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Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) has recently opened its first Agency-wide Open Broad Agency Announcement (BAA), which seeks funding proposals for research to improve health outcomes across patient populations, communities, diseases, and health conditions. The BAA calls for proposals that outline breakthrough research and technological advancements, investigate unconventional approaches, and challenge accepted assumptions to enable leaps forward in science, technology, systems, or related capabilities. ARPA-H also encourages concepts that advance the objectives of President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative, as well as more disease-agnostic approaches.​

Join us for a lunch and learn to hear how new technologies in quantum computing will be utilized to power scientific research and the life science companies already taking advantage. Shahar Keinan, CEO, and Maurice Benson, Lead Software Engineer at POLARISqb, will give a presentation on how the innovations in the quantum computing industry will directly impact the future of drug design, clinical research, and precision medicine. POLARISqb has created one of the first platforms for the life sciences industry that can cut the drug discovery research process timeline from its traditional time of 5 years down to 4 months. Shahar and Maurice will also discuss how quantum computers are beginning to be made ready for commercial use and all of the recent case studies on their performance.

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The tragic and shocking demise of SVB and bailout of its depositors is a watershed, “Too Big to Fail” event for Silicon Valley that will reverberate for years to come, if not longer, bringing significant new challenges to the industry in both the short and long term.

For the small but critically important world of startups and venture capital, things have gone from bad to worse. After a year of upheaval—plummeting stock valuations, dormant M&A and IPO markets, and massive layoffs—the tech industry now bears the indignity of losing a cherished institution that nearly sparked a national financial panic.

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The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on Friday, March 10, sent shockwaves through the tech and biotech world. But it does not appear to have had a major effect on the BioHealth Capital Region and the Philadelphia region’s life sciences industry, at least not so far.

On about March 8, SVB, a major supporter of tech, biotech and venture capital funds, indicated it was facing a cashflow problem. Initially, it attempted to raise money by selling shares. Then it attempted to sell itself. Investors were alarmed by these efforts and began pulling their funds from the bank, causing a run on the bank, leading to shares plunging on Thursday, March 9. On Friday, March 10, regulators shut down the bank.

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FREDERICK, Md., March 13, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ — RoosterBio Inc., a leading supplier of human mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (hMSCs), highly engineered media, development services, cell engineering, and advanced therapy bioprocess solutions, today announced that it has selected Repligen Corporation, a life sciences company focused on bioprocessing technology leadership, as a collaboration partner to advance scalable exosome bioprocessing.

RoosterBio’s goal, in collaboration with Repligen, is to deliver solutions for manufacturing of exosomes using scalable and low shear technologies that enable cost-effective commercialization of these advanced therapies.

The deal stands to drive hundreds of millions more to the local company over time.

Image: Scott Koenig is president and CEO of Rockville’s MacroGenics. JOANNE S. LAWTON

Join us and guest speaker John Newby, CEO of Virginia Bio, who will be highlighting strategic goals for Virginia Bio and Virginia Bio-Connect as well as discussing the future of biotech collaborations and partnerships in the DMV region. Enjoy an evening of networking, drinks, and fun!

LEIDEN, the Netherlands, March 07 / B3C newswire / — MIMETAS, a leading company in the field of organ-on-a-chip-based disease models, announces that it has launched its Adult Stem Cell (ASC)-derived tubular organoids in an assay-ready format. As part of its OrganoReady® product line, MIMETAS offers two organoid-based products: ASC-derived Colon1 and Kidney2 Organoid tubules.

“We are thrilled to offer this cutting-edge technology to the research community,” says Jos Joore, co-CEO of MIMETAS. “We’ve worked for several years to optimize these OrganoReady® organoid products. As a result, our early-access users will be the first in the world to have license-free access to ready-to-use, donor-relevant organoid tubules of consistent quality.”