News Archive

CASI Pharmaceuticals to Raise $25.1 Million in Private Placement of Common Stock and Warrants ROCKVILLE, Md., Sept. 21, 2015 – CASI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (the “Company”) (Nasdaq: CASI), a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the acquisition, development and commercialization of innovative therapeutics addressing cancer and other unmet medical needs for the global market with a commercial focus on China, announced today that it has entered into definitive agreements for a $25.1 million financing led by a China investment fund manager affiliated with the same management team of our current largest shareholder, IDG-Accel China Growth Fund III, L.P.

Picture this: A global business magazine features a close-up head-shot of a 30-year-old male on its cover.

He’s of Indian descent, with an American upbringing and education, and he’s just concocted a multi-million dollar business out of thin air.

Last month, Baltimore’s burgeoning startup scene earned a top spot in Entrepreneur’s hot U.S. startup cities’ list. With a network of top entrepreneurial resources such as Betamore, Baltimore Angels and Baltimore Corps, as well as educational institutions, it’s not hard to see why Baltimore’s startups are booming.

So, you live in Baltimore, you have a great idea and you are ready make your idea a reality. Where do you start? Before taking any tangible steps, concentrate on the capital with these three questions:

An open science collaboration among academic research institutes, the public sector, and private companies has been in the works since 2006 and now the drug manufacturer AstraZeneca has decided to join the bandwagon. AstraZeneca hopes to harness the open source platform of the DREAM challenge, releasing preclinical data on drugs developed by the company, to discover synergistic cancer drug combinations.

Developed by IBM researcher Gustavo Stolovitzky, PhD, and Columbia University researcher Andrea Califano, PhD, the program has blossomed with multiple cross-collaborative projects across 50 different institutions. About 2 years back, in February 2013, DREAM joined hands with Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit research organization that believes in open sharing of complex biological data, especially big data, to accelerate discovery. DREAM Challenges have touched a variety of healthcare issues, from prostate cancer to odor detection to protein interaction networks.

The Office of Research and Development at the University of Maryland Baltimore currently has 2 openings for the position of Technology Licensing Officer. The Technology Licensing Officers draft and negotiates term sheets and contracts to ensure that University technology and intellectual property (IP) is appropriately commercialized. The incumbents lead negotiations on IP licenses, option agreements and inter-institutional agreements. The incumbents ensure that third parties of University IP meet the contractual obligations to the University and serve as the University’s primary point-of-contact with prospective and current licensees. The incumbents will function as part of an interdisciplinary team that assures the University protects, markets and commercializes its technologies and discoveries.  

On a Friday afternoon in June, Staq cofounders James Curran and Mike Subelsky turned over the giant scissors to Greg Cangialosi. Sporting a Staq T-shirt, the tech community leader cut the ribbon on the adtech startup’s new offices.

Located on the fourth floor of a building above 8 Market Place, the ceremony was held one story above a space where DreamIt Health’s Baltimore accelerator program helped six health-focused startups over the winter.

Applications to be a board member of the new Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) are being accepted until 5 p.m. on Friday, October 2.

The board members will be tasked with marketing Montgomery County, attracting businesses and investments to the County, growing entrepreneurship, as well as helping existing businesses grow and succeed.

For years, the Department of Health and Human Services has been taking cues from the private sector’s startup culture, encouraging employees to work on independent technology ideas.  

On Thursday, HHS held a demo day for a few teams that joined its summer accelerator program, meant to build out technology ideas that could eventually be implemented in HHS. Here were a few ideas presented at the event:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), in collaboration with over 35 federal partners, today released the updated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015–2020 (Plan).

The final Plan represents the collective strategy of federal offices that use or influence the use of health information technology (health IT). The Plan’s work aims to improve the health IT infrastructure, help transform health care delivery, and improve individual and community health. The Plan sets a blueprint for the federal partners to implement strategies that will support the nation’s continued development of a responsive and secure health IT and information use infrastructure.

The Maryland Board of Regents on Friday approved the University of Maryland University College’s request to create a for-profit business-intelligence company. The new company will offer data-analysis technology and services to universities across the country, and the revenue will go toward the university’s endowment.

The company, called HelioCampus, will provide two main services: the technology to combine and analyze a university’s data, as well as analysts to help administrators understand what the data mean.