Biohealth Innovation
Paul Palmieri thinks Maryland's entrepreneurs and innovators need a boost — especially after supporters of a state angel investor tax credit turned out in force to a Senate hearing Wednesday and faced some tough questions.
"We need to, as much as possible, support new entrepreneurs," said Palmieri, the founder and former CEO of Millennial Media who's now venture adviser at Chevy Chase-based New Enterprise Associates Inc. and an angel investor.
A coalition of 13 leading life science and diagnostics organizations today announced the formation of the Allele Frequency Community, a landmark initiative that is creating an extensive, high-quality and ethnically diverse collection of human genomes to address a key challenge in interpreting sequencing data for research and clinical applications. The announcement coincides with the start of the 16th annual Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) scientific meeting in Marco Island, Florida.
Signing a deal can seal your fate. An exit for your investors may mean the end of your dream. What if you decided to forego the exit route, leapfrog to an IPO, and use commercial partnerships to fuel your scale-up into a fully integrated biopharma company? For an example in progress, look at Sucampo — a still-small company with two FDAapproved products, many more in the pipeline, a healthy balance sheet, and a commitment to maintain its long-term independence.
Vaccination may be the most effective public health intervention of all time. This is especially true in developing countries, where many families can’t find or afford health care when they get sick. The prevention offered by vaccines can be life-saving.
Five Maryland life science companies and a medical institution will share a total of $865,000 in grants from the BioMaryland Center. The awards — up to $200,000 per recipient — are part of the center's Biotechnology Development Awards program, which is designed to help accelerate commercialization of medical treatments and technologies.
Smart Asset names Rockville and Bethesda as having the best paying STEM jobs in the nation
Looking for a job in STEM-related fields (Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics)? Look no further than Montgomery County.
A recent report by Smart Asset (smartasset.com) lists Rockville and Bethesda as the top spots in the nation for well-paying STEM jobs. The area (which included Frederick, MD) beat out Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Boston and New York in offering the most financially rewarding opportunities.
In the latest look at stocks ordered by largest market capitalization, Russell 3000 component Qiagen N.V. (Symbol: QGEN) was identified as having a larger market cap than the smaller end of the S&P 500, for example Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. (Symbol: JEC), according to The Online Investor .
The Cambridge Biomedical Campus will become a new UK home for biologics research and protein engineering next year, as pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca opens its new headquarters.
Venture capital investment in U.S. life sciences companies soared 29 percent in 2014 from the year before, reaching $8.6 billion, the highest level since 2007. And there is reason to think 2015 will also be a big year for a sector having its third boom of the last two decades.
Did you see the recent news that the FDA has approved the first direct-to-consumer genetic test in the U.S.? Can you say game-changer? Talk about personalized medicine, what’s more personal than our own genetic blueprint? In a health care era defined by patients taking more personal responsibility for their own health and well being, including the costs, it’s about time that we enabled consumers directly with access to their own health care data and the tools to interpret and act on it. Access to our own genetic data gives new meaning to the buzzword, patient-centered care.
Baltimore health technology startup Protenus Inc. hopes a partnership with health care consulting firm Sage Growth Partners will speed up the company's development and lead to top-notch clients for the fledgling company.
Protenus is developing a cyber security tool that helps hospitals protect patient information by identifying and thwarting insider threats to hospitals' electronic medical records. Since launching in 2014 the company has been focused on fine tuning its technology, which is already in use at Johns Hopkins Hospital. As part of Sage's venture management program, Sage will help Protenus strengthen the business strategy side of the company. Protenus will be based at Sage's office at the Broom Factory in Canton.
There’s a hushed quiet in the waiting room at a midtown Manhattan fertilization clinic called Reproductive Medical Associates as a dozen women flip through magazines, the glossies a welcome distraction from their scheduled treatments and consultations. But just down the hall, in a window-rimmed corner office with views of Central Park, conversation ping-pongs back and forth as Piraye Yurttas Beim, a scientist and entrepreneur, updates the clinic's co-director on her startup's progress.
The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) will be hosting its 2015 national meeting in Denver, Colorado, from April 28 – 30 at the Embassy Suites Denver – Downtown/Convention Center. Each year, the national meeting is highly anticipated by the FLC and the technology transfer (T2) community, serving as the premier event for advancing T2 strategies and providing important connections.
It's a Rubik's Cube.
That's what New Enterprise Associates general partner Harry Weller told me about the monster venture capital firm's philosophy regarding the management of its giant funds. The firm has raised more than $13 billion across 14 funds since its inception in 1977, the last three of which have been between $2.3 billion and $2.6 billion.
Everything about China is big, including its cancer problem. In some wealthier cities, like Beijing, cancer is now believed to be the most frequent killer. Air pollution, high rates of smoking, and notorious “cancer villages” scarred by industrial pollution are increasing death rates around the country. Liver cancer in particular is four times as prevalent as it is in the West, in part because one in 14 people in China carry hepatitis B, which puts them at risk. Of all the people worldwide who die of cancer each year, some 27 percent are Chinese.
Noah is a six-year-old suffering from a disorder without a name. This year, his physicians will begin sending his genetic information across the Internet to see if there’s anyone, anywhere, in the world like him.
Springboard’s Health Innovation Hub is a collaboration platform advancing the growth of digital health and life science companies led by women with significant potential for investment and partnerships.
About the Program
We seek women-led companies with a track record of milestone achievement. We are location- and stage-agnostic but seek solutions within several themes:
Funding and Research Opportunities
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
Notices:
Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.
Deloitte has launched the 2015 Top Technology Talent Competition for a fifth year seeking innovative ideas from college students on how technology can solve a business problem.
The winner of the 2015 Top Technology Talent Competition will win a trip to one of the Deloitte digital studios in the US, in addition to a six-week summer internship in Deloitte Ireland which will enable them to further develop their idea if they so choose.
MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced the signing of a five-year agreement to jointly support research that will help advance drug discovery and manufacturing. The effort will focus on tools and measurements that will be used in the development and production of biopharmaceuticals, which are drugs and treatments derived from biological, rather than chemical, sources.
MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, announced today that it has joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Centers for Accelerated Innovations (NCAI) program as the first biotech/pharmaceutical company corporate partner.
The NCAI program was launched in September 2013 to improve how basic science advances and discoveries are translated into commercially viable treatments for patients. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) will provide $32.5 million in grants to establish three translational research Centers of Innovation in Boston, Cleveland and California, consisting of 14 top-tier research institutions. The program seeks to accelerate the commercialization of university-based technologies, and public private partnerships are critical to the success of the NCAI program.
Johns Hopkins University launched its Fast Forward business accelerator two years ago as a way to support the growth of its own entrepreneurial community, but also to help stimulate the Baltimore economy. It recently opened a second accelerator space on the East Side of Baltimore by its medical campus. It’s designed to equip life science startups with the kind of wet lab space that tends to come at a premium and is often too costly for early stage companies with an uncertain future.
MedImmune has joined the NIH’s Centers for Accelerated Innovations (NCAI) program as its first biopharma corporate partner.
The global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca said it will team up with NCAI awardees and help shape the program’s strategic direction. MedImmune said it may also review prospective NCAI technologies in collaboration with the awardees, and provide feedback regarding their commercial potential and early-stage development.
Epic Games has created a $5 million fund to provide financial grants to developers who are creating games and other innovative projects.
Above: Tim Sweeney Image Credit: Dean Takahashi In doing so, Epic is joining a number of game-platform owners who are courting developers with actual cash to help them create games that run on that platform. From a business view, it pays to invest in their own platforms. In this case, Epic Games is competing with rivals such as Unity for the hearts and minds of developers. And when it comes to creating a game that shows off a platform, cash is now king.
Many cancer patients and their families are happy to never look back once they’re safely on the other side of treatment, in remission or cured. But for David Austin and his wife, Emily, whose 6-year-old son now has a clean bill of health, winning the cancer battle was just the first step on another journey to help other cancer patients, particularly those whose treatment involves central lines — catheters placed directly into a vein in the chest to administer chemotherapy or take blood for frequent tests.
It was easy to get my head around the biotech buzz and the digital health marketing blitz that happened last month at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.
But here’s the question I heard most often (and gave me the most food for thought): “Can I meet more angels?”
The venture boom that funneled billions of dollars into life sciences companies last year included a big surge in first-time deals, according to a fresh analysis of the numbers for 2014. And the boom in venture investing looks set to continue well into 2015, according to the analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, working with data provided by Thomson Reuters to put out the MoneyTree report.
Roche and Qualcomm have entered into a new collaboration to improve remote monitoring and management of chronic disease patients.
The new deal between the Swiss cancer drug firm and the communication technology specialist will see Roche use Qualcomm Life's 2net Platform to capture data from a patient's medical devices, beginning with anticoagulation metres, and transmit it to Roche's cloud-based services.
Pharma Major Lupin Limited (Lupin) and Celon Pharma S.A. (Celon) announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which the companies will jointly develop a fluticasone/salmeterol dry powder inhaler (DPI) product which is a generic version of GlaxoSmithKline's Advair Diskus. Lupin will be responsible for commercialization of the product. Celon will supply the product to Lupin for its commercialization in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and other key markets. GlaxoSmithKline's Advair Diskus® had global sales of over USD 7 billion as of last fiscal.
Moving to advance its leadership in developing vaccines for important public health and biodefense needs, Vaxin Inc. today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Immune Targeting Systems (ITS) Ltd. Vaxin is a clinical stage vaccine development company headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland. ITS develops novel T-cell vaccines at its operations in the United Kingdom and France. The deal is an all-stock transaction and is subject to customary closing conditions. The combined company will be known as Vaxin Inc.
Crystal City-based Disruption Corp. is partnering with Maryland-based Greenspring Associates, a $3 billion fund of funds that backs some venture capital firms that actively invest in the region, including New Enterprise Associates, Revolution Growth and True Ventures.
Ashton Newhall, co-founder of Greenspring Associates, told me he believes Disruption and Greenspring are "philosophically aligned" on the possibilities of using data analytics to make sounder investments in startups and the private market broadly.
At The MidAmerica Healthcare Venture Forum hosted at Chicago’s Fairmont Hotel on March 10 and 11, Healthbox’s Maria Siambekos will host a session about the growing role of healthcare accelerators. Do investors invest in them?
Enterprise Therapeutics Ltd, a drug discovery company focused on new therapeutics for respiratory diseases, today announced that it has secured £1.6m ($2.4m) in initial Series-A financing from Epidarex Capital. The proceeds will fund, in parallel, low molecular weight drug discovery and new target identification programs. The company will be based at the University of Sussex.
In today’s world, the average adult between the ages of 65 and 69 takes almost 14 prescriptions per year, and those aged 80-84 take 18 prescriptions. With the safety information for each medication constantly changing, it can be difficult for consumers to be informed about their medications.
This is a Request for Proposal to lease the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) facility located at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR), on the University System of Maryland's Shady Grove campus at 9600 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, MD 20850.
IBBR is a University System of Maryland joint research enterprise between the University of Maryland College Park, The University of Maryland Baltimore and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. IBBR's Vision and Mission are as follows: