health systems manage their connections to the cloud, beat out nearly 100 startups to win a pitch competition at Health 2.0, a leading healthcare technology conference in San Francisco.

Immunomic Therapeutics, a biotechnology company developing a new type of vaccine based on Johns Hopkins research, has reached a $300 million deal licensing its technology to Japanese company Astellas Pharma.

Astellas will be able to use Immunomic’s vaccine design to develop products that treat or prevent allergic diseases under the deal. Immunomic will receive an up-front $300 million payment and then 10 percent royalties on sales Astellas gets using the technology. It also retains the rights to use its vaccine methods on other types of diseases, including cancer.

Gaithersburg-based Novavax, Inc., (Nasdaq: NVAX) a clinical-stage vaccine company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of recombinant nanoparticle vaccines and adjuvants, announced positive top-line data from a Phase 2 clinical trial of its RSV F-protein recombinant nanoparticle vaccine candidate (RSV F Vaccine) to protect infants via maternal immunization.

Novavax also announced it has been awarded a grant of up to $89 million by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support development of the RSV F Vaccine Phase 3 clinical trial in pregnant women, planned to initiate during the first quarter of 2016.