ROCKVILLE AND BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, January 6, 2014 – BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) and MIMETAS announced today that Todd Chappell, MBA, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for BHI, has been named General Manager, U.S. Affairs for MIMETAS. A Netherlands-based company, MIMETAS is establishing its offices within BHI’s headquarters in Rockville. MIMETAS and BHI created a U.S. subsidiary of MIMETAS to access the clinical, regulatory and scientific resources available in Central Maryland and to access the U.S. marketplace, the largest life sciences market in the world.
“We’re very pleased to add Todd to the MIMETAS team,” said Jos Joore, Ph.D., Chief Business Officer of MIMETAS. “Todd couples a vast experience in business creation with a profound understanding of biology and disease mechanisms. Most importantly, Todd shares our sense of urgency around enabling better medical treatment by using more predictive cell culture models.”
Previously, Mr. Chappell was the Vice President of Operations for Shape Pharmaceuticals, a portfolio company of HealthCare Ventures, LLC, where he oversaw all day-to-day operations involved in the development of a novel HDAC inhibitor for Cutaneous-T-Cell-Lymphoma. Prior to that, he was at CombinatoRx Inc. for eight years and served as Director of New Products. Mr. Chappell will be combining his role at MIMETAS with his existing EIR position at BHI.

MIMETAS and BHI created a U.S. subsidiary of MIMETAS to access the clinical, regulatory and scientific resources available in Central Maryland and to access the U.S. marketplace, the largest life sciences market in the world.
“We’re very pleased to add Todd to the MIMETAS team,” said Jos Joore, Ph.D., Chief Business Officer of MIMETAS. “Todd couples a vast experience in business creation with a profound understanding of biology and disease mechanisms. Most importantly, Todd shares our sense of urgency around enabling better medical treatment by using more predictive cell culture models.”

On Tuesday, January 7th from 4-7 pm there will be an open house for the spring courses in the “Advanced Studies in Technology Transfer” certificate program at the FAES Graduate School at NIH in the new FAES Classroom & Bookstore complex in Building 10 / B1 level. For the semester beginning on January 27th there will be 10 courses available with enrollment open to the general community:
- TECH 503 – Business Law Primer
- TECH 506 – Research Commercialization Webinar Course: The Essentials
- TECH 513 – Introduction to Technology Transfer
- TECH 562 – How to Get a Job in Technology Transfer ***NEW***
- TECH 566 – Biotechnology Business Leadership & Management Strategies
- TECH 582 – Intellectual Property and Patent Prosecution for Scientists
- TECH 584 – Translational Medical Product Development
- TECH 586 – International Science, Technology and Innovation Policy
- TECH 607 – Capstone Course in Technology Transfer
- PHAR 500 – Principles of Clinical Pharmacology
More details can be found in the spring 2014 course catalog supplement (www.faes.org). Course credit is transferable as well into various MBA & MS degree programs at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC) Graduate School as well as the new Master of Biotechnology Enterprise and Entrepreneurship degree program at Johns Hopkins University.

Defense and government contracting giant Northrop Grumman is making a bet on young start-ups by supporting a business accelerator for healthcare-related ventures.
The Falls Church-based company partnered with Johns Hopkins University, Rockville-based nonprofit BioHealth Innovation, which helps bioscience research projects in Maryland find funding, and Philadelphia venture capital firm DreamIt Ventures to start the new accelerator, to be based in Baltimore. DreamIt has operated similar programs for start-ups across other industries in several cities nationwide.
The goals of this initiative are to: 1) develop strategies and methodologies for the sequencing, mapping and genomic analyzing of established phenotypes of selectively bred animal models with addiction traits, and 2) identify, from new or existing selectively bred animal models, genetic variants with implications for addiction related traits.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is interested in funding a diverse set of projects that develop, test and evaluate various simulation approaches for the purpose of improving the safe delivery of health care. Simulation in health care serves multiple purposes. As a training technique, it exposes individuals and teams to realistic clinical challenges through the use of mannequins, task trainers, virtual reality, standardized patients or other forms, and allows participants to experience in real-time the consequences of their decisions and actions. The principal advantage of simulation is that it provides a safe environment for health care practitioners to acquire valuable experience without putting patients at risk. Simulation also can be used as a test-bed to improve clinical processes and to identify failure modes or other areas of concern in new procedures and technologies that might otherwise be unanticipated and serve as threats to patient safety. Yet another application of simulation focuses on the establishment of valid and reliable measures of clinical performance competency and their potential use for credentialing and certification purposes. Applications that address a variety of simulation techniques, clinical settings, provider groups, priority populations, patient conditions, and threats to safety are welcomed.