News Archive

Since Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act on July 10th, one Big Pharma company has already moved to capitalize on the legislation even before it has been passed by the Senate and become law. A good introduction to the bill can be found in this piece. In short, the bill is designed to speed up the route to market for certain therapeutics. Senate passage is estimated for around December. In the last piece I paid particular attention to one of the most consequential aspects of the Act – that it would promote the development of brand-new antibiotics. In response to the Act, there have been two interpretations of this likely influx of therapeutics.

Transplant surgeons have started using a device that allows them to “reanimate” hearts from people who have recently died, and use the organs to save others. 

The “heart in a box” is a wheeled cart with an oxygen supply, a sterile chamber, and tubing to clamp onto a donor heart and keep it fed with blood and nutrients. Doctors say it may extend the time a heart can last outside the body and is letting them recover hearts from donors who haven’t been eligible before.

If there’s one thing that’s a nearly universal anxiety among cities, it’s brain drain, or the loss of educated residents to other places. I’ve written about this many times over the years, critiquing the way it is normally conceived.

Since brain drain seems to be a major concern in shrinking cities, I decided to take a look at the facts around brains in those places. Looking at the 28 metro areas among the 100 largest that had objective measures of shrinkage – in population and/or jobs – between 2000 and 2013, I looked what what happened to their educational attainment levels.

Remedy Pharmaceuticals, a company focused on the development and commercialization of CIRARA™, a breakthrough drug for treating acute central nervous system conditions, announced that a prospective multi-center open-label pilot study of CIRARA in patients with acute traumatic cervical spinal cord injuries. 

Mark Lafferty has joined UM Ventures Baltimore as a venture associate. In this role, he provides financing and business planning advice to new companies, prepares valuations for startup companies and new products, and evaluates financial aspects and terms for licensing deals.

Wednesday, September 16, 2015 12:00 pm-1:15 pm, Silver Spring Innovation Center, 8070 Georgia Avenue, Silver Spring, MD 20910

The Angel Venture Forum is starting up its annual educational training series to prepare business owners to make their pitches in front of 30 angel investors on November 10 at the National Press Club.  Angel investor Valerie Gaydos will explain the process and give a few highlights from the training series. Learn the six basic lessons that every entrepreneur should know and what investors want to know about you before investing:  1) Funding 2) Term Sheets & Cap Tables 3) Financials 4) Intellectual Property Protection 5) Leadership 6) Valuation & Price.  Free, a light lunch will be served. Parking is available in the garage adjacent to the Silver Spring Innovation Center.

BioMarker Strategies, LLC, a private company, has developed SnapPath®, a cancer diagnostics system that automates and standardizes functional ex vivo profiling of live solid tumor cells from fresh biopsies or other fresh, unfixed samples such as xenografts or tumorgrafts, according to the company’s website (see here: www.BioMarkerStrategies.com). SNNLive spoke with Jerry Parrott, President and CEO of BioMarker Strategies at the BioMaryland Booth at BIO International 2015 in Philadelphia, PA.

Revolve Biotechnologies, Inc. has been awarded a $450K Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to develop iRFP-Max, a near-infrared fluorescent protein research tool that will enable in vivo imaging of brain and other tissues up to ten-fold deeper than currently available tools. Current fluorescent protein tools operate at wavelengths at which tissue absorbance allows scientists to image only close to the surface. This tool will enable a range of new applications and has the potential to become the industry standard for pre-clinical in vivo imaging for drug development and neuroscience research for diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

In 2011, the World Well being Group compiled an inventory of each illness, dysfunction, and ailment recognized to man. The listing ultimately crested the 14,000-ailment mark when it was full. However amongst all of those illnesses, it is debatable that none attracts extra consideration from drugmakers or the general public than most cancers.

Sept. 17th, 2015, Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, Washington DC, 1619 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington, DC, 20036

Are you an entrepreneur and thinking of starting your own company? Are you a small start-up looking for local resources that will help your company succeed? Are you a small company looking to expand and enter the next stage of commercial success? If you said “Yes” to any of these questions, then this WIB event is for you!

Our panel of industry experts from MD TEDCO, BioHealth Innovation, and the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development will provide you with invaluable information about resources their organizations provide to the local business community, including idea/product development, early and late stage funding, and business accelerator programs.