
BHI and Ahead are collaborating to accelerate commercialization of Symcat, Ahead Research’s patient/healthcare provider matchmaking app
ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, Dec. 19, 2012 – BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) announced today that its newest client, Ahead Research, Inc. (Ahead), received the first Cigna Innovation Health Challenge award at the 2012 mHealth summit. BHI and Ahead recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to jointly accelerate the commercialization of Symcat, Ahead’s web and mobile application whose module was the basis for the Cigna award.
“Ahead Research – with its Symcat app – is the type of entrepreneurial start-up company that BioHealth Innovation seeks to foster as part of its mission to drive the commercialization of market-relevant biohealth innovations,” said BioHealth Innovation’s President & CEO Richard Bendis.

ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, Dec. 19, 2012 – BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI), a regional private-public partnership focusing on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Central Maryland, announced today the appointment of Emergent BioSolutions Inc. President and CEO Daniel J. Abdun-Nabi and SR One President Jens Eckstein, Ph.D., to the BHI Board of Directors.
“It is an honor to welcome two additional life science industry leaders to the BHI Board of Directors,” said BioHealth Innovation’s President & CEO Richard Bendis. “Dan brings a unique perspective from his role at the helm of one of the leading specialty pharmaceutical companies while Jens will provide important insight as the head of the corporate venture capital arm of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). I’m also incredibly pleased that GSK, after having acquired Human Genome Sciences (one of the original investors in BHI), will continue to support BHI and has expressed an understanding of the importance of the mission of our organization.”

Income from invention royalties at the University of Minnesota and University of Iowa has plummeted faster the past two years than at all but a handful of U.S. research institutions, an analysis of royalties data shows.
Of universities that earned more than $2 million in royalties in 2009, the University of Minnesota saw the biggest drop in revenue over the next two years, Association of University Technology Managers data show.
Minnesota lost $75 million in licensing revenue from 2009 to 2011. An expiring anti-AIDS drug patent dropped its income last year to $10 million. Iowa’s royalties plummeted from $43 million in 2009 to $6 million last year, also because of a single expired drug patent.