News Archive

Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:TKAI), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on developing novel therapies for prostate cancer and other hormonally-driven diseases, today announced that scientists in the laboratory of Vincent Njar, PhD, at the University of Maryland School of Medicine presented preclinical data showing that galeterone and novel analogs of galeterone inhibited growth, survival and migration of human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells.

These data were presented in a poster presentation titled, “Galeterone and Its Novel Analogs Induce Profound Anti-Cancer Activities in Human Pancreatic Cancer Cell Lines,” abstract number 1764, at the 2015 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Thanks to our back to back April/May sponsor, The University of Maryland’s Biotech Research and Education Program (BREP), who is sponsoring the upcomig event in Rockville on May 20th at the @AmericanTapRoom. BioBuzzMoCo events always draw an awesome crowd so join BREP for an awesome evening in the heart of the region’s growing BioHub.

MAY 12, 2015, 2-3 pm ET

The landscape of potential customers for biomedical products can be complicated, with patients, providers and payers assigning different values to new technologies. Companies must navigate this landscape to find the individuals who will actually make the decision to purchase their products. In this webinar, entrepreneur and educator Rana Gupta will talk about how customers can not only help biomedical innovators to define the value proposition for their products, but can also guide and fund their product development work.

The Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS), created in 2007, is an inter-disciplinary, multi-departmental team of collaborative investigators within the University of Maryland School of Medicine led by Claire M. Fraser, Ph.D., one of the world’s preeminent genome scientists.

IGS uses large-scale, cutting-edge experimental and computational tools to better understand gene and genome function in health and disease, to study molecular and cellular networks in a variety of model systems, and to generate data and resources of value to the international scientific community.

Blood draws typically require trained professionals to perform and can be both frightening and painful to patients. Tasso, Inc., a spinoff of the Unviersity of Wisconsin-Madison, has developed a device that can be applied by the patients themselves to nearly painlessly draw blood.

The device works thanks to capillary action, slowly pulling in blood through a tiny channel over a two minute period. Once the process is complete, the patient simply takes the device to a clinical lab for testing. Since current methods require refrigeration of blood samples during shipment, DARPA is giving Tasso $3 million to work with other firms to develop a way to extend to a week the time the blood samples can be safely stored at up to 140° F (60° C).

The tech incubator 1776 is a collegial place, with offices painted in lively colors, couches to greet visitors, and members who share seats, desks and the fixings for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

It’s an atmosphere carefully cultivated by its founders, Evan Burfield and Donna Harris, and it helped position the outfit as a caretaker, connector and capital provider for tomorrow’s big technology companies.

In the face of growing criticism and impatience with the Meaningful Use EHR incentive program, National Health IT Coordinator Dr. Karen DeSalvo remains upbeat but aware of the tough work ahead to achieve the vision of a learning health system underpinned by a network of interoperable EHRs.

“Interoperability is a priority, but it is still just a means to an end,” De Salvo said Thursday morning in a keynote session on the last day of HIMSS15 at McCormick Place in Chicago. Without interoperability, it will be difficult to achieve healthcare payment and delivery reform, she added.

Washington companies raised more venture capital funding in the first quarter than they have during the first three months of any year in more than a decade, building on momentum the industry mustered up late last year.

During the first quarter, 38 Washington companies hauled in roughly $329.9 million from venture capitalists, a 55 percent increase over the $212.5 million raised by firms in the region during the same period last year, according to the latest round of data from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. While that’s down slightly from a surge last quarter, in which investors poured $363.5 million into local companies, it’s well above last year’s sluggish quarterly average ($270.4 million) and the largest first-quarter haul since 2001.

Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) and the bwtech@UMBC Cyber Incubator announced today that continuous monitoring solutions provider DB Networks® will be the fifth cyber startup to graduate from the highly successful Cync Program. A ceremony marking the occasion is scheduled for next week during the RSA Conference 2015 in San Francisco, California.

OptioLabs of Baltimore joins Cync this month as the newest cyber startup accepted into the program since it began in 2011.

The news broke just after midnight Thursday that D.C. tech accelerator 1776 would acquire Disruption Corp. — both its Crystal Tech Fund, which currently includes 12 portfolio companies, and the startup-focused, data-crunching software that formed the foundation of Paul Singh’s Crystal City enterprise.

It can’t be denied that 1776 has built a rather explosive brand since it first popped on the scene in 2013. President Barack Obama and United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron have toured the premises. Partnerships have been forged with several monster corporations (like Comcast and Microsoft) and, as of this week, two local municipalities (Montgomery and Arlington). Legions of startups work out of the District offices. And Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe will be speaking at Thursday’s formal announcement of the deal.