News Archive

Tasly Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a global leader in pharmaceuticals, biologics, and nutraceuticals, held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on September 3, 2014, at Tasly’s corporate offices in Rockville, MD.

The ceremony marked the official launch of Tasly’s Rockville location as the North American headquarters of Tasly Holding Group, a twenty year old global technology company established in China.

More than 100 distinguished guests and dignitaries were in attendance, including the Chairman and the President of Tasly Holding Group, China’s Embassy Counselor, Maryland state officials, Maryland biotechnology and pharmaceutical executives, and high-level regional media representatives, among others.

FasterCures, part of the Milken Institute dedicated to improving drug development by encouraging greater patient involvement is searching for digital health entrepreneurs to pitch at its upcoming conference, Partnering for Cures. The group is looking for collaboration opportunities between biotech and digital health, partly to find more effective ways to improve clinical trial recruitment.

Entrepreneurs for Cures  will spotlight entrepreneurs who are developing digital and mobile health technology that boost patient participation in biomedical research and development and those looking for partnerships with patient communities to demonstrate their product’s capabilities. It’s particularly interested in companies pursuing solutions geared to chronic conditions,  acute and infectious diseases, mental illness, genetic conditions.

OpGen, Inc., a whole-genome analysis company developing and commercializing a complete suite of break-through products and services based on its proprietary Whole Genome Mapping technology, announced today the appointment of Vadim Sapiro as chief information officer. In addition, the company announced the promotion and appointments of several key members of the executive committee. The organizational changes have been made to strengthen the management team and accelerate OpGen’s development and commercialization strategy. The company’s products enable rapid, accurate, high resolution whole genome analysis of microbes as well as more cost effective and accurate sequence assembly and finishing of human, animal, plant and microbial genomes.

An entrepreneurial and innovative spirit filled the conference room Tuesday, Sept. 16, at the Talbot County Free Library in Easton.

As part of Innovation Week, the third annual Startup Maryland Pitch Bus tour made a stop at the library. Business representatives from the additive manufacturing industry, commonly known as 3-D printing, also had 3-D printers and products on display.

The pitch bus offered an opportunity for area entrepreneurs to make a video for public viewing on YouTube to compete for venture investment.

AS a former physician, I shivered a bit when I heard Dr. Vivek Wadhwa say he would rather have an artificial-intelligence doctor than a human one. “I would trust an A.I. over a doctor any day,” he proclaimed at a recent health innovation conference in San Francisco, noting that artificial intelligence provided “perfect knowledge.” When asked to vote, probably a third of those in attendance agreed.

But it made sense: Dr. Wadhwa is a professor, entrepreneur and technology visionary. What’s more, the conference took place in San Francisco, where faith in the power of technology and data to solve problems holds unshakable sway.

A competition by Washington, D.C.-based incubator 1776 in a global search for the finest startup has set down the groundwork for its annual Challenge Cup in search of technology and healthcare startups. It is working with incubators in 16 cities around the world to identify early-stage companies across education, energy health and environment in a new twist to the competition called ChallengeX.

It begins in Washington, D.C. on October 21 and in Chicago on October 28, according to a company statement. In addition to those cities, it is working with incubators in Sydney, New York City, Tel Aviv, Amman, Santiago, Nairobi, Mumbai, Austin, Toronto, Boston, Berlin, Dublin, San Francisco and China. Each city will have four winners in each of the categories and advance to a week long festival in May when entrepreneurs for these companies have a chance to pitch investors, receive mentoring and meet policymakers. The intention of the Challenge Cup is to search for meaningful technology that’s also scalable.

Earlier this year, both Apple and Google presented competing visions for how we’ll use apps and wearables to gather data about our bodies and share it via our phones. Apple called its software HealthKit, while Google presented Google Fit.

If things had gone according to plan on Wednesday, Apple would be enjoying a head start over Google, with HealthKit released along with iOS 8, its new mobile software for iPhones and iPads. (Google Fit is still unreleased beyond a “developer preview.”) 

The 2014 Innovation2Commercialization Conference will be held on October 23rd at the Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville. This is our third year and we would like to ask you participate again to support and encourage the innovators, scientists, technologists and entrepreneurs in our area.

The conference will be held from 7:30am-3:30pm, with three panels: Innovation, Commercialization and Financing, and a special Keynote Speaker – Rachel King, CEO, GlycoMimetics. The program will spotlight serial entrepreneurs and successful tech transfer to product from the Naval Research Laboratory and The Johns Hopkins University – including a full panel discussion on the successful development to exit for Amplimmune.

As Partners in the past, we hope you found participation in the I2C Conference productive and plan to join us again this year.

DC I-Corps, a new, NSF-supported program designed to foster, grow and nurture an innovation ecosystem in the Mid-Atlantic Region, is now accepting applications for its fall cohort, beginning on October 9. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis up until that date. Apply here.

Open to research teams and technology entrepreneurs from universities, federal laboratories, agencies and the general community, the free program guides researchers in exploring the commercial potential of their inventions.

Since its passage more than two years ago, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which was designed to decrease regulatory burdens for raising capital, has spurred more than 110 IPOs among biotechnology companies alone. These are companies working to find cures for cancer, cardiovascular disease, blood disorders, and infectious diseases, among other conditions. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now in the process of finalizing another important provision of the law that could further encourage biotech capital formation and investment.