News

Lab will help enable broader adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and state-of-the-art quality solutions 

Rockville, MD – June 4, 2025 – The U.S. Pharmacopeia (USP) announced today the opening of its Advanced Technologies Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland. USP will use this lab, and related solutions and expertise, to develop, pilot, and scale innovations that foster more efficient and expanded production of quality medicines for stronger and more secure supply chains. 

The lab expands USP capabilities to help manufacturers overcome barriers in the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies by developing new approaches and processes for flow chemistry and additive manufacturing coupled with advanced analytical techniques such as process analytical technologies (PAT) that can enable real-time quality monitoring. The lab will also support development of alternative and novel synthetic routes to produce active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and key starting materials. Taken together, these capabilities are essential in efforts to create stronger supply chains through strategic onshoring, distributed manufacturing, and personalized medicine. 

COLUMBIA, Md., June 4, 2025 — Welldoc^®, a leader in AI-powered digital health innovation, today announced it will power the newly launched Lilly Health™ Personalized Health & Medicine Platform* (Lilly Health app) with its cardiometabolic digital health platform. The Lilly Health app is designed to support a tailored patient experience for individuals interested in or using Eli Lilly and Company’s incretin-based therapies, for the treatment of cardiometabolic conditions, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, and moderate- to-severe obstructive sleep apnea and obesity. Initially, the Lilly Health app will be available for patients prescribed Zepbound® (tirzepatide)** or Mounjaro® (tirzepatide)**.

Lilly and Welldoc aim to build a more seamless patient experience through educational resources and targeted support. The Lilly Health app will provide features to help patients with their cardiometabolic health goals and weight, such as medication logging, reminders, device connectivity and health data tracking.

COLUMBIA, Md., June 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission (“Commission“) is pleased to announce the release of Requests for Applications (RFAs) for the July 2025 funding cycle. The deadline for application submissions is July 9, 2025.

The upcoming cycle supports a broad spectrum of grant programs, including early-stage basic research, translational efforts, clinical trials and manufacturing support. Maryland-based academic institutions, nonprofits and companies are encouraged to apply. Additionally, companies/non-profit entities outside Maryland are eligible to apply, provided the funded research occurs within the state. Supplemental funding is available for research projects involving collaboration between public and private sectors, accelerating the development of therapies for unmet medical needs.

COLLEGE PARK, MD – June 3, 2025 – IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), a leading commercial quantum computing and networking company, today announced the successful completion of its acquisition of Lightsynq Technologies, Inc., a Boston-based startup specializing in photonic interconnects and quantum memory. This strategic acquisition accelerates IonQ’s fault-tolerant quantum computing roadmap and advances progress toward the development of the quantum internet.

Lightsynq’s photonic interconnect platform supports high-fidelity, multi-nodal qubit operations and modularity, which are essential for scaling quantum computers. The company’s innovations in quantum memory and repeater technology complement IonQ’s trapped-ion quantum computing approach and will advance IonQ’s quantum networking systems.

Baltimore, Md. (May 28, 2025) – CoapTech Inc., a Baltimore-based medical device company, announced today the initial close of a Series B funding round, which was led by Good Growth Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in transformative science and technology, with participation from the University System of Maryland (USM) Momentum Fund (Momentum Fund) and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), a previous investor.  Additional funds joining the round included NuFund, TEDCO, The Abell Foundation, and Ecphora Capital.  

By Nate Doughty – Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal – Virginia Tech this week unveiled the Institute for Advanced Computing at its Potomac Yard campus to offer academic and research opportunities in AI and quantum computing — and it’s looking for more companies to work with.

At buildout, the institute will employ 50 full-time faculty members and occupy about a third of Virginia Tech’s Academic Building One, a $302 million, 300,000-square-foot facility in Alexandria that opened in January. That’s all somewhat subject to grant funding, enrollment and the total number of partnerships, according to Kirk Cameron, professor of computer science at Virginia Tech and interim director of the institute.

Ralph Berrier Jr. //June 1, 2025// – A $4.9 million grant from the commonwealth will allow leaders from the Roanoke and New River valleys to build upon efforts by Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine and the Fralin Biomedical Institute at VTC to turn the region into a hub for biomedical research.

“As we build the biotech sector, this statewide grant will help us where we have gaps,” explains Erin Burcham, CEO of the Roanoke Blacksburg Innovation Alliance (RBIA), a regional economic development organization.

The money is a slice of a $14.3 million pie from state economic development initiative GO Virginia to fund the multiregional Project VITAL (Virginia Innovations and Technology Advancements in Life Sciences), an endeavor to make Virginia a biotechnology leader.

FREDERICK, Md., May 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Cartesian Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: RNAC) (“Cartesian” or the “Company”), a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering cell therapy for autoimmune diseases, today announced that the first participant has been enrolled in its Phase 3 AURORA trial of Descartes-08 in patients with myasthenia gravis (MG).

Descartes-08, Cartesian’s lead cell therapy candidate, is an autologous engineered chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CAR-T) product candidate targeting B-cell maturation antigen (BCMA). Descartes-08 is designed to be administered without preconditioning chemotherapy in an outpatient setting and does not use integrating vectors.