News Archive

A Baltimore startup that developed a surgical tool to recycle the blood of a patient suffering from internal bleeding landed a $100,000 investment Monday from AOL co-founder Steve Case, winning a “live pitch” competition among eight Baltimore companies.

Sisu Global Health, founded less than two years ago by three women, was singled out for the potential impact its Hemafuse surgical tool could have in emerging markets of sub-Saharan Africa, said Case, CEO of Washington-based investment firm Revolution LLC.

Switzerland’s Roche has moved into pole position in the race to launch the world’s first treatment for progressive multiple sclerosis but smaller players are working hard on rival approaches.

While there are a number of treatments for relapsing remitting MS, the most common form of the disease, there are no approved drugs for progressive MS, which is marked by steadily worsening symptoms.

The National Institutes for Health is trying to commercialize its inventions by licensing them out, a new Federal Register notice shows. 

The technology available for licensing includes a mobile app that monitors users’ psychological health by asking them questions throughout the day, as well as research that could be useful in the treatment of cancers. 

The use of a patient’s or tumor’s DNA sequence to diagnose/characterize a disease and select or discover drugs that have the highest likelihood of response with least toxicity is one way of broadly defining Precision Medicine. Although most doctors would agree that medicine is far from precise, President Obama’s state of the union address in early 2015 made ‘precision medicine’ a household phrase drawing public attention to this burgeoning field. Mayo clinic has adopted the phrase individualized medicine in naming its world class center at Rochester, MN. Some even refer to it as genomic medicine but I like ‘personalized medicine’ (PM) better. Major healthcare organizations in US and around the world are early adopters and are already practicing PM.

Vtesse, Inc. today announced that the first three patients have been screened for inclusion in its pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial with VTS-270 for treatment of Niemann-Pick Type C1 Disease (NPC). This clinical trial follows a Phase 1 study conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

NPC is a progressive, irreversible, chronically debilitating – and ultimately lethal – genetic disease. It is caused by a defect in lipid transportation within the cell, which leads to excessive accumulation of lipids in the brain, liver and spleen. Vtesse has worked extensively with regulators in the United States and Europe with the goal of conducting its pivotal study under one global protocol that will evaluate safety and efficacy of VTS-270 to support approval of the drug by regulatory agencies in both regions.

Three years ago, MIT finance professor Andrew Lo proposed rallying private investors to raise an eye-popping $30 billion to develop cancer drugs. That idea went nowhere.

A California congressman plans to file legislation next week that would create a more modest version of Lo’s plan: A $400 million fund to finance development of drugs for rare diseases — with the federal government acting as a backstop, providing financial guarantees to attract private investment. If it works, Lo said, taxpayers could profit and patients could get access to new treatments.

It’s officially election season, which is why I’ll be firing up a big, campaign bus and traveling through Charm City on Monday, stopping for crab cakes, talking to business leaders and meeting with politicians and students. Only our campaign is not about asking for votes in Baltimore; instead, it’s about encouraging the people of Baltimore to continue rallying around startups and entrepreneurs.

For all the tragic news in recent months — and there is real heartbreak along with festering issues that have to be addressed — there’s another chapter being written in the city’s dynamic history. It centers around founders who are starting companies, creating jobs and bringing economic opportunity and growth to Baltimore.

BD Life Sciences, a segment of global medical technology company BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) announced Thursday the availability of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared BD MAX™ Enteric Parasite Panel for use on the BD MAX System.

The BD MAX Enteric Parasite Panel is the latest panel in the BD MAX Enteric suite of assays that aid in the diagnosis of infectious gastroenteritis. This panel joins the BD MAX Enteric Bacterial Panel detecting the pathogens that are responsible for up to 95 percent of the bacteria causing gastroenteritis. With the availability of the BD MAX Enteric Parasite Panel, the majority of pathogens causing this disease can be detected with a fully automated, rapid and accurate platform.

Gaithersburg-based biotech MedImmune and a division of 3M unveiled plans Friday to work together on a next-generation cancer immunotherapy drug.

Under the agreement, MedImmune — the biologics research and development arm of U.K. pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) – licensed an agent called MEDI9197 from 3M Drug Delivery Systems. 3M said it developed the molecule as an injectable treatment for head and neck cancer that stimulates the body’s immune system to attack and destroy tumors.

If you want to see a city with pride and passion, come to Baltimore on the Friday before a Ravens football game. The entire city is purple, our home team’s color. School kids wear purple. Working men and women wear purple. The cupcakes at local bakeries are — you guessed it — purple.

A Ravens game might be the occasion, but our pride and passion are bigger than our team. During Orioles games, we sing “Oh” as loud as we can during the national anthem that was penned right here (“Oh say can you see by the dawn’s early light”). We put Old Bay (thank you McCormick Spice, a Baltimore company) on everything from crabs to ice cream.