News Archive

Tech award season rolled on in Maryland on Thursday night at the American Visionary Art Museum. The Maryland Incubator Company of the Year Awards recognized startups in a host of categories like life sciences, health technology and technology services.

Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development Secretary Mike Gill offered the keynote address, detailing a few specifics of how Gov. Larry Hogan’s administration wants to make the state more business-friendly. That will include a new name for the department, and will likely mean a new title for Gill.

Gemstone Biotherapeutics, a Baltimore company developing treatments to promote wound healing, has raised $2.45 million in a seed round of investment, company officials said.

The company plans to use the money to further test its technologies and pursue regulatory review and clinical trials. It is developing biosynthetic “scaffold” technology that has shown in animal tests it can help skin regenerate and prevent scarring when applied to burn wounds.

Personal Genome Diagnostics has raised $4.3 million in private financing, the firm said in a document filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. 

A spokesperson for the firm said that the financing was in the form of a convertible note funding and is part of a larger Series A round currently underway. No further details were disclosed. 

Investment to accelerate momentum behind cloud-based electronic health record software for behavioral health market

June 2nd, 2015 | Rockville, MD – Credible Behavioral Health, Inc. (“Credible”), a leading provider of electronic health record (“EHR”) and practice management Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) solutions to the behavioral health market, today announced that it has secured a $30 million minority investment from Goldman Sachs. The investment will allow Credible to further pursue its mission of helping behavioral health agencies improve their quality of care by scaling its presence across the clinic, community, residential, and inpatient behavioral health market. Credible plans to accelerate product development, build out its sales and marketing team, and opportunistically pursue acquisitions.

The Incubator Company of the Year Awards is an opportunity to highlight Maryland’s impressive incubator system and recognize the breadth and depth of technology talent that we have throughout Maryland. In determining the winners, judges considered factors such as technology and product development, increase in employee numbers, growth in revenue, and the attraction of outside investors. The Incubator Company of the Year Awards represent some of the best companies in Maryland that have recently been started and have gone through incubator programs. With BioHealth Innovation’s assistance, Avhana Health has been able to create a category-defining product, triple it’s workforce and gain funding from outside investors.

Gaithersburg-based Novavax Inc. — known for its work developing vaccine candidates for the flu, a pediatric respiratory illness and Ebola — expanded into a new 54,000-square-foot research and development space where it plans to house its vaccine work.

“It’s a very important signal of our continued growth,” said Buck Phillips, chief financial officer of Novavax (Nasdaq: NVAX) of the new space at 21 Firstfield Road, across the street from its headquarters.

For decades, a postdoctoral appointment in a university laboratory has been the “default” next step for new Ph.D. researchers in biomedical sciences and, increasingly, in other sciences as well. In those positions, scientists encounter such well-known issues as low pay, long hours, and little or no preparation for career opportunities outside academe.

The Human Genome Project was one of mankind’s greatest triumphs. But the official gene map that resulted in 2003, known as the “reference genome,” is no longer up to the job.

So say scientists laying plans for a new universal map they say will combine the genomes of hundreds, and eventually thousands, of people to create a true reference that reflects all of humanity.

Come to this information breakfast to learn about Relevant Health, the new accelerator located in the Rockville Innovation Center, now accepting applications from health tech startups for its Fall 2015 class. Relevant Health’s five-month program involves an intensive product-focused curriculum that gives founders of health tech startups the skills to define, develop, position and launch a viable health tech product. Companies admitted to the accelerator will have access to the cowork facility along with other support that includes up to $50,000 in funding, mentorship, development support from a pool of software engineers, and access to the local health tech ecosystem. Interested applicants should visit http://www.relevanthealth.md to complete the online application. The final deadline for application submissions is July 31, 2015. Free, breakfast will be served. Park in designated GIC parking spots only.

The TechConnect World Innovation Conference is an annual event uniquely designed to accelerate the commercialization of innovations out of the lab and into industry. The Technical Program spotlights applications focused innovations, materials and devices emerging from industrial, government and academic laboratories worldwide. The Innovation Partnering Program gathers market-ready, commercially-viable, innovations into the largest global technology accelerator program.

Early-stage companies are reviewed and selected by our board of corporate and investment partners. Technical submissions are reviewed and selected by our symposium chairs and program review committee. The 2015 TechConnect World Innovation event encompasses the 2015 SBIR/STTR National Conference, the 2015 National Innovation Summit and Showcase, and Nanotech2015 – the world’s largest nanotechnology event.