Accepting Applications for InvestMaryland Challenge!
Could $100,000 help jumpstart your startup? Well, Maryland’s national business competition is back for the third year!
Since 2013, InvestMaryland Challenge has awarded nearly $1.5M in prizes to innovative startup companies. Prizes have included cash grants, incubator space, marketing and legal services, and opportunities to pitch investors.
Start an application today and your business could be on its way to accepting the $100,000 Grand Prize!
AstraZeneca will jointly develop and commercialize its high-risk, Phase II/III-bound Alzheimer’s disease drug candidate AZD3293 with Eli Lilly, in a deal that could net AZ up to $500 million in development and regulatory milestone payments.
AZD3293 is an oral beta secretase cleaving enzyme (BACE) inhibitor designed to prevent the formation of amyloid plaque and eventually slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. The company cites Phase I studies that showed AZD3293 significantly and dose-dependently reduced levels of amyloid beta in the cerebro-spinal fluid of Alzheimer’s patients and healthy volunteers.
The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and other research institutions closer to Greater Washington have received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ALS Association in the past few years.
Early indications are that some are likely to see even more in the future as contributions to the viral “Ice Bucket Challenge” have surpassed $113 million.
As of 2014, Deloitte is the largest professional services firm in the world by revenue. What began in the 19th century as stand-alone accounting offices has merged and evolved into a partnership that encompasses 200,000 employees in more than 150 countries around the globe.
But size alone doesn’t make a company great, of course. Things like satisfying clients, increasing opportunities for personnel, and performing a vital function for society make a company great. When employees, customers, investors, and the community benefit from a company’s services, that’s what makes it stand out from the rest.
Please plan to attend and also help spread the word about some exciting technology transfer programs planned for the NIH Research Festival next week:
Monday, September 22nd from 12-2pm
“Careers for scientists in technology transfer & business development” Poster Session I Building 10 – FAES Academic Center Presenter: Steve Ferguson (NIH/OTT)
Monday, September 22nd from 12-2pm
“NIH and the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer” Poster Session I Building 10 – FAES Academic Center Presenters: Steve Ferguson (NIH/OTT) and Gary Jones (Federal Laboratory Consortium)
Monday, September 22nd from 2-4pm
“Commercial Development of my Research: Still More Personal Stories from former NIH Intramural Scientists” Concurrent Symposium Session I Building 10 – FAES Academic Center – Classroom 3
Co-chairs: Steve Ferguson (NIH/OTT) and Todd Chappell (BioHealth Innovation)
Medical investors once spent a disproportionate amount of their money on diseases affecting the brain, heart and skeleton. Now market pressures and technological advances are driving them to invest across the human body more broadly.
A VentureWire analysis of U.S. venture financings shows how investors have spread their dollars across a widening range of disease treatments in recent years. From 2002 to 2007 the body part that attracted the most capital–nearly always the heart–often represented 5% to 7% or more of the total venture capital deployed into all U.S. companies, according to data from Dow Jones VentureSource.
A new upcoming report from Thomson Reuters unit CMR International declares that several positive trends are buoying the pharmaceutical industry to an all-time high in sales, which are projected to hit $1 trillion this year.
The CMR Factbook 2014 stated that global pharmaceutical sales reached a record of an estimated $980 billion last year and is expected to climb to a trillion dollars in 2014. On the other hand, the growth rate declined last year compared to previous years due to the patent expiration of several blockbuster drugs. The decline in growth was also attributed to cheaper generic drugs’ domination in the market.
Brendan Iribe dropped out of the University of Maryland here, but before he did he amassed 227 parking tickets. And he managed to meet two business partners who would help him build the virtual-reality company Oculus VR, which Facebook bought this year for about $2-billion.
One of those parking tickets remains unpaid, but the university is likely to forgive it after Friday, when he gave $31-million to erect a computer-science building. That makes Mr. Iribe, who is 35 years old, the institution’s most generous donor ever.
The Southern Maryland Innovation and Technology (SMIT) initiative has awarded Smartronix and Coherent Technical Services, two locally headquartered technology firms, Pro Memberships to CoFounders Lab.
CoFounders Lab, a OneVest Company, is an online partnering platform of more than 40,000 founders, advisers and interns available to help launch and grow businesses. A Pro Membership provides access to entrepreneurs nation-wide to help individuals connect with the right partner, investment or resource needed to take a business to the next level. SMIT will award 40 Pro Memberships to individuals and companies to encourage technical innovation and commercialization in St. Mary’s County.
Harpoon Medical, Inc., a medical device company focused on the development and commercialization of a minimally invasive, beating heart mitral valve repair technology, announced today that the company has successfully raised $3.2M of new capital and expects to complete the round over the coming weeks. The Series A financing was led by Epidarex Capital in order to advance Harpoon’s innovative technology into the clinic and expand the company’s research and development efforts.
“We are very pleased with the results of our Series A financing because it gives Harpoon Medical the resources necessary to advance the technology from an innovative concept into the clinic,” said, Bill Niland, CEO of Harpoon Medical, Inc. and serial healthcare entrepreneur. The round was increased to accommodate strong demand from investors that include the Maryland Venture Fund, the Abell Foundation, medical device executives, doctors and successful business executives in the Maryland area. “When you have the opportunity to put together a high caliber syndicate of investors who can help you with more than just capital you find a way to accommodate the demand.”
