Thursday, December 10, 2015 | 6:30pm-8:30pm, Johns Hopkins East, 1101 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 | 3rd Floor Conference 

Learn how to secure National Institutes of Health SBIR/STTRs for your high-tech bio-innovation.

Dr. Doswell lead JUICE Money wins for high-tech minority companies and HBCUs such as:

• 3 NIH SBIR/STTR grant awards in 2015.
• 1 DOD RIF grant award in 2015.
• 1 CASIS grant award for testing innovation onboard the International Space Station in 2015.
• 1 Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) Phase II award for Morgan State University in 2015.
• 1 Maryland Space Grant Consortium Award for Morgan State University in 2015.
• Secured Maryland TEDO awards.
• Secured a Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) award
• Secured NSF STTR Phase I/II awards.
• Helped fund the Robotics Technician Program at Baltimore City Community College.

Virginia Beach has long been an expert at luring visitors with its sun and sand.

But now, there’s a serious effort under way to attract men and women who will spend the majority of their days indoors.

Earlier this month, the Virginia Beach Department of Economic Development launched VABeachBio (vabeachbio.com), an initiative to attract biomedical and life science businesses to the city.

A collaboration between the University of Cambridge and MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, has led researchers to identify a potentially significant new application for a well-known human enzyme, which may have implications for treating respiratory diseases such as asthma.

Enzymes are biological catalysts – molecules that speed up chemical reactions within living materials. Many enzymes are already well characterized and their functions fairly well understood. For example, the enzyme known as MMP8 is present in the connective tissue of most mammals, where it breaks the chemical bonds found in collagen.

When Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz founded their namesake venture firm in 2009, they laid out a clear-but-narrow vision for investing in a new wave of Web-based innovation.

Andreessen, in particular, espoused a net-centric view that was absolute. “No clean tech, no rocket ships, no electric cars. No China or India,” he told Fortune magazine at the time. Biotech likewise was out of the question. In the six years since then, Andreessen Horowitz has grown into a $4 billion VC, and established itself as a leading tech investor. Andreessen’s observation that “software is eating the world” has become an industry axiom, as Web-based services have invaded and taken over financial services, education, and a host of other sectors.

How would you engineer a baby? I mean really, actually do it.

Last April, Chinese researchers reported that they had tried genetically editing human embryos for the first time to correct a disease gene. Out of more than 80 embryos, however, only a handful came out correctly. In the rest, the gene didn’t get fixed properly, or they ended up with unintended alterations to their DNA (see “Chinese Team Reports Gene-Editing Human Embryos”).

Construction is complete on a new 700-spot parking garage at Universities at Shady Grove, clearing the way to begin moving dirt on a planned $162 million biomedical sciences building on its Rockville campus.

Work will start on that facility in June, said Stewart Edelstein, associate vice chancellor of the University System of Maryland, the state's public university network that includes USG. The full project, which included the $20 million garage and a new entrance onto campus, will be completed by fall 2018, said Edelstein, who is also USG's executive director.

With the cost to sequence a human genome dropping by the day and medical records finally going digital, public health experts are excited for a new era of personalized, or "precision," medicine—a big data future in which there is no "average" patient, only individual patients with unique genes, environments, and lifestyles. As a measure of this excitement, this year, President Obama launched a $215 million initiative that will create a health database from 1 million volunteers that is unprecedented in detail. Breakthroughs in prevention, understanding, and treatment of disease are hoped.

Following the Maryland Venture Fund’s transition under TEDCO’s purview last month, there’s now a new director of the quasi-public, early-stage funding resource.

Andy Jones is now the Managing Director of the Venture Fund, tasked with “defining MVF’s strategy and leading team members,” according to a news release. TEDCO chief Rob Rosenbaum made the announcement at last week’s Entrepreneur Expo event, and the organization made the formal announcement Tuesday.

The Food and Drug Administration late Monday broadened the use of an already available anthrax drug from Emergent Biosolutions Inc. EBS, -0.57% to a larger treatment population. The agency approved Emergent's BioThrax for use in people 18 to 65 years old who have had suspected or confirmed exposure to anthrax. Previously, the indication for the drug was for people who were at a high risk of exposure to the bacteria. Emergent Biosolutions shares rose 1% to $38.10 after hours.

Real estate giant Alexandria Real Estate Equities has unveiled sweeping plans to transform a 56-acre Research Triangle Park site into a campus for life science and agricultural technology companies.

Plans for the campus call for more than 1 million square feet of space.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ vision to turn a mostly undeveloped property in Research Triangle Park into its latest life science cluster is moving forward with a first phase intended to boost offerings for early-stage startups.

Pasadena, CA-based Alexandria (NYSE: ARE), which operates science and technology campuses across the country, announced the RTP plans today. Alexandria will start by refurbishing an existing building and laying the groundwork for development expected to reach 1 million square feet of space. Those RTP plans put the property shy of similar Alexandria science campuses in San Francisco; Cambridge, MA, and New York. But Alexandria CEO Joel Marcus says each site reflects its market.

Hot biotech startups are attracting increased venture funding, and venture investors are ensuring a slot in the financing of these types of companies by starting the company themselves, Brian Gormley reports for Dow Jones VentureWire. The latest venture firm to do so is SR One, the venture arm of GlaxoSmithKline PLC.GSK.LN +1.16% The group, which invests in medical technologies, has added an entrepreneur in residence to its Cambridge, Mass., offices and has seeded its first startup through the effort, a company formed to develop drugs for cancer and inflammatory diseases. The firm’s launch of its own company comes after 30 years of funding existing companies.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015 | 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
The Observation Gallery at Baltimore Washington
International Thurgood Marshall Airport

Meet with over 30 companies and learn about their technology and relationship to Maryland.

Keynote address by Mike Gill, Secretary, Maryland Department of Commerce

Economic Development in Maryland...the Next Chapter
New Addition! Immediately after the Showcase join OurCrowd for an update on The Startup Nation: Israel’s Vibrant Economy.

emocha Mobile Health received a Small Business Innovation Research grant to further development of its mobile app that provides video-based healthcare observations in some cases where visits were previously required.

The NIH grant, which is for about $200,000 over two years, will allow the Johns Hopkins-based startup to gather data on its miDOT app from Tuberculosis patients in four health departments around the state, said cofounder Morad Elmi. The system is already in use at Baltimore’s health department.

Most companies make a conscious and deliberate decision to embrace digitization and the information revolution. Yet the role of big data in medicine seems almost to compel organizations to become involved. In this interview, Dr. Eric Schadt, the founding director of the Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at New York’s Mount Sinai Health System, tells McKinsey’s Sastry Chilukuri how data-driven approaches to research can help patients, in what ways technology has the potential to transform medicine and the healthcare system, and how the Icahn Institute is building its talent base. An edited transcript of Schadt’s remarks follows.

This week, Andreessen Horowitz said it’s launching a fund dedicated to investments in bioinformatics and “beyond the pill” technology.  The venture capital firm had already gotten its feet wet with investments in these areas, but a dedicated fund is something new and indicates an interest in ramping up its strategy. With its fund, the firm could make a big impact. Here are some insights on some challenges and opportunities in these areas and some companies the firm should consider.

First of all, it’s worth noting some of the health and life science IT companies that Andreessen Horowitz have invested in so far. It’s only a handful to date:

The new president and chief executive officer of Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology has roots in high flight and high finance and every intention to bring skills from both sectors to his new job. Ed Albrigo, appointed Nov. 2 by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe to succeed Peter Jobse, who has returned to the private sector after 13 years with the nonprofit CIT, says his goals are lofty — maybe seeding Virginia companies to remotely mine for minerals on the moon and bring them back for use in fusion energy.

Pfizer has clinched a blockbuster merger with a fellow drug maker, one worth more than $150 billion, that can best be described in superlatives.

When it is announced — most likely on Monday, people briefed on the matter said — the deal to buy Allergan, the maker of Botox, would be one of the biggest ever takeovers in the health care industry. And it would be the largest acquisition yet in a banner year for mergers.

PHARMACEUTICAL majors AstraZeneca and Sanofi have agreed to swap 210,000 compounds from their proprietary libraries as part of efforts to encourage open innovation in drug development. No money will change hands between the two companies, in what is a relatively new collaborative approach. Both companies will be able to increase the diversity of their compound libraries. AstraZeneca and Sanofi have chosen compounds from each others’ libraries which plug gaps in their own, and will share chemical structures and the procedures to make them.

Dr. Robert L. Caret was inaugurated as chancellor of the University System (USM) of Maryland on November 19, 2015 at the Christopher Columbus Center in Baltimore, Md. The event featured remarks by several Maryland dignitaries and members of the USM community; musical performances by current USM students; as well as the following video tribute.

Imagine you’re back in high school and you’re sent on a field trip to a local pharmaceutical company. You spend the day talking to scientists, touring the labs and ... making ice cream?

That’s what your day would look like if you showed up at Emergent BioSolutions Inc. as part of MdBio Foundation’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education opportunities.

This week, PricewaterhouseCoopers came out with a report on remaking primary care for what the consulting form called “the New Health Economy.” We would have covered it straight up on Wednesday, but a certain provider-focused health IT reporter at MedCity News was busy at the American Medical Informatics Association conference.

Since it’s not breaking news anymore, we have to take a different angle. A major component of the future of primary care, according to PwC, will be digital health.

On November 4 more than 400 regional business and government leaders joined us for our Annual Meeting to celebrate the people and companies that make this region great. Attendees heard from 20 individuals who share their stories about their connection to Baltimore.

Virtual reality is here, and brands of all stripes are embracing the tech. The New York Times and Google newly partnered to send more than 1 million cardboard VR viewers to Times subscribers at the beginning of November so they could watch the paper’s first VR documentaries on a smartphone. Magic Leap published video of its augmented reality system online in October, causing more buzz around VR’s potential. Even Tommy Hilfiger now offers VR sets to its in-store customers so they can watch its recent New York Fashion Week show.

OpGen, Inc. (NASDAQ:OPGN) and the District of Columbia Hospital Association (DCHA) today announced that Washington DC’s public health departments will oversee a comprehensive citywide evaluation, HARP-DC (Healthcare facility Antibiotic Resistance Prevalence-District of Columbia), to gauge the prevalence of the multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) in healthcare facilities throughout the District of Columbia. The DC Department of Health (DOH)-led study is being funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) Funding program for tracking healthcare-associated infections (HAI). The Department, in turn, has contracted OpGen to perform related laboratory services. The DC Department of Forensic Sciences-Public Health Laboratory (DFS-PHL) is also participating in the study by providing logistical support and by sequencing and banking isolates recovered from cultures.

In 2016, The University System of Maryland will break ground on a new Biomedical Science and Engineering Education Facility at the Universities at Shady Grove. The facility has been designed to meet the specific economic needs of this region, while expanding degree opportunities in healthcare, biosciences, engineering and computational sciences and STEM education. This facility will provide state-of-the-art teaching laboratories, active learning classrooms, clinical training facilities, academic offices, and an expanded level of student services necessary to support program and enrollment growth.

Smartphones are getting smarter thanks to Agewell Biometrics and their Equilibrium app! More specifically, Equilibrium is a "mobile software balance assessment application that allows healthcare professionals to quickly evaluate postural stability". In turn, this can help detect signs of musculoskeletal, neurological and vestibular dysfunction in the elderly. So, in short, AgeWell Biometrics is improving senior care and quality of life by providing objective, precise and predictive fall risk assessment.

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Thu, Dec 3, 2015 4:30 PM - 8:00 PM MedImmune, Gaithersburg, MD

It is an unprecedented time in science and healthcare filled with equal parts cavernous challenge and unrivaled opportunity. Competitive job markets, extended trainee timelines and increasing demand for endurance coupled with uncertain career paths to pose serious questions to early, mid and late career professionals in our fields. Nowhere is this more apparent than here at the heart of our nation’s capital – a microcosm representing nearly every sector of science, medicine and healthcare along with the institutions that govern them.

Join us for an impactful evening as four extraordinary women leaders from across our community come together to discuss the career and life lessons that guide them as they define success and shape the future of science, medicine and healthcare today.

Accelerators have been nurturing young companies since startups became as hip as garage bands. (This was 2005ish… about the same time I was in my garage tuning my guitar.) Founders consume the wisdom of elders in a sleepless boot camp designed to spin up incredible value quickly. For the startup, the ticket to ride is somewhere around 6 percent of their seedling company in exchange for $20K and the opportunity to immerse themselves in the three-month program, usually concluding with a rockstar-like demo day event.

The University of Maryland was honored at the 2015 Innovation & Economic Prosperity (IEP) University Awards by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU).  UMD took home the top honor, the Connections Award, which recognizes an institution working to build connections between innovation and entrepreneurship, talent development, and social, community and cultural development. The award winners were announced today at APLU’s annual meeting in Indianapolis. 

UMD won the Connections Award in part for its partnership with Northrop Grumman to create the Advanced Cybersecurity Experiences for Students (ACES), a program which helps to supply trained workers to serve the cyber community. In addition, UMD announced earlier this year its plans for Greater College Park, an initiative which ties together many efforts supporting the university’s goal of becoming a premier college town.  It focuses on dynamic academic spaces, a vibrant downtown community and a public-private research hub that brings together businesses and the university’s academic community. 

Join Us on Dec 2nd for BioBuzz MoCo

We are excited to be returning to Growlers in Gaithersburg on December 2nd for BioBuzz MoCo

BioBuzz is an ongoing monthly networking group of professionals from all sectors of the Bioscience industry. Each month we host a FREE event for like-minded people to come to gether and network, reconnect with past coworkers, build stonger relationships and share stimulating conversations in a welcoming atmosphere.

ONLY TWO BRAND NEW LABORATORY/OFFICE SUITES AVAILABLE 3,596 SF AND 3,796 SF

• Lab casework with epoxy tops, shelving, and sinks
• Fume hood(s)
• Open/closed office space, kitchen, conference room, etc.
• Common autoclave and glasswash
• Newly renovated lobby and restrooms
• Complimentary access to the Alexandria 'FitLab' fitness center

GSK is quietly building a new treatment pipeline, in parallel to its established work on molecular medicines, that hopes to use peoples’ nerves to treat disease. If successful, it could not only revolutionize its product offering, but change the very way we think of medicine.

“There are fewer players looking at it,” said Kris Famm, who leads the dedicated R&D unit at GSK. “We’ve gone out on a limb to capture what we believe is a game-changing therapeutic opportunity.”

Everyone loves the backup quarterback because they’ve never played a down. But once those backups play, the sports analogy goes, and they are almost always worse than the starter.

Are digital health VCs the backup quarterbacks of healthcare investing? Rightfully, there’s a lot of excitement about corporate venture’s increasing prominence in healthcare. But don’t get overexcited.

The pursuit of truth requires both free speech and racial justice

Nearly two centuries after his birth as a slave in Maryland, the great orator and abolitionist Frederick Douglass has come home. His statue, just installed at the University of Maryland, now towers over a square inscribed with his soaring words on racial justice and the transformative power of education.