News Archive

Dubbed as the most severe and deadly outbreak, the Ebola menace in West Africa has caught the attention of GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) (NYSE:GSK) and National institute of health. CNBC’s Meg Tirrell reports that NIH and GlaxoSmithKline have partnered to develop a vaccine that is said to have had immense success in primates, but yet to be tested in Humans.

The studies are to be used to ascertain whether the vaccine is safe and also its ability to prompt an immune response, able to combat the Ebola virus. No humans are to be infected’ with the Ebola virus during the course of the study.

Anne Arundel Medical Center is looking to get in on technology commercialization, a game more typically played at research hospitals and universities.

The James and Sylvia Earl Simulation to Advance Innovation and Learning (SAIL) Center is developing a plan to bring together doctors and the local business community to commercialize technology that would benefit the hospital.

Legal 500, considered one of the most comprehensive worldwide qualitative guides available on legal services providers, recently announced its 2014 rankings. Venable’s national Corporate Group continued to earn high marks in the latest edition leading the way with a Tier 1 ranking in the M&A: Middle-Market (Sub-$500m) category. The group also received high marks in the Technology: Outsourcing, Technology: Transactions and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) categories.

Corporate Practice Co-Chair Charles J. Morton, Jr. and partner William T. Russell received special recognition as Leading Lawyers for M&A: Middle Market (Sub $500m) Technology: Transactions respectively. Leading Lawyers are selected from all the nationally recommended attorneys in a particular category and represent those few individuals, who, in the view of their peers, represent the highest standards of their practice. This is Mr. Morton’s third year as a Leading Lawyer and Mr. Russell’s fourth. Mr. Morton was one of 23 attorneys nationwide named a Leading Lawyer in M&A: Middle Market (Sub $500m). Mr. Russell was one of only 12 attorneys nationwide named a Leading Lawyer in Technology: Transactions.

A lot has been written lately about innovation, or the lack thereof, in the world of biopharma. One question that often gets asked: which countries lead the way in creating new medicines? Many people think that drugs originate in the nation where the companies that produce them are headquartered. The truth, however, is much more complicated. Given that multi-national firms market the majority of medicines, figuring out where each one of their drugs originated requires digging through some extensive data vaults. A proper analysis requires the examination of company histories, free market deal making, and in some cases government interventions. Consider the following examples:

Have you always wondered what type of scientific researcher you are? Take the quiz to find out.

Student consultants at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business often find their target audience staring at them in the mirror when they do market research for nonprofit organizations.

ChangeTheWorld.org, a pro bono consulting program launched at the school’s Center for Social Value Creation in 2006, reports an increased interest among nonprofit organizations in the Millennial Generation as the population segment grows up and goes to college. “Nonprofit organizations want to unleash the potential of this generation, and they are coming straight to the source for insights at the Smith School and other partner universities,” said Pammi Bhullar, program manager at the Center for Social Value Creation and ChangeTheWorld.org. “Essentially, they are asking college students to gather market intelligence on themselves.”

Too much fat weighs down not just your body, but also your brain.

harms most organs in the body, and new research suggests the brain is no exception. What’s more, the researchers found that getting rid of excess fat actually improves brain function, reversing the ill effects of the extra weight. The new study, which focused on people who underwent bariatric surgery, found that the procedure had positive effects on the brain, but other research has shown that less invasive weight loss strategies, like exercise, can also reverse brain damage thought to be related to body fat.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, has announced that it will freeze the prices of its vaccines for five years for developing countries that graduate from GAVI Alliance support.

By committing to offer GAVI Alliance prices for vaccines against pneumonia, diarrhoea and cervical cancer, GSK will support developing country governments as they transition to financing the full cost of their local vaccination programmes.

A candidate Ebola vaccine could be given to healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom, The Gambia, and Mali as early as September, as part of a series of safety trials of potential vaccines aimed at preventing the disease that has killed more than 1,400 people in the current outbreak in West Africa.

Human trials of this candidate vaccine, being co-developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), are to be accelerated with funding from an international consortium in response to the Ebola epidemic, which the World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared a public health emergency of international concern.

GlaxoSmithKline’s experimental Ebola vaccine could be tested on humans in the UK, US, the Gambia and Mali in the next few weeks, in a race to contain the deadly virus that has claimed more than 1,500 lives in west Africa.

The news came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the Ebola epidemic could eventually exceed 20,000 cases. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s assistant director-general for emergency operations, said: “This far outstrips any historic Ebola outbreak in numbers. The largest outbreak in the past was about 400 cases.”