The emerging tech town of St. Louis has also become fertile ground for a community of life sciences companies that are ready to bloom — if they can find early stage funding.

“We’ve got a lot of engineers here who have been working for companies like Sigma-Aldrich and Monsanto that have decided to spin off, so we have some great entrepreneurial ventures in the life sciences,” said Kasey Joyce, the director of investor relations for Cultivation Capital.

3-V Biosciences, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics that modulate key pathways in oncology and infectious disease, today announced the completion of a Series C financing round, raising $20 million. Proceeds from the financing will be used to advance 3-V's lead oncology candidate into a Phase 1 clinical trial and to conduct ongoing preclinical studies of multiple virology leads generated by the company's integrated drug discovery process. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and New Enterprise Associates participated in the round.

UK-based healthcare company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has announced an investment of €17.5m ($23.5m) in a French venture firm to develop new drugs that have the potential to target rare diseases in Europe.

The Kurma Biofund II fund is led by Paris-based venture capital firm Kurma Life Science Partners (KLS) and is supported by other investors namely, CDC Entreprises, Idinvest Partners and New Enterprise Associates.

A tiny, tin-coated piece of wood could one day be used as a high capacity and environmentally benign battery.

A team of researchers at the University of Maryland constructed a nano-scale, sodium-ion battery from a sliver of wood more than 1,000 times thinner than paper.

“The inspiration behind the idea comes from the trees,” said Liangbing Hu, an assistant professor of materials science, in a press release. “Wood fibers that make up a tree once held mineral-rich water, and so are ideal for storing liquid electrolytes, making them not only the base but an active part of the battery.”

BlueCross BlueShield of Louisiana and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts will provide online healthcare to their members with technology from American Well.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana plans to leverage American Well's telehealth platform as an added feature of its new Quality Blue Primary Care population health and quality improvement program, and will create multiple avenues to use this technology in other programs.

As our next receipt date is approximately 6 weeks away, we wanted to send a reminder to all new (and returning) HHS applicants about the required registrations needed before you can submit your SBIR/STTR grant to grants.gov. This includes the new requirement to register with the SBA Company Registry. It is never too early to start the registration process, even if you are thinking about submitting for December 5th or beyond, but especially for August 5th!

Applicant Organizations

Applicant organizations must complete and maintain the following registrations as described in the SF 424 (R&R) Application Guide to be eligible to apply for or receive an award. All registrations must be completed prior to the application being submitted. Registration can take 6 weeks or more, so applicants should begin the registration process as soon as possible. The NIH Policy on Late Submission of Grant Applications states that failure to complete registrations in advance of a due date is not a valid reason for a late submission.

iVantage Health Analytics, a leading provider of health care informatics and business analytics solutions that transform complex data into actionable business intelligence, announced it has raised $10 million in growth equity from Great Point Partners (GPP). The equity investment will fund expanded sales and marketing efforts, additional investment in technology infrastructure and personnel expansion.

SC&H Capital, an investment banking and advisory firm focused on middle market and growth companies, served as the sole placement agent to iVantage Health Analytics in connection with the transaction.

Venture capital firms—and the high-tech startups they support—historically concentrated in suburban office parks, such as Silicon Valley and North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

Richard Florida, co-founder and editor of The Atlantic Cities and director of the Martin Prosperity Institute, has crunched the available data and found (along with some other studies) a shift underway within the venture capital community away from the suburbs and towards urban areas.

Business, civic, and political leaders in St. Louis are coming together to raise $100 million in private funds over the next five years to support the Regional Entrepreneurial Initiative, a new effort aimed at helping emerging regional businesses grow and thrive. The project was launched with funding from the federal government and will draw on several ongoing fundraising initiatives in the community. About 80 percent of the funds will be used to provide capital support for startup businesses, with the remaining 20 percent directed toward entrepreneurial support and mentoring, according to the St. Louis Beacon.

In April 2012, the city and county of St. Louis invited stakeholders to develop a regional economic development strategy that would guide efforts to grow and retain high-growth startups. The St. Louis Regional Entrepreneurship Initative Report received financial assistance from the Economic Development Administration (EDA), the state of Missouri, and the St. Louis County Economic Council. The findings of the report suggest that the St. Louis region has a growing cluster of resources to support entrepreneurship, but that they are not of uniform quality and not distributed evenly across sectors. For example, the region's bioscience sector is relatively well-supported through the efforts of such organizations at BioSTL, BioGenerator and the Helix Center Biotech Incubator. Information technology companies, however, have few local organizations and programs to rely on for support. Resources for the agricultural, energy and advanced manufacturing sectors remain scarce and uncoordinated.

The NIH has been faced with considerable difficulties as of late in terms of finding the required means to continue moving science forward at the early stage. However, the group recently announced a commitment of $12.7 million to a novel project – funding further research on assets that have been cast-off by big pharma in key indication areas that represent a significant unmet medical need (e.g. Alzheimers, Duchenne, etc.). The initiative has been fittingly named Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules, and it may be a groundbreaking solution to several problems facing drug development today. These include reducing time to market, alleviating early stage investment risk, and creating even more incentive for research scientists to orient themselves towards commercialization of research.

The America Invents Act (AIA), also known as the “patent reform bill,” is designed to modernize the U.S. patent system. One provision of the new bill, that went into effect in March, converts the United States from first-to-invent to a first-inventor-to-file system. You’ve had a few months to get used to the new law, but if you’re still wondering how it could affect biotech and medical-device products you invent, you’re not alone.

The new first-inventor-to-file patent law means that the first person or company to file a patent application on an invention has the right to pursue the patent on it. While this is new in the U.S., it’s the system that’s already being used in every other country in the world. So now the United States should be in synch with the rest of the world, right? Well, not quite.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) announced today that Allen Shofe, executive vice president of corporate affairs, has been appointed to serve on the board of directors of the MdBio Foundation, a private charitable organization whose mission is to support bioscience awareness, education, and workforce development in Maryland. MdBio Foundation is an affiliate of the Tech Council of Maryland.

“I am honored to serve on the board of a Foundation that is committed to training and investing in tomorrow’s scientific talent, which is one of four focus areas of Emergent’s GIVE corporate social responsibility program,” said Mr. Shofe. “For years, Emergent has partnered with MdBio Foundation to host the Young Science Explorers program (YSEP) at our Gaithersburg laboratory facility providing middle school students a glimpse into biopharmaceutical product development and an opportunity to interact with employees and scientists about STEM-based careers. We look forward to again welcoming YSEP at our facility in July.”

The search for the artificial pancreas continues, and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and Becton Dickinson ($BDX) have joined forces to develop an insulin-delivery system paired with glucose monitoring for people with Type 1 diabetes.

The foundation and Becton Dickinson have agreed to a three-year partnership, an extension of existing collaborations between the two, with a focus on Type 1 diabetes, according to a release. The device, long sought-after in the industry, would mimic the functions of a human pancreas to release insulin when blood sugar levels indicate it is needed by combining the pump with a glucose-monitoring system. This minimizes the potential for human error, as the standard of care currently requires a pump with a catheter and patient-controlled glucose monitoring.

“Don’t write that we have a cure for cancer tomorrow,” says Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, “but there are some spectacular results.”

Mr Soriot was at MedImmune on Granta Park, AstraZeneca’s current toe-hold on the city and on the day that the pharma company announced its chosen site – Cambridge Biomedical Campus at Addenbrooke’s – to relocate its global HQ and UK R&D activities.

Higher education is becoming big business as more students head off to college, but they're also about developing businesses, and the state is turning research and development into new business ventures.

Maryland leads the nation in how much it spends on research but the University System of Maryland -- which includes 13 colleges and universities -- is trying to take research to a new level by creating more small businesses off campus. The goal so far is to try and create more than 300 new businesses over the next decade.

The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland will offer an online MBA program beginning in January 2014. Designed to accommodate working professionals, the flexible online program allows students to earn an MBA degree largely on their own time with minimal on-campus requirements. The program courses are taught by the same top faculty and adhere to the academic rigor of the Smith School's other top MBA programs.

"This is a major step forward for the university and for business professionals who need flexible access to academic excellence," said UMD President Wallace Loh. "The Smith School is combining a state-of-the-art online platform with the academic rigor that makes it a leader. University-wide we are exploring how best to use technology-based learning, and this is an excellent model."

As groups of high-net-worth individuals continue to band together in the form of angel investment networks and funds, they’re creating new opportunities for funding for mid-stage startups. But to some entrepreneurs, they’re also starting to look an awful lot like VCs.

There are about 350 angel investing groups in the U.S. today, according to Marianne Hudson,executive director of the Angel Capital Association. Although most of the U.S.’s more than 300,000 angel investors still work as individuals, the influence of their networking is growing. The median angel round size in 2012 was somewhere around $600,000, according to the 2012 Halo Report, up from $500,000 in 2010.

Hard to understand, slow to exit and more than enough risk to go around.

Not many investors are brave and smart enough to fund startups working to get new pharmaceuticals, medical devices and therapeutics on the market. To highlight this breed of investors, and to give healthcare entrepreneurs a way to find them, we have compiled a list of venture capital firms with a track record of healthcare investing.

Savara Pharmaceuticals needed several million dollars to take its inhalable drug for troublesome infections in cystic fibrosis patients through Phase 2 clinical trials. So CEO Rob Neville, naturally, began talking with venture capitalists. But in the end, he didn’t end up needing any of their money.

Over the course of about a year, Savara raised a $16 million Series B round – in two tranches – led by a quartet of angel groups from central Texas to southern California.

Medical schools have been preparing for the changes health care reform is bringing. Many have framed their education around iPads and other tablets and are encouraging more of their students to focus on primary care as physician shortages are expected to worsen. From accelerated programs to a technology focus, the description of some of the innovative approaches proposed to obtain some of the $11 million in grants being offered by the American Medical Association over the next five years offers a window to their thinking about health care reform.

Combined primary care degree Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School is setting up a dual degree in primary care and population health. “The goal is to educate a new type of physician with a primary care background,” its proposal said.

The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:

NIH Guide Notice:

• Notice of Multiple Institutes' Participation in PAR-13-239 Native American Research Centers for Health (NARCH) (S06)
  The NHLBI, along with other NIH Institutes, has joined the funding opportunity announcement PAR-13-239, entitled “Native American Research Centers for Health (NARCH) (S06)”. 
• Notice of Correction to RFA-HL-14-014 Clinical Centers (CC) for the NHLBI Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL) Clinical Trials Network (U01)
  On May 15, 2013, the NHLBI issued Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) RFA-HL-14-014 "Clinical Centers (CC) for the NHLBI Prevention and Early Treatment of Acute Lung Injury (PETAL) Clinical Trials Network (U01)". This Notice corrects the allowable number of satellite recruiting sites. 
• Notice Providing Additional Information for Applicants to PAR-13-231 Phenotyping Embryonic Lethal Knockout Mice (R01)
  The purpose of this Notice is to provide additional information for applicants interested in responding to PAR-13-231 which encourages R01 applications to phenotype embryonic lethal knockout (KO) mouse strains being generated through the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) of which the NIH Knockout Mouse Phenotyping Program (KOMP2) is a member.

Request for Information:

• Request for Information (RFI): Input on Administration of the NIH-Industry Pilot Program Discovering
  The goal of this Request for Information (RFI) is to collect feedback from the biomedical research community, pharmaceutical companies, and other members of the public about the “NIH-Industry Pilot Program: Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules” initiative and the application process. NCATS is interested in feedback from researchers and institutions that submitted an application, considered submitting an application but did not, and/or would be interested in submitting an application in the future. NCATS is also interested in feedback from existing and potential pharmaceutical partners.

The Department of Defense last week announced the establishment of the world’s first brain tissue repository on the Walter Reed Campus to help researchers better understand traumatic brain injury (TBI).

TBI is common among veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which led to the opening of The Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine Brain Tissue Repository for Traumatic Brain Injury at the Uniformed Services University on the campus.

The University Economic Development Association (UEDA) is currently seeking nominations for its annual Awards of Excellence program, which recognizes leading edge university-based economic development initiatives from across the country. The Awards of Excellence Program recognizes higher education institutions and their partners who are transforming their campuses into engines of economic prosperity through creative initiatives in five categories: 

1. Community Connected Campus: initiatives that promote the physical development of quality connected campuses and their surrounding communities;
2. Research and Analysis: initiatives that enhance the capacity of colleges and universities to provide new forms of research and tools for community, economic and workforce development practitioners;
3. Leadership and Collaboration: initiatives that support the development of collaborative economic development strategies and the leaders required to implement them;
4. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: initiatives designed to support startups, high-growth companies and clusters within a region; and
5. Talent Development: initiatives that promote the development of 21st-century skills.

June 27th, 3:30-5:30pm

Join Nicholas P. Jones, Benjamin T. Rome Dean, Whiting School of Engineering to celebrate the launch of FastForward.

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Get a preview of the innovative technologies created by Johns Hopkins faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students in the FastForward accelerator and see examples of entrepreneurship from across the university. Learn how FastForward, a unique innovation system, can increase the probability of a startup's success.

The University of Maryland (UM) BioPark announced today that Ocular Proteomics, LLC (OPL), a startup biotechnology company leveraging a new class of biomarkers found in vitreous fluid of the eye to more accurately diagnose and treat retinal diseases, has recently relocated to Building One of the BioPark from Baltimore County. Led by world-renowned and internationally respected retinal surgeon Bert M. Glaser, M.D., OPL is a spin out of the National Retina Institute. OPL’s move to the BioPark comes on the heels of the company’s $1.2 million dollar Small Business Innovation in Research (SBIR) phase 2 grant from the National Institutes of Health. In its new space, OPL will be conducting the research phase of a multi-center clinical trial, which will include 200 patients with macular degeneration.

Said Jim Hughes, President, Research Park Corporation, University of Maryland Baltimore, “The BioPark has once again attracted an innovative and important start-up to our location. We’re pleased to welcome Dr. Glaser and Ocular Proteomics to our roster of commercial tenants. Dr. Glaser founded Ocular Proteomics to use personalized medicine to drastically change the way blinding diseases are diagnosed and treated.”

It’s a popular sport among startups and the mobile vendor community to figure out what physicians are willing to do on their tablets and smartphones. It has to be said that some of them have come up with some pretty compelling approaches to deepen the relationship between physicians and their mobile devices.

But what is really going on in their practices? In two studies generated from a survey by AmericanEHRPartners of 1,400 with responses from about 696 physicians and 150 allied health professionals has uncovered some interesting information. AmericanEHRPartners was formed in 2010 by formed by Cientis Technologies and the American College of Physicians to help physicians compare and implement electronic health records.

Irene Pollin, the widow of the late Washington sports team owner Abe Pollin, has donated $10 million to a Johns Hopkins University center for the prevention of heart disease.

Hopkins announced Thursday that Pollin’s gift will support the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease in the division of cardiology.

Aside from memory loss and cognitive impairments, often the most difficult aspect of caring for people with dementia is treating their disruptive changes in behavior.

With no reliable medications to treat them and limited information for caregivers regarding alternative therapies, these behavior changes are frequently the source of increased upset, stress and burden to families and often result in nursing home placement.

Robert Langer shares the experiences and lessons learned through his involvement with more than two dozen biotech startups.

I started my first company in 1987 because I realized it was an effective path for transforming science into life-saving and life-improving inventions. Startup companies provide one means for accomplishing ends that interested me: creating products that have a positive effect on human health. I did this first with a colleague (Box 1), but through the years I have also started many companies with students and postdocs in my MIT lab.

Many times when I talk with small businesses, they don't fully understand the difference between a Federal Grant and a Federal Contract. It is important for a small business to completely understand if their government funds are coming from a grant or a contract.  The terms and conditions surrounding each have somewhat unique requirements that may have implications on how the business handles the award and, in particular, the accounting related to that award. 

The Government defines the difference in fairly easy to understand terms (for the government) at the grants.gov website:

A Grant is an award of financial assistance, the principal purpose of which is to transfer a thing of value from a federal agency to a recipient to carry out a public purpose of support or stimulation authorized by a law of the United States (see 31 U.S.C. 6101(3)). A grant is distinguished from a contract, which is used to acquire property or services for the federal government's direct benefit or use.

The NIH is one of the 'easier' federal agencies to apply to because every year it issues an Omnibus Solicitation, requesting investigator- initiated topics. This means that rather than telling you exactly which projects they will fund, the NIH asks you, the investigator, to come up with the ideas.

As long as these ideas are related to Human Health, have the requisite level of Technological Innovation and Commercial Potential, they may be appropriate for SBIR/STTR. However, you still need to do some homework to make sure your idea fits within the research interests of the NIH's Institutes and Centers. So before you put a lot of work into developing your proposal, there are a few things you can do:

In the year following its groundbreaking last June, all aspects of Bioscience Connecticut have moved forward on time and on budget. Of note, the project has created about 500 construction and related jobs on the UConn Health Center campus in its first year, including higher-than-required averages for small business participation and 85 percent of all work going to Connecticut-based contractors. The number of construction jobs will rise significantly over the next three years.

“Bioscience Connecticut was an important first step in positioning Connecticut as a leader in the industry,” said Governor Dannel P. Malloy. “This investment, in conjunction with the new Bioscience Innovation Fund and our other efforts, not only creates thousands of good paying jobs with good benefits, but also highlights the commitment we have to growing this sector of our economy. Our vigorous approach to establishing long-term partnerships between our universities, medical centers, and private secto