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.
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.
