News Archive

An FDA decision summary released today allows DNA-testing company 23andMe to market a genome test that screens for Bloom syndrome, a rare disorder that leads to a predisposition in carriers toward the development of cancer. In February, the FDA announced it would approved the Bloom test, but 23andMe was unable to begin marketing these tests until today’s detailed regulations and guidelines were announced. While, on the surface, this may seem like a minor change in policy, it is significant given the complex relationship the FDA has had with 23andMe over the last two years.

If you end up near the Baltimore Convention Center this week, you may notice crowds of people carrying black and teal tote bags. The American Society of Human Genetics is meeting there through Saturday, bringing 8,000 researchers, clinicians and ethicists from more than 60 countries to the city.

We are thrilled to bring our annual meeting back to Baltimore (our most visited venue), where research of all kinds has a long history and still thrives today. Last year, Baltimore institutions including Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland Medical School received more than $800 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — providing a beacon of hope not just for the residents of Baltimore but the entire world. Thanks to funding from NIH, the National Science Foundation and other federal science agencies, Hopkins is ranked number one among all U.S. institutions for research and development expenditures — and has been for 35 straight years.

GE Ventures (NYSE:GE) and health innovation company StartUp Health said they plan to expand their partnership to invest and support startups in the healthcare innovation sector.

The expansion will allow the partners to accept 10 new qualified companies into their “StartUp Health Academy” program. The 2 companies originally launched their startup focused partnership program in 2013 with 15 consumer health companies.

Patient engagement company GetWellNetwork is taking a crack at re-envisioning healthcare with the introduction of the Interactive Care Model for nursing, a five-phase plan to create patient-centric care delivery systems.

“This new model rethinks care delivery and includes measurement of a person’s capacity to engage in his/her health,” representatives of Bethesda, Maryland-based GetWellNetwork’s O’Neil Center wrote in an article published in the October issue of the Journal of Nursing Administration. The O’Neil Center is tasked with supporting “integration of patient and family engagement into healthcare delivery across the care continuum,” according to GetWellNetwork.

In the fall of 2014, the HBS-HMS Forum on Health Care Innovation launched the inaugural Health Acceleration Challenge — a “scale up” competition that focuses on compelling solutions to problems in health care delivery that have already been implemented at a small scale and have the potential for wider dissemination.

The contest produced some useful innovations. Many of them are easily adoptable by other organizations, proving our assertion that there is no shortage of innovations in health care; rather the problem is that they take too long to be adopted by others.

DATE: October 14, 2015 TIME: 3:30 – 5:00 PM

LOCATION: Montgomery County Department of Economic Development, 111 Rockville Pike, Suite 800, Rockville, MD 20850

PRESENTER: Ami Gadhia, J.D., LLM, CLP, Portfolio Director, Technology Licensing, Office of Technology Transfer, The Johns Hopkins University, and  Dinesh Melwani, Esq., Partner, Bookoff McAndrews, PLLC     

ABSTRACT: Ms. Gadhia and Mr. Melwani will discuss Intellectual Property (IP) Licensing Strategies, including technology transfer considerations relating to corporations, universities, and startups. They will provide an overview of the technology transfer function between academia and industry, and the collaborative relationship technology transfer fosters between universities, corporations, and startups.  Our speakers will discuss exemplary contentious issues (including prosecution of patents, improvements based on collaboration, publication, and financial terms), the reasons these issues are typically contentious, and potential solutions for bridging the gap and closing the licensing deal.

BD Life Sciences, a segment of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX), a leading global medical technology company, and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) have entered into a Corporate Partners Sponsorship Agreement for the university’s business accelerator program, FastForward, which serves as a catalyst for the advancement and commercialization of an array of innovations derived both at the university and elsewhere in Baltimore.

Through the sponsorship, BD will have access to the FastForward innovation hubs including FastForward East in the John G. Rangos Sr. Building located in close proximity to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Bloomberg School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, as well as the flagship hospital. As a FastForward sponsor, BD will support programs that can accelerate business startup efforts, host social networking events, hold round-table discussions and workshops, and offer lectures on areas likely to be of interest to the startups.

A giant sign reading “Made in America” loomed over Shelly Blake-Plock. In front of him was a group of investors from some of Maryland’s top venture capital firms.

But the founder of Baltimore big data firm Yet Analytics was looking beyond both the state and the country.

“I want to create a big company that makes big change in the world,” he said emphatically.

UK drug major GlaxoSmithKline (LSE: GSK) has created an Immunology Network, aiming to link GSK’s work to that of academic scientists focusing on immunology research.

The company is already working with a board of academics who are experts in immunology, and is launching the Immunology Catalyst as a new phase of this initiative. Researchers from GSK will learn new skills from external immunology experts, and these academics will be able to continue their own research while having access to GSK’s technology and learning about pharma research and development. Over the next year, six experts are expected to set up research labs at the GSK facility in Stevenage, UK. After the formal sabbatical has come to an end, collaboration will continue between GSK and the academics.

With $15 million in hand, TCP Venture Capital partners Christopher College and Stuart Sutley look to foster Baltimore’s budding technology scene by investing in 10 to 12 new Baltimore-based startups within the next 12 to 18 months, College tells DC Inno. Those companies, who may be caught between a seed and series A funding round, could each receive anywhere between a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars to help accelerate their growth.

The Columbia, Md.-based institutional investors have raised a new fund, called the Propel II fund, to capitalize off the success of their previous fund, the Propel I fund, which helped support a number of high growth potential Baltimore tech companies—including edtech powerhouse CiteLighter, rising cybersecurity star RedOwl Analytics and eco-friendly product developer Bambeco.

Chris College