An open science collaboration among academic research institutes, the public sector, and private companies has been in the works since 2006 and now the drug manufacturer AstraZeneca has decided to join the bandwagon. AstraZeneca hopes to harness the open source platform of the DREAM challenge, releasing preclinical data on drugs developed by the company, to discover synergistic cancer drug combinations.

Developed by IBM researcher Gustavo Stolovitzky, PhD, and Columbia University researcher Andrea Califano, PhD, the program has blossomed with multiple cross-collaborative projects across 50 different institutions. About 2 years back, in February 2013, DREAM joined hands with Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit research organization that believes in open sharing of complex biological data, especially big data, to accelerate discovery. DREAM Challenges have touched a variety of healthcare issues, from prostate cancer to odor detection to protein interaction networks.

The Office of Research and Development at the University of Maryland Baltimore currently has 2 openings for the position of Technology Licensing Officer. The Technology Licensing Officers draft and negotiates term sheets and contracts to ensure that University technology and intellectual property (IP) is appropriately commercialized. The incumbents lead negotiations on IP licenses, option agreements and inter-institutional agreements. The incumbents ensure that third parties of University IP meet the contractual obligations to the University and serve as the University's primary point-of-contact with prospective and current licensees. The incumbents will function as part of an interdisciplinary team that assures the University protects, markets and commercializes its technologies and discoveries.  

On a Friday afternoon in June, Staq cofounders James Curran and Mike Subelsky turned over the giant scissors to Greg Cangialosi. Sporting a Staq T-shirt, the tech community leader cut the ribbon on the adtech startup’s new offices.

Located on the fourth floor of a building above 8 Market Place, the ceremony was held one story above a space where DreamIt Health’s Baltimore accelerator program helped six health-focused startups over the winter.

Applications to be a board member of the new Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) are being accepted until 5 p.m. on Friday, October 2.

The board members will be tasked with marketing Montgomery County, attracting businesses and investments to the County, growing entrepreneurship, as well as helping existing businesses grow and succeed.

For years, the Department of Health and Human Services has been taking cues from the private sector's startup culture, encouraging employees to work on independent technology ideas.  

On Thursday, HHS held a demo day for a few teams that joined its summer accelerator program, meant to build out technology ideas that could eventually be implemented in HHS. Here were a few ideas presented at the event:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), in collaboration with over 35 federal partners, today released the updated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015–2020 (Plan).

The final Plan represents the collective strategy of federal offices that use or influence the use of health information technology (health IT). The Plan’s work aims to improve the health IT infrastructure, help transform health care delivery, and improve individual and community health. The Plan sets a blueprint for the federal partners to implement strategies that will support the nation’s continued development of a responsive and secure health IT and information use infrastructure.

The Maryland Board of Regents on Friday approved the University of Maryland University College’s request to create a for-profit business-intelligence company. The new company will offer data-analysis technology and services to universities across the country, and the revenue will go toward the university’s endowment.

The company, called HelioCampus, will provide two main services: the technology to combine and analyze a university’s data, as well as analysts to help administrators understand what the data mean.

Once every three weeks, I spend several days in the heart of Baltimore at the University of Maryland Medical Center for my chemotherapy. On each trip, I pass two magnificent stadiums, a vibrant downtown that includes my own office at the William Donald Schaefer Tower, and thousands of busy workers in a bustling, amazing, beautiful city.

During the riots in April and during my campaign for governor last year, I toured every corner of Baltimore, from Sandtown-Winchester to Fells Point. Everywhere I went, I met people who talked with me about their optimism for a better future for the great city they love.

Apply by Thursday, September 24 for a chance to record your 3-minute investor pitch in a mobile video studio on the Startup Maryland bus when it arrives in Montgomery County on Wednesday, September 30.

At each event, 20 entrepreneurs will pitch their companies and network with the business community. Pitches are seen online by VC, angel investors and voted on by fans around Maryland! Fan favorite finalists will present at the TEDCO Entrepreneur Expo on November 17.

There are a lot of rare diseases that strike a small number of people and some of them are actually novel maladies that have to be identified and studied. The National Institutes Of Health (NIH) has just begun a new program to help doctors work with such patients, combining resources at leading institutions across the country to identify the genetic causes of various conditions. Seven centers, including the NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, are participating in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) for which a patient portal, called UDN Gateway, has been setup to recruit potential study subjects. Additionally, two DNA sequencing centers will be involved in providing genomic information gathered from patient samples.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have developed a low-cost diagnostic tool, slightly larger than a coffee mug, that detects chlamydia within 30 minutes.

Scientists hope the apparatus, unofficially called mobiLab, will improve screening for the common and often symptomless sexually transmitted disease that, if left untreated, can cause permanent damage to a woman's reproductive system and lead to fatal ectopic pregnancies.

QIAGEN N.V. today announced its latest initiative to increase global access to advanced cervical cancer screening technologies for women most in need. It includes the commercial launch of QIAGEN's CE marked careHPV Test and the introduction of a new CE marked self-collection claim for its sampling device, the digene HC2 Collection Device.

The careHPV Test is the first HPV diagnostic specifically designed for regions with limited healthcare infrastructure. As such, the test enables the worldwide implementation and expansion of HPV-based cervical cancer screening, including in areas where women are not screened otherwise. Human papillomavirus or HPV is the primary cause of cervical cancer.

For years, Maya Nieder suffered from severe developmental delays, including difficulty communicating and hearing loss. She endured multiple operations and countless tests before exome sequencing revealed a mutation in her genes that had never been seen before. For Maya and her family, the power of sequencing her DNA found an answer and ended a four year search for the cause of her medical illnesses. Maya was the world’s first crowdfunded gene discovery innovated through Rare Genomics Institute.  Now her parents know the cause, and they can stop searching.

There are a lot of rare diseases that strike a small number of people and some of them are actually novel maladies that have to be identified and studied. The National Institutes Of Health (NIH) has just begun a new program to help doctors work with such patients, combining resources at leading institutions across the country to identify the genetic causes of various conditions. Seven centers, including the NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, are participating in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) for which a patient portal, called UDN Gateway, has been setup to recruit potential study subjects. Additionally, two DNA sequencing centers will be involved in providing genomic information gathered from patient samples.

When: Thursday October 15, 2015 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT

Where: Growlers, 227 E Diamond Ave Gaithersburg, MD 20877

We are excited to be returning to Growlers in Gaithersburg on October 15th for BioBuzz MoCo with our Sponsor The Biomedical Research Institute (BRI). BRI is a nonprofit organization committed to improving global health through a variety of research and service activities. For over 60 years BRI has been an integral component of the federal government's aim to reduce the global health burden posed by infectious diseases in developing nations. BRI has made significant contributions focusing initially on cryobiology, subsequently on malaria, and more recently on schistosomiasis, a deadly parasitic disease with over 200 million people affected and a quarter million deaths a year.

Let’s stop the worrying right now. Baltimore city has its own network of growing innovation clusters.

That doesn’t take anything away from the county or the rest of Maryland or the broader mid-Atlantic region, for that matter. It’s just that it needs to be said that Baltimore’s old urban core is having a revival — and technology, creative and web businesses are playing a real role.

The Frederick County Council has voted to financially support the expansion of MedImmune's Frederick manufacturing plant, a project the company says will bring 300 new jobs.

The Frederick News-Post (http://bit.ly/1Kmya4R ) reports that, in a 6-1 vote, the County Council on Tuesday approved the county's $3.8 million contribution to a $6.8 million conditional loan for MedImmune's expansion. The agreement guarantees the AstraZeneca-owned firm certain tax credits and access to county resources over the next decade.

Multiple drugs to combat bioterrorism threats and other life-threatening bacterial infections will be developed under a public-private partnership agreement between the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) and AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company.

The partnership agreement with AstraZeneca uses Other Transaction Authority granted to the Secretary of HHS under the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006. The agreement becomes the second such strategic alliance ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) has forged with a private company to develop a portfolio of drug candidates with dual uses in treating illnesses caused by bioterrorism agents and antibiotic-resistant infections.

Inovalon INOV, +4.11% a leading technology company providing advanced, cloud-based data analytics and data-driven intervention platforms to the healthcare industry, today announced it will partner with The Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business Collaborative on research efforts that will focus on how digital solutions can be more effectively deployed to address outcomes such as patient safety, healthcare quality, efficiency in healthcare delivery and a reduction in health disparities.

Driving BioMedical Innovation and Advancing Regulatory Science through Public-Private Partnerships with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Featuring Remarks from U.S. FDA Acting Commissioner Stephen Ostroff, M.D. and other distinguished speakers and panelists

October 26 - 27, 2015
United Therapeutics Headquarters
1110 Spring Street
Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

The Johns Hopkins University's new personal protective suit for frontline health care workers in Ebola outbreaks was honored Monday as one of 10 finalists in the Social Good category of Fast Company's 2015 Innovation by Design Awards.

The suit, intended for use in future Ebola outbreaks like the 2014 epidemic that killed thousands in West Africa, has elements to keep the wearer more comfortable than existing suits, reduce the risk of coming in contact with the virus and protect against other infectious diseases.

Plans to expand MedImmune’s Frederick manufacturing plant will move forward with financial support from Frederick County after the County Council approved an agreement with tax credits and other economic incentives for the biotechnology firm Tuesday night.

In a 6-1 vote, the Frederick County Council approved the county’s $3.8 million contribution to a $6.8 million conditional loan for MedImmune’s expansion and an agreement guaranteeing the AstraZeneca-owned firm certain tax credits and access to specific county resources over the next decade.

On Tuesday, Rare Genomics Institute (RG), announced that it is launching ten separate crowdfunding campaigns to help patients with rare diseases pinpoint the causes of their illnesses. All amounts raised will go towards exome sequencing, which is a method of partial genome sequencing to find the genetic causes of diseases.

This effort is part of Amplify Hope, initiated by RG to determine the most effective crowdfunding programs and measure their effect on scientific education. Amplify Hope is a new RG study funded by the John Templeton Foundation that provides crowdfunding training to rare disease families and tracks the overall reach and scientific impact to help rare disease patients.

Google Capital has invested $32.5 million in Oscar, a health insurance startup, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The new funding values Oscar, which had in April raised $145 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, at $1.75 billion.

Are you an entrepreneur with or know someone who is? Apply today for the opportunity to make your pitch!

Application deadline September 21.

Apply for a chance to record your 3-minute investor pitch in a mobile video studio on the Startup Maryland bus Montgomery County on September 30.

At each event, 20 entrepreneurs will pitch their companies and network with the business community. Pitches are seen online by VC, angel investors and voted on by fans around Maryland! Fan favorite finalists will present at the TEDCO Entrepreneur Expo on November 17.

The Product Development and Management Association (PDMA), the premier global advocate for product development and management professionals, announced today that it has awarded the 2015 Outstanding Corporate Innovator (OCI) Award to BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) BDX, +0.68%

BD's focus on innovation has provided a framework to integrate the business, make acquisitions and coordinate actions vertically, from the top through operating levels of the company.

Join more than 400 of the region’s business and government leaders for the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore’s Annual Meeting, November 4, 2015 at the Hilton Baltimore.

While Maryland is known for its history and culture, food and beautiful landscape, this year’s annual meeting will celebrate one of the region’s greatest assets – the people – as they tell their stories.  The program will recognize the region’s growing companies and those who make our community a world-class market in which to live, work, learn and invest.

Harpoon Medical, a medical device company focused on minimally-invasive, beating-heart, mitral valve repair, announced today that ten patients with severe degenerative mitral valve disease are now enrolled in its ongoing Early Feasibility Study at two clinical study sites in Europe. The company will showcase the results of the Early Feasibility Study, including a 100 % procedural success rate, over 850 total implant days and echocardiographic data on the first two patients with trace MR during their six-month follow up visit, at the upcoming 2015 Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) Conference in San Francisco, CA on October 12, 2015.

Looks like San Diego life sciences and tech investment firm Avalon Ventures is in the midst of compiling its eleventh fund, looking to raise $300 million.

Fund XI, according to an SEC filing, has raised $103.5 million of the proposed $300 million from 26 investors.

It can be considered an opportunity on wheels. Startup Maryland has kicked off its statewide tour to hear Marylanders pitch their best business ideas on Monday.   

The tour made its first stop in Pocomoke City and invited entrepreneurs to hop in a bus to share their ideas for a chance to expand.

The MACH37™ Cyber Accelerator announced today that it has selected seven cybersecurity startups to participate in the Fall 2015 (F-15) three-month mentorship-driven startup program. With this announcement, MACH37™ will have launched 29 cyber companies in the past two years. The top candidates were selected as a result of a highly competitive selection process from the largest application pool to date.

As a focused business accelerator, MACH37™ brings together domain experts, successful cybersecurity entrepreneurs, and investors familiar to the security market to create a platform for success for innovators and their startups. The MACH37™ program consists of an intense 90-day program in which the selected startups are mentored in all aspects of creating a sustainable and successful business.

We told you in our deep dive into the Occupational Employment Statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics that since 2009, human resources jobs scored some pretty hefty pay raises. That is true nationwide.

And now, as we show you in the accompanying slideshow, those jobs are growing at a rapid pace, according to the data from 2009 to 2014.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have found molecular evidence of how a biochemical process controls the lengths of protective chromosome tips, a potentially significant step in ultimately understanding cancer growth and aging.

In a paper recently published as the cover story in the online journal eLife, biologist David C. Zappulla and graduate student Evan P. Hass show how in baker’s yeast cells, two proteins work together to usher a key enzyme to the chromosome tip, the telomere, to restore its length, which diminishes with each round of cell division.

IBM and Medtronic are part of a group that have won a grant from the Israeli government to open a digital medicine incubator, according to a statement from the Office of the Chief Scientist with the Israeli Ministry of Economy. It’s part of a long-running economic stimulus program to improve investment in Israeli technology startups and create jobs.

The statement was translated from Hebrew with Google Translate.