The search for a cure for Covid-19 is lining the pockets of some landlords.

While the pandemic wreaks financial havoc on hotels and retailers, landlords who cater to biotech and pharmaceutical tenants are seeing increased demand as companies research treatments for the coronavirus, according to the Wall Street Journal. The work of those tenants, too, is more difficult to replicate in a work-from-home setup than the typical office employee.

The finalists are sourced from nominations and editorial coverage, and selected by the DC Inno team.

Healthcare stakeholders can no longer lag on digital transformation, and tapping into innovation can sate convenience-hungry consumers and tackle some massive challenges compressing their bottom lines.

Personalization and convenience have become table stakes in nearly every industry, and consumers are extending demands for these digital-powered experiences to healthcare — US consumers have expressed a willingness to jump ship to care services that can provide them with better digital experiences. 

Image: Business Insider Intelligence

The theme of the 25th CBA Annual (Virtual) Conference is "Innovations amid Crisis: A Productive Year of Biopharma Industry". We will invite biopharmaceutical industry leaders, regulatory and scientific experts from US, China, and Canada to discuss recent research advances on COVID-19, and new trends in biopharma industry. The detailed conference program will be available at www.cba-usa.org shortly.

Time:

Day 1: 8 am – 11 am (EST), August 29th, 2020 (Saturday)

Day 2: 8 am – 11 am (EST), August 30th, 2020 (Sunday)

Registration link: https://bit.ly/2WfpRrR

As we embark on our third fund at LionBird, we believe that proactively thinking deeply about what will drive the next decade of healthcare will help us both filter through the noise of digital health, and quickly identify the right investment opportunities. We believe that 2020 represents an unprecedented inflection point in digital health (due to both the COVID-19 global pandemic, as well as many other factors) and we aim to define the trends for the coming decade and their implications for our investment strategy.

NEW YORK — The US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on Monday approved a roughly $5.5 billion increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health in fiscal 2021, with budget increases for every institute and center.

The committee recommended a total of $46.96 billion in NIH funding for FY 2021, representing a nearly 13 percent increase over its current $41.68 billion budget. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump called for trimming the NIH's FY 2021 budget to $38.37 billion.

Scientists have responded to COVID-19 with unprecedented speed. Just months after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, clinical trials are already underway for nearly 200 vaccines and therapies.  

But while the pace of COVID-19 innovation may be extraordinary, the research infrastructure allowing this remarkable work is hardly new. In fact, it was cemented into place nearly two generations ago when Congress passed the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980.

The raise is one of the biggest in the Triangle since last year.

Fourteen businesses in New Jersey’s technology, life sciences, and clean energy sectors received a combined $12.3 million from 50 investments approved through the state’s Angel Investor Tax Credit Program during the first half of 2020, the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) announced yesterday. Two of the approved companies benefited from legislation signed by Gov. Phil Murphy last year expanding the program.

BHI's own Rich Bendis will Moderate.

Join us for a lively discussion between our region’s top innovators and connectors to hear about their efforts to help grow the innovation ecosystem and the pipeline of successful startups across the BioHealth Capital Region.

On this webinar, you will learn how you can take advantage of the many resources available throughout the region that will help your company go to market AND increase the opportunity to find success in the process.

Fueling an Innovation Ecosystem for Startups to Thrive

Click here for more information and to register.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. government has awarded Novavax Inc $1.6 billion to cover testing and manufacturing of a potential vaccine for the novel coronavirus in the United States, with the aim of delivering 100 million doses by January.

The award announced by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the biggest yet from "Operation Warp Speed," the White House initiative aimed at accelerating access to vaccines and treatments to fight COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus.

NEW YORK and GAITHERSBURG, Md. and NEW ORLEANS and LAFAYETTE, La., July 08, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Mount Sinai Health System, Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE: EBS), and ImmunoTek Bio Centers today announced that they will collaborate to develop, manufacture, and conduct clinical trials to evaluate Emergent’s COVID-19 hyperimmune globulin product, COVID-HIG, including a post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) study on health care providers at high risk of COVID-19 infection and other high-risk populations, with $34.6 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Defense (JPEO-CBRND).

ROCKVILLE, Md., July 8, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- REGENXBIO Inc. (Nasdaq: RGNX), a leading clinical-stage biotechnology company seeking to improve lives through the curative potential of gene therapy based on its proprietary NAV® Technology Platform, today announced that it has completed dosing of three patients in Cohort 2 of the Company's Phase I/II study of RGX-121 for the treatment of Mucopolysaccharidosis Type II (MPS II) and reported encouraging data under a single-patient investigator-initiated Investigational New Drug (IND) application for RGX-111 for the treatment of Mucopolysaccharidosis Type I (MPS I) conducted at CHOC Children's.

VIENNA, AUSTRIA and GAITHERSBURG, MD, July 8, 2020 APEIRON Biologics AG (“APEIRON”), a private biotechnology company specializing in the discovery, development and commercialization of novel immunotherapies for cancer and respiratory diseases, and MaxCyte, Inc., a global cell-based therapies and life sciences company, today announces the signing of a clinical and commercial licensing agreement.

APEIRON Biologics will obtain non-exclusive clinical and commercial rights to use MaxCyte’s Flow Electroporation® technology and ExPERT™ platform for the advancement of APN401, a siRNA-based cell therapy currently in clinical development for various solid tumors. In return, MaxCyte will receive undisclosed development and approval milestones and sales-based payments in addition to other licensing fees.

ROCKVILLE, Md., July 13, 2020 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- ROCKVILLE, Md., July 13, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ExeGi Pharma LLC, a U.S.-based company focused on developing and commercializing products targeting the human microbiome, including live biotherapeutic products (LBPs), announced today the results of a 70-patient clinical trial evaluating a new biologic drug candidate in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The study was conducted in a hospital setting in Rome and published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Medicine. It compared outcomes of patients who received standard drug treatments alone or standard treatments combined with an oral bacteriotherapy.

PASADENA, Calif., July 6, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. ("Alexandria" or the "Company") (NYSE: ARE) today announced the pricing of its upsized public offering of 6,000,000 shares of the Company's common stock at a price of $160.50 per share in connection with the forward sale agreements  escribed below. The Company also granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 900,000 additional shares. The offering is expected to close on or about July 9, 2020, subject to customary closing conditions.

While COVID-19 has thrown the world into an uproar, there’s been a slim silver lining for Maryland. Thanks to a robust group of biohealth and life science organizations, Montgomery County has a unique opportunity to help people nationwide — and worldwide — in the fight against the disease.

As a resident, you may not realize just how much Montgomery County does to help in biohealth across the country.

To start, there is the National Institutes of Health, which hardly needs an introduction, what with its many contributions to medicine throughout the world for more than a century. Just in April, the NIH launched the Accelerating COVID-19 Therapeutic Interventions and Vaccines partnership to coordinate — and hopefully accelerate — research on a vaccine.

GSK and Medicago today announced a collaboration to develop and evaluate a COVID-19 candidate vaccine combining Medicago’s recombinant Coronavirus Virus-Like Particles (CoVLP) with GSK’s pandemic adjuvant system. CoVLPs mimic the structure of the virus responsible for COVID-19 disease, allowing them to be recognised by the immune system. Use of an adjuvant can be of particular importance in a pandemic situation as it may boost the immune response and reduce the amount of antigen required per dose, allowing more vaccine doses to be produced and therefore contributing to protect more people.

BALTIMORE, July 10, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Johns Hopkins University filed suit in federal court Friday in an effort to stop a Trump administration rule change that would severely impact nearly 5,000 international students at the university. The decision to abruptly rescind accommodations for online learning during the COVID pandemic is unlawful and fails to consider the many complexities of meeting our educational mission while also protecting the health of our community.

The suit was filed in the Federal District Court for Washington, D.C., which has significant expertise in handling challenges against unlawful action by the federal government, and it joins other litigation related to the new rule filed by Harvard, MIT and the University of California. Johns Hopkins' plans for a hybrid, online/in-person model for some of its divisions presents the broadest array of issues for the courts to consider.

(CNN) - If the year 2020 is good for anything, it's the lesson that during a crisis, anyone who builds a better mousetrap will find the world beating a path to his door.

A humble team at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland reminded the world of late poet Ralph Waldo Emerson's phrase when they created a real time tracking map of coronavirus cases and deaths.

And the world came to their door. They report that the site, plus downloads of its data, hosts three to five billion interactions daily. By their measurement, interactions include uses of the public dashboard and requests from a separate website for the underlying data used by news outlets and others who design their own maps and graphics.

Image: Civil engineering professor Lauren Gardner, of the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, is the lead behind the dashboard project.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and several senior House lawmakers recently announced a plan to impose price controls and seize patents on any COVID-19 vaccines and treatments in development. They vowed to strike down any emergency stimulus packages excluding such measures.

Those efforts aren’t just misguided — they pose a threat to the health of Americans. If lawmakers succeed, they would dismantle the innovation ecosystem that has enabled U.S. pharmaceutical firms to move with remarkable speed to develop COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.

Asafe, effective vaccine is the ultimate tool needed to end the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Biomedical researchers are making progress every day towards such a vaccine, whether it’s devising innovative technologies or figuring out ways to speed human testing. In fact, just this week, NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) established a new clinical trials network that will enroll tens of thousands of volunteers in large-scale clinical trials testing a variety of investigational COVID-19 vaccines.

Image: DR. FRANCIS COLLINS Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - https://www.govexec.com

Hopkins has the highest percentage of international students of any Maryland college.

Providence Ventures was founded in 2014 and manages $300 million of venture capital in two funds.

The company is affiliated with Providence, a 51-hospital health system that has more than 800 clinics in five states. The fund makes direct investments in healthcare companies with the goal of improving outcomes and convenience while lowering costs.

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ten finalists have been named in the prestigious annual "Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!" competition presented by the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI). Representing innovations in cardiovascular, orthopaedic and spine, and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) medical devices, finalists were selected from a field of 30 semi-finalists who competed in March 2020.  The ten innovators now have access to a new pediatric accelerator program and will compete for FDA-funded grants of up to $50,000 each in the final virtual pitch event on Oct. 7 as part of the 8th Annual Symposium on Pediatric Device Innovation, co-located with the MedTech Conference, powered by AdvaMed.

BHI's own Rich Bendis will Moderate.

Join us for a lively discussion between our region’s top innovators and connectors to hear about their efforts to help grow the innovation ecosystem and the pipeline of successful startups across the BioHealth Capital Region.

On this webinar, you will learn how you can take advantage of the many resources available throughout the region that will help your company go to market AND increase the opportunity to find success in the process.

Fueling an Innovation Ecosystem for Startups to Thrive

Click here for more information and to register.

Gentian Diagnostics AS is pleased to announce that the Research Council of Norway (Norges Forskningsråd) has awarded Gentian up to NOK 8.0 million of funding to support the development of a high-throughput COVID-19 antibody test. Gentian has in cooperation with Professor Ørjan Olsvik and Dr. Vegard Skogen at the University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway performed explorative test work that supports an idea of developing a COVID-19 antibody test based on Gentian’s proprietary technology. The assay, if successfully developed, will be designed for use on clinical analysers already available in major laboratories around the world.

Inner Harbor-based biotech company PathSensors will be acquired by global security screening and threat detection company Smiths Detection, the companies announced this week.

With the deal, PathSensors will become part of a London-based company with 2,200 employees and a U.S. headquarters in Edgewood.

Image: PathSensors is headquartered at Columbus Center. (Photo by Wikimedia Commons user Smash the Iron Cage, used under Creative Commons license)

GAITHERSBURG, Md., July 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) today announced a five-year manufacturing services agreement with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, for large-scale drug substance manufacturing for Johnson & Johnson’s investigational SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, Ad26.COV2-S, recombinant based on the AdVac® technology. Emergent will provide contract development and manufacturing (CDMO) services to produce drug substance at large scale over five years, valued at approximately $480 million for the first two years.

In a recent conversation someone shared the quote “You can’t throw a stone in the BioHealth Capital Region and not hit somebody who worked at MedImmune”. This statement emphasizes how important the company was in seeding the growth of the biotech industry in Maryland. Founded by Wayne T. Hockmeyer in 1988 as Molecular Vaccines, Inc., MedImmune became one of the cornerstone Biotech companies in what eventually was named the BioHealth Capital Region.

With its COVID-19 vaccine hopeful cycling through clinical trials, shot maker Novavax is working to flesh out its executive team to help lead the company to the commercial stage. But you can't get regulatory approval without a sturdy manufacturing operation—and now Novavax has hired an exec to get that operation in order.

Novavax tapped Ben Machielse as its executive vice president of chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) as the vaccine maker works to take its COVID-19 and four-strain flu hopefuls across the finish line, the company said Monday.

Image: Novavax's newest manufacturing head will join newly hired Chief Medical Officer Filip Dubovsky. (Novavax) 

VENLO, The Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--QIAGEN N.V. (NYSE: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) announced that its shareholders today approved all agenda items at the Company’s Annual General Meeting related to the proposed voluntary public takeover offer for the acquisition of all ordinary shares in QIAGEN by Quebec B.V., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (NYSE: TMO) for EUR 39 per share in cash (the “Offer”).

BALTIMORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Protaryx™ Medical, a company committed to reimagining access to the left atrium for transcatheter cardiac procedures, today announced that it has raised $8.3 million in funding to develop the company’s first-in-class device for precision transseptal access to the left atrium during structural heart and catheter ablation procedures. The company’s funding includes non-dilutive grants and a seed round totaling $3.2 million and the recently closed $5.1M Series A financing led by Ajax Health, with participation from University of Maryland (UM) Ventures, a returning investor.

ROCKVILLE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc., (“ITI”), a privately-held clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering the study of nucleic acid immunotherapy platforms and Ichor Medical Systems (“Ichor”), a privately held biotech company based in San Diego, CA, announced today that the companies have entered into a license agreement to support the development of ITI’s investigational plasmid DNA vaccine therapy, ITI-1001.

ITI will leverage Ichor’s TriGrid® Electroporation technology to increase cellular uptake of ITI-1001 when administered to patients with newly diagnosed Glioblastoma, or GBM. DNA vaccines delivered by conventional injection have experienced challenges to delivery efficiency, resulting in suboptimal immune responses in clinical trials. Ichor’s TriGrid technology utilizes the application of electrical fields in a target tissue to increase intracellular nucleic acid uptake in the local area, resulting in enhanced gene expression.

RADNOR, Pa., June 30, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Avantor, Inc. (NYSE: AVTR), a leading global provider of mission-critical products and services to customers in the life sciences, advanced technologies and applied materials industries, today announced the expansion of the company's Bridgewater, N.J. (USA) innovation center. Located close to biotech companies, the site now has nearly double the laboratory and support space.

Bioprocessing efficiency that doesn't compromise quality continues to be a top priority for the biopharma industry. At the same time, it's critical to meet increasingly stringent global regulatory standards.