News Archive

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell today announced the seven winners of the 2015 HHS Innovates Awards. This annual award program, in its eighth round, recognizes creative solutions developed by HHS employees in response to some of the nation’s most challenging problems in health, health care and government. Winners this year reflected a number of collaborative innovation projects representing seven different operating divisions (winners listed below).

For many sea creatures, regrowing a lost limb is routine. But when a young jellyfish loses a tentacle or two to the jaws of a sea turtle, for example, it rearranges its remaining limbs to ensure it can still eat and swim properly, according to a new study published June 15 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discovery should excite marine enthusiasts and roboteers alike, the authors say, because the jellyfish’s strategy for self-repair may teach investigators how to build robots that can heal themselves. “It’s another example of nature having solved a problem that we engineers have been trying to figure out for a long time,” says John Dabiri, a biophysicist at Stanford University who had discussed the project with the study investigators but was not involved with the research.

GlycoMimetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: GLYC) announced today that Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) has dosed the first patient in the RESET (Rivipansel: Evaluating Safety, Efficacy and Time to Discharge) study – a Phase 3 clinical trial assessing the efficacy and safety of rivipansel for the treatment of vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) in patients hospitalized with sickle cell disease who are six years of age or older. The start of this trial triggered the second of two milestone payments from Pfizer to GlycoMimetics totaling $35 million for Phase 3 initiation. GlycoMimetics received a $15 million milestone payment from Pfizer in May 2014.

The global population is aging as life expectancy increases. That means not only is demand for healthcare rising, but the very nature of that care is changing. In this interview, the CEO of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, Joseph Jimenez, discusses with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland issues including the emerging need for regenerative medicine, how digitization is driving innovation, and why Novartis is shifting to an outcomes-based approach for patient treatments. An extended and edited transcript of Jimenez’s remarks follows.

The Mayo Clinic’s Jacksonville, Florida unit and Silver Spring, Maryland-based biotechnology company United Therapeutics Corporation have announced that they will collaborate on construction and operation of a lung restoration center to be located on Mayo’s Jacksonville campus. The project’s goal is to significantly increase the volume of lungs available for transplants for a range of patients with various lung diseases, including those with PAH, by preserving and restoring selected marginal donor lungs, thereby making them viable for transplantation.

Confucius says “To Get Bigger Sometimes You Must Be Smaller.” Alright, so I made that up but that seems to be the thinking behind GlaxoSmithKlein’s (GSK – Analyst Report)  move to sell two meningitis vaccines to rival Pfizer (PFE – Analyst Report), in order to satisfy antitrust concerns after GSK’s recent acquisition of the vaccine business from Novartis. Sound confusing? Well it is.

In a cooperation between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and Israel Institute of Technology (Technion) scientists have developed microscopic “nanoswimmers” that can penetrate  blood and even thicker liquids that exist within the body, something that corkscrews modeled on bacterial flagella have been disappointingly bad at. The tiny devices are made of three connected chains, one made of a polymer and two consisting of nanowires that can be influenced by an external magnetic field to flap in a given direction. This allows the system to control the direction in which the nanoswimmers are moving, so any on-board cargo such as drugs or some sort of nanoparticles can be precisely placed inside a tumor, for example.

Johns Hopkins is expanding its commitment to Baltimore on a number of fronts as the city faces “a time in need of new thinking and of urgent action,” Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels said Monday night at a gathering of community, political, and faith leaders in West Baltimore.

Daniels discussed efforts to support city schools, including new partnerships with Barclay Elementary/Middle School and Margaret Brent Elementary/Middle School, and the previously announced hiring of up to 300 Baltimore youth as part of the institution-wide summer jobs program. He pointed to Johns Hopkins’ current ex-offender hiring program and work that is under way to develop more job training resources. He also previewed the roll-out of an expanded program to increase local hiring, purchasing, and contracting.

For those healthcare providers still resistant to technology, you’ve got a problem on your hands: You’re going to be left behind. This is where healthcare it going – with or without you.

That’s according to a new Accenture report, Healthcare Technology Vision 2015, which lays out five key trends in the industry that show adaptation might be the best business model.