News Archive

The paper, based on a study conducted by researchers at Drexel, Brandeis, and Harvard Universities, represents an attempt to measure the effectiveness of policies instituted by funding agencies and journals to encourage the wider sharing of data by scientists.

The study consisted of a survey that was sent to 2,853 life-sciences investigators at leading research institutions and that drew a response rate of 41 percent. The answers were compared with those in a similarly designed survey by a separate research team in 2000. The comparison was chosen because of various changes in rules and the creation of data repositories since 2000, including a 2003 requirement by the National Institutes of Health for the inclusion of data-sharing plans in all grant applications with an expected annual value exceeding $500,000.

The Texas Medical Center has more square footage, more doctors and more hospitals than any other medical center in the country. However, that has not translated into product commercialization necessarily.

Its new accelerator may be the catalyst that changes that, experts say.

A drug used to treat advanced breast cancer has had what appears to be unprecedented success in prolonging lives in a clinical trial, researchers reported on Sunday.

Patients who received the drug — Perjeta, from the Swiss drug maker Roche — had a median survival time nearly 16 months longer than those in the control group.

Officials from local and state government as well as business and education attended a virtual ribbon cutting on Wednesday to celebrate the opening of the new $71 million Center for Communications and Information Technology at Maryland’s Frostburg State University.

“This is one of the most technologically advanced learning centers in the United States. Every inch of this building fosters learning,” said Jonathan Gibralter, FSU president.

Medimmune, the global biologics research and development arm of Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca (LSE: AZN), has entered into a collaboration to establish a joint lab in Cambridge, UK, with Cancer Research Technology, the commercial arm of Cancer Research UK.

The new laboratory will be the first partnership of its kind of both organizations, and will focus on the discovery and development of biologic cancer treatments over an initial five-year period.

American University’s Kogod School of Business on Friday plans to show off its new on-campus start-up incubator, the latest in a string of co-working spaces to pop up in and around the nation’s capital.

The incubator, one of the key components of the school’s recently announced Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Innovation Initiative, aims to provide current students and recent graduates with work space and pair them with a business mentor to help get their fledgling ventures off the ground. In addition, each business team will received a $1,500 grant to cover some initial start-up costs, such as the legal work necessary to incorporate a company.

Ever since D-Wave Systems unveiled what it called the world’s first quantum computer in 2007, the small Canadian company has attracted controversy.

Computers capable of exploiting quantum physics for computation on a large scale promise to solve in mere seconds problems that would take conventional machines millions of years. But whether D-Wave’s machine uses quantum tricks to process data more efficiently is still an open question. Nonetheless, the company has attracted significant investment funding, and it has struck deals to supply its hardware to companies including Google and Lockheed Martin for research (see “The CIA and Jeff Bezos Bet on Quantum Computing”).

The National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will receive a top national award for the year’s most outstanding intellectual property licensing deal, for technology transfer of a pioneering, low-cost meningitis vaccine launched in sub-Saharan Africa. The 2014 Deals of Distinction Award will be presented to the two federal agencies and their collaborators by the Licensing Executives Society at the society’s 50th annual meeting, Oct. 5-8 in San Francisco.

Recognizing the continuing evolution of New Jersey’s life sciences industry, BioNJ today released a comprehensive report that documents the ongoing growth of the biotechnology sector in the State and combines and assesses the contributions of the entirety of the life sciences sector to New Jersey’s economy, including employment and economic impact.

BioNJ conducted the study in partnership with EY (formerly known as Ernst & Young) the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy (Bloustein School) and the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development’s (LWD) Office of Research and Information. To access the study go to: http://www.bionj.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/09/Industry-Study-9-19-14-Final-Final.pdf.

More than 300 entrepreneurs are expected to vie for between 150 and 175 spots on the Startup Maryland bus to film a pitch video of their idea.

Now in its third year, the Startup Maryland’s Pitch Across Maryland tour will make 27 stops where entrepreneurs can film a short pitch video about their business. A panel of judges selects eight finalists, of which a winner and runner up are entered into a finalist round of the state’s InvestMaryland Challenge business competition.