News Archive

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) is pleased to offer you a sneak peak at its new and improved branding. While the official unveiling of the new branding will take place at the 2015 national meeting, the FLC is eager to share exclusive insights into the new logo design and refreshed brand message with its members.

As the FLC looks forward to its 30th year after being chartered, the organization wanted to portray a more modern look and feel that reflects the progressive achievements and innovations of its member laboratories and research centers.

As bacterial infections are becoming more difficult to manage, new ways of targeting the pathogens have to be developed. Creating new antibiotics is one approach, but often the real issues is being able to identify which antibiotic will work. Today that takes days and involves guess work that often prevents a powerful early attack against the bacteria. Researchers at Johns Hopkins are now working on a new technology that will allow clinicians to identify the bacteria that is causing the infection and the antibiotic that will treat it.

Gaithersburg molecular diagnostics company OpGen Inc. intends to raise about $18.7 million in its initial public offering expected sometime this week.

That’s less than the $37.5 million the company indicated it would raise when it initially filed to go public last month. In their latest regulatory filing, officials said the company is offering 2.5 million units, each consisting of one share of common stock and one warrant to purchase one additional share of common stock within the next five years. OpGen anticipates an IPO share price of between $5.50 and $6.50.

The University System of Maryland will name its Center for Academic Innovation in honor of its retiring chancellor William E. “Brit” Kirwan.

The center will take on its new name, William E. Kirwan Center for Academic Innovation, when Kirwan steps down June 30 after 12 years as the university system’s top administrator. University officials announced the name and $3 million raised to support the center at a recent gala honoring Kirwan. The center is located at USM’s offices in Adelphi.

he world’s first malaria vaccine, produced by GlaxoSmithKline, could be approved by international regulators for use in Africa from October.

The final trial data showed that the shoe, called RTS, S offered partial protection for children for up to four years.

AstraZeneca and its global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune, announced that they have entered into an exclusive collaboration agreement with Celgene Corporation, a global leader in haematological cancers, for the development and commercialisation of MEDI4736 across a range of blood cancers including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, myelodysplastic syndromes and multiple myeloma.

MEDI4736 is an investigational immune checkpoint inhibitor, directed against programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1). Signals from PD-L1 help tumours avoid detection by the immune system. MEDI4736 blocks these signals, countering the tumour’s immune-evading tactics. Within the collaboration, MEDI4736 will be assessed both as monotherapy and in combination with other AstraZeneca and Celgene potential and existing cancer medicines. Over time, the collaboration could expand to include other assets.

ASTRAZENECA has paid $250m for the rights to develop an antibody that could help in the fight against cancer.

The pharmaceutical firm’s research and development arm MedImmune, which is based in Cambridge, has entered into an agreement with Innate Pharma that will allow it exclusive access to the company’s anti-NKG2A antibody.

Real estate firms, which have traditionally been slow to innovate, are beginning to embrace new technologies to find clever solutions to old problems. This newfound openness comes as millennials start to enter the workforce, creating a need for tools that appeal to a tech-savvy customer base.

“It’s pretty fascinating when you think about we’re 75 percent millennials in maybe a dozen years. Clearly technology’s going to have an incredibly important impact on real estate; the operation of real estate and what the tenants do and how they do it,” said Joel Marcus, the CEO of Alexandria Real Estate Properties, an REIT that specializes in science campuses.

Among this year’s Mentors-in-Residence at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures are a senior-level biomedical executive, a chief executive at a company developing novel treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, a two-time medical device industry Most Valuable Thought Leader and an American Pain Foundation chairperson.

These are just four of the 14 entrepreneurial leaders serving at Johns Hopkins as Mentors-in-Residence in 2015, the second year of the program. All 14 mentors this year are business leaders, entrepreneurs and development-driven experts with a passion for innovation and growth.

Since 2003, the Johns Hopkins Alliance for Science and Technology Development has brought faculty members and investors together for an annual daylong meeting to foster important biotechnical and pharmaceutical developments.

This year, 14 faculty members or teams of faculty members from The Johns Hopkins University and seven from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, presented work, as did eight startups affiliated with each university. Four Johns Hopkins University researchers received monetary awards for translational development of their inventions at the April 20 annual joint meeting of the alliance and the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s Commercial Advisory Board.