Blackstone Group LP agreed to buy BioMed Realty Trust Inc, a supplier of office space to healthcare companies, in a deal valued at $8 billion, adding to the private equity firm’s huge real estate portfolio.
BioMed’s shares were up 8.6 percent at $23.45 in premarket trading, just shy of the offer price of $23.75.
College kids always close out the party, and Baltimore Innovation Week was no different.
Students and other members of the Johns Hopkins community worked all weekend on MedHacks. The student-run event marked the debut of the healthcare-focused hackathon, and drew more than 400 participants on more than 25 teams.
The UMD BioPark-based PathSensors, Inc. has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The award will fund the development of a multi-sample testing platform for rapid, facile identification of plant pathogens including the bacterium Ralstonia solanacearum and the widespread water mold Phytophthora. The new instrument will enhance the capabilities of the company’s CANARY® biosensors, enabling high throughput analysis of liquid and plant samples.
The award comes on the heels of a successful pilot program for screening plant imports at US Plant Inspection Stations. As part of an ongoing Material Transfer and Research Agreement with the USDA and MIT-Lincoln Laboratory, the originators of CANARY® technology, the PathSensors technology was used to analyze geranium cuttings, from countries not in the APHIS pre-clearance program, entering the US via Linden, NJ and Atlanta, GA for the select agent Ralstonia solanacearum. The bacterium, the most dangerous strain of which is endemic to Europe but has not reached the US, accounts for over $1 billion annually in economic losses to crops such as potatoes and tomatoes.
Novavax, Inc., (Nasdaq:NVAX) a clinical-stage vaccine company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of recombinant nanoparticle vaccines and adjuvants, today announced it has been awarded a grant of up to $89 million from 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. This grant will also support regulatory licensing efforts, providing a path to WHO prequalification. Upon licensure, Novavax has agreed to make the RSV F Vaccine affordable and accessible to people in the developing world.
“Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of pneumonia in infants, and currently there are no affordable approaches to protecting children in the developing world from this viral disease,” said Dr. Keith Klugman, Director of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Pneumonia Program. “Maternal immunization may provide protective antibodies to infants during the first few months of life, and we hope this vaccine will protect infants from this disease to help them live healthy, productive lives.”
Intrexon Corporation (NYSE: XON), a leader in synthetic biology, announced today that it has entered into its first Exclusive Channel Collaboration (ECC) with a startup backed by an investment fund sponsored by Harvest Capital Strategies, LLC. The fund is believed to be the world’s first fund dedicated to the inventions and discoveries of a single company. The collaboration with the startup entity, Thrive Agrobiotics, Inc., will seek to utilize Intrexon’s ActoBiotics® platform to express nutritive proteins for improving the overall growth and feed efficiency in piglets, thereby expanding the application of this innovative biologic delivery platform to animals.
Circulomics today announced a $1.5 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to create nucleic acid extraction products based on its Nanobind technology.
The firm said in a statement that it would use the grant to develop Nanobind technologies for automated and microvolume clinical sample preparation. It is building a pipeline of chemistries to extract DNA and RNA from sample types including cultured cells, blood, and other fluids, and from pathogens.
Health care remains one of the few services that require people to have a face-to-face interaction to obtain access. But more and more consumers are questioning that reality, and change is on the way. In January 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a new provider reimbursement code for non–face-to-face health care services for patients who have chronic medical conditions. A new CMS code may seem like a tiny matter, but this one emblemizes a larger shift toward delivering health services independently of time and place, enabled by technologies such as smartphones, sensors, and wireless health-monitoring devices — what we in the field call telemedicine.
Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center has created a $15 million program to develop the ideas, discoveries and inventions of its faculty and staff members into life-science technologies that can benefit patients.
The Technology Development Program will be operated by Wake Forest Baptist in partnership with Pappas Capital, a science investment firm based in Durham. Pappas Capital will manage the money for the program with Wake Forest Innovations, which is responsible for accelerating the commercialization of the specialized research capabilities for licensing to established companies or startups.
Disruption is coming for the big, regulated industries that were once investment no-nos: education, energy, healthcare and the sciences. And that’s good news for Baltimore.
At least two big trends are causing a flood of interest in these more complicated sectors.
Boston Scientific BSX, +1.51% this week announced the start of the Boston Scientific Connected Patient Challenge, an open innovation contest designed to encourage advancements in the use of remote patient monitoring to enhance patient care. Until January 5, 2016, clinicians, engineers, designers and entrepreneurs can submit their ideas and collaborate on solutions through Medstro’s social networking site (www.Medstro.com).
The Boston Scientific Connected Patient Challenge is seeking submissions designed to improve patient care and/or drive down the cost of health care through the use of remote patient monitoring technologies such as wearable, implantable or ubiquitous sensors, with a preference for innovations in the management of the flow of data and the decision making process. Finalists will be honored at a live event in Cambridge, MA where they will present their ideas to the Challenge sponsors, fellow participants and a live audience. Up to $25,000 of services in kind may be divided among Challenge winners to further develop or pilot their ideas.
