Roche has just announced the acquisition of the U.S. biotech company InterMune for $8.3 billion. The driver for Roche was to gain access to InterMune’s drug, pirfenidone (trade name, Esbriet), which is already approved in Canada and Europe for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). IPF is a deadly lung-scarring disease which affects 50,000 – 70,000 people in the U.S. and 80,000 to 110,000 in Europe. While still under review by U.S. regulatory authorities, Roche’s acquisition signals its belief that pirfenidone will also gain U.S. approval. How big a product can pirfenidone be? Consensus forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters Pharma peg annual sales at greater than $1 billion in 2019 – a nice addition to Roche’s stable of pulmonary compounds including Xolair (asthma) and Pulmozyme (cystic fibrosis).

Roche Holding AG said Sunday it would pay $8.3 billion for a California biotech firm that has yet to turn a profit on a new drug to treat a deadly lung disease—the latest gamble by a pharmaceutical giant to buy its way into a lucrative corner of the industry.

The takeover would allow the Swiss company to expand its presence in the treatment of respiratory disorders, one of the world's biggest drug markets. Roche's offer of $74 a share represents a 38% premium over InterMune's closing share price on Friday of $53.80, and a 63% premium before takeover speculation surrounding the biotech started circulating this month.

The interest in using health IT tools as a way to improve healthcare delivery and efficiency has produced many rapidly growing healthcare companies, many of which can trace their origins within one or two years of Obamacare’s passage. These companies have reached a stage of their development to accelerate growth and that has coincided with a readiness by healthcare providers and payers to adopt or ramp up their technology.

With a nod to the top healthcare company on Inc’s 5,000 Fastest Growing Companies, molecular diagnostic companies with smartphone-enabled technology have also become more attractive as investment and acquisition targets.

The 2014 Steering Committee of the Montgomery County Executive Hispanic Gala (MCEHG) announces the first of three awards to be presented during the gala celebration on September 18, 2014 to take place at The Fillmore Silver Spring. 

University of Maryland President, Dr. Wallace D. Loh, will be the 2014 recipient of the “Advocate of the Year Award”.

The Daily Record announced Thursday its 2014 Innovators of the Year, celebrating Marylanders and Maryland-based companies for their innovative spirit.

Twenty-eight innovators will be celebrated during the awards event on Oct. 15 at the American Visionary Art Museum, at 800 Key Highway in Baltimore.

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:

NIH Guide Notice:

Updated Forms and Instruction Clarification for Re-entry (PA-12-150) and Diversity (PA-12-149) Administrative Supplements
(NOT-OD-14-118) National Institutes of Health

Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program Contract Solicitation (PHS 2015-1) Now Available
(NOT-OD-14-120) Office of the Director, NIH

Notice of Participation of NLM in PAR-13-357 "Pre-application: Opportunities for Collaborative Research at the NIH Clinical Center (X02)"
(NOT-LM-14-003)
National Library of Medicine

Requests for Applications:

Multi-Site Clinical Trials for the Pulmonary Trials Cooperative (PTC) (U01)
(RFA-HL-15-015)
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Application Receipt Date(s): October 20, 2014

Network Management Core (NEMO) for the Pulmonary Trials Cooperative (PTC) (U01)
(RFA-HL-15-016)
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Application Receipt Date(s): October 20, 2014\

Program Announcements:

Administrative Supplements for Tobacco Regulatory Research on the Role and Impact of Flavors in Cigarettes, Cigars, E-Cigarettes and Smokeless Tobacco (Admin Supp)
(PA-14-320)
Office of the Director, NIH
National Cancer Institute
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
National Institute on Drug Abuse
Office of Disease Prevention
Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.

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.

In July, alongside the ÜberResearch team, we launched a Twitter competition open to PhD students. The task was to tweet how you would spend £10 million of science funding using the hashtag #uberresearchprize. 

We had hundreds of tweets and the top three, as voted by our judging panel, were then invited to write a blog post, delving into their original tweet. Over the next few days we will publish the top three blog posts here on our blog, announcing the winner on Monday 25th August. 

The Maryland Technology Development Corp. is launching a new investment fund dedicated to cyber security.

The fund will make investments of up to $100,000 in companies that are developing and commercializing new cyber security projects.

JMI Equity closed a $1 billion growth equity fund targeted at investing in software companies and services companies, it announced Wednesday.

The fund is the largest raised by JMI, a private equity firm operating out of offices in Baltimore and San Diego. The firm has raised more than $3.1 billion in committed capital since its founding in 1992. The largest fund JMI previously closed on was an $875 million fund completed in November 2010.

DATE: September 10, 2014 - 3:30 - 5:00 PM

LOCATION: Germantown Innovation Center, 20271 Goldenrod Lane, 2nd Floor, Germantown, MD 20874

As a federal agency, the Department of Energy is creative and innovative. Unlike other federal laboratories, each contractor-operated laboratory manages its own tech transfer agreements. Learn how to navigate these various opportunities and identify the best way to gain access to the technologies and partnerships to enhance your companies growth.

David E. Koegel
David Koegel is the senior technoogy transfer advisor in the Office of Science (SC) at the Department of Energy. A member of the Department's Technology Transfer Policy Board, his experience in technology transfer goes back to the early 90's when he was the Office's Program Manager for American Textile partnership in the Laboratory Technology Transfer Program, a technology transfer collaboration among members of the integrated textile industry, the DOE national laboratories, a number of universities, and several research/education/technology transfer organizations. A member of the National Advisory Council of the Federal Laboratory Consortium, David has been the Department's representative to the FLC for many years, as well as their representative to the federal Interagency Working Group on Technology Transfer. One of his significant duties involves the annual appraisal of the ten Office of Science national laboratories and is the primary point of contact for the various programs and organizations that use the laboratories' personnel and facilities. Previously, he had been the Department's Senior Technology Analyst in the SBIR/STTR Program, the Office of Science Small Business Program Manager, as well as the Program Manager for the Advanced Energy Projects program.

David joined the Department after spending several years at the Pentagon in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Research, Development, and Acquisition, most notably during Desert Shield/Desert Storm, acting as a liaison to the Army's laboratory system. Prior to this, he conducted research at the Army's Night Vision Laboratory using metal organic chemical vapor deposition for the development of advanced infrared imaging devices.

David earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Materials Science Engineering.

Location: MD, Gaithersburg - Corporate Headquarters

This will be a highly visible position dedicated to ensuring MedImmune further builds its collaboration efforts with governments, universities and non-profit organizations. The primary objective of this role will be to further entrench MedImmune in key biotech clusters to gain access to leading science and technology, enhance MedImmune's reputation and create operational flexibility. The role will entail scouting for cross-therapeutic scientific collaboration opportunities, negotiating deals, working closely with internal scientists, event planning and strategic planning and analysis.

MorphoSys AG (MOR) MPSYY,  and Emergent BioSolutions Inc. EBS,  today announced an agreement for the joint development and commercialization of ES414. The compound, to be renamed MOR209/ES414, is an anti-PSMA/anti-CD3 bi-specific antibody targeting prostate cancer, which was developed by Emergent using its proprietary ADAPTIRTM (modular protein technology) platform. Preclinical in vitro and in vivo studies have shown that MOR209/ES414 redirects T-cell cytotoxicity towards prostate cancer cells expressing Prostate Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA), an antigen commonly found on such cells.

When you think of tech companies, incubators or startups, South Carolina is still probably one of the last places that comes to mind. But with its new Office of Economic Engagement, which launched in the summer of last year, and a steadily growing incubator program, the University of South Carolina is working to change any misconceptions about tech startups not meshing well with the Palmetto State.

Just last week, USC’s Technology incubator held a graduation ceremony for seven companies that were ready to transition into the larger business community.

An invasive species has been introduced into the U.S. health innovation ecosystem, with a growing danger of permanent damage to the development of specialty drugs. The relentless assault on the price of Sovaldi is becoming a threat to the 30-year political balance that has energized the biomedical revolution.

Sovaldi is the kind of medicine that the drug scolds claim to want—a true scientific advance with a near-perfect cure rate for Hepatitis C, the liver-destroying virus that infects one of every 100 Americans and some 150 million world-wide. The old critique was that pharmaceutical discovery had stalled and the industry produced only me-too drugs. Now they attack Sovaldi because its price is $84,000 a patient.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded 36 Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) to enable new technologies to better understand how complex behaviors emerge from the activity of brain circuits.

These awards will contribute to NSF's growing portfolio of investments in support of President Obama's BRAIN Initiative, a multi-agency research effort that seeks to accelerate the development of new neurotechnologies that promise to help researchers answer fundamental questions about how the brain works.

A team of Biomedical Engineering undergraduate students from Johns Hopkins recently won the 2014 Design by Biomedical Undergraduate Teams (DEBUT) Challenge for developing a device that aims to help surgeons safely and accurately place screws during spinal fusion procedures and surgeries for spinal abnormalities.

The AccuSpine pedicle probe was designed by eight undergraduates: Clay Andrews, Eric Xie, Adarsha Malla, Bradley Isaacs, Anvesh Annadanam, Erica Schwarz, Ravi Gaddipati, and Luis Herrera. Their project began in July 2013 as part of a Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design design team class. Their goal was to address a clinical need for an effective guidance system for the safe and accurate placement of screws.

There are approximately 1,250 business incubators in the United States, including about 120 with some life science focus, according to the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA). These programs vary greatly in their structure and services.

Often associated with universities or medical centers, life science incubators frequently offer affordable office space attached to shared wet lab facilities. Others focus on accelerating companies' progress by offering intensive coaching, networking and support services. Some programs include seed funding up to $250,000 at a stage when few others are willing to invest.

Digital health incubator Rock Health is investing in eight new startups and teaming up with three new corporate entities – Blue Shield of California, Deloitte and global healthcare firm Abbott.

The new startups being incubated span the healthcare spectrum, from HIPAA compliance to life sciences and biotech. Among them:

The annual global confidence survey from the National Venture Capital Association produced an unusual apparent contradiction.

Investors around the world think the U.S. is the best place to back startups but confidence in our country's government among domestic VCs is dropping.

Innovative technologies and methodologies fuel progress in biomedical and behavioral research and represent an increasingly important area of the economy. The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program provides support for research and development (R&D) of new or improved technologies and methodologies that have the potential to succeed as commercial products.

The purpose of this notice is to (1) announce the issuance of the Solicitation of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for Small Business Innovation Research Contract Proposals (PHS 2015-1) with a receipt date of November 5, 2014, 4:30 PM ET; and (2) inform the public about the opportunities that the SBIR program offers to small business concerns as well as to scientists at research institutions.

The SBIR legislation requires the Public Health Service (PHS), Department of Health and Human Services, and certain other Federal agencies to reserve 2.8 percent (for FY 2014) of their extramural research or R&D budgets for an SBIR program. (The NIH SBIR set-aside requirement for FY 2014 is $663 million.)

Wrap up a great summer with one last BioBuzz networking event on August 27th from 5:00 - 7:30 p.m. at American Tap Room in Rockville, MD. This location is a short walk from the Metro located in the Rockville Town Center so there are no excuses not to come.

New this month, join us for Table Talks at BioBuzz.

This month's featured Table Topics will be on Project Management & Navigating your Life Science Careers.

Life Science Career Talks with;
Shira Harrington, President of Purposeful Hire
Multiple corporate recruiters from local Biotech companies

Project Management discussions with;
Tariq Allana, Project Manager at GlycoMimetics
Allen Bolden, Experienced GMP Manufacturing Project Manager

The National Institutes of Health is challenging science innovators to compete for prizes totaling up to $500,000, by developing new ways to track the health status of a single cell in complex tissue over time. The NIH Follow that Cell Challenge seeks tools that would, for example, monitor a cell in the process of becoming cancerous, detect changes due to a disease-causing virus, or track how a cell responds to treatment.

"Advances in cellular analysis promise earlier diagnosis and improved therapies for diseases, from cancer to Alzheimer's," said James Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., director of NIH's Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives (DPCPSI). "These prizes will also help to stimulate new businesses and economic growth in our biomedical communities."

For the third year in a row, Johns Hopkins has been recognized as one of the nation's best college campuses for dining.

Hopkins ranks second on the list of the "Best Colleges for Food in America" compiled by the website The Daily Meal, up from a No. 42 ranking a year ago. The site praised JHU's commitment to sustainability, the diversity of food offerings, and its special programming, including on-campus cooking classes and food and wine pairings for seniors.

For an incubator set on changing perceptions of where startups need to be to succeed in regulated sectors such as healthcare, education and energy, the decision to set up 1776 in Washington D.C. was a smart move. Mentors abound in a city where lawmakers, think tanks, regulators and Fortune 500 companies come to do business. In a phone interview, co-founder Donna Harris talked to MedCity News about its approach to finding and working with startups.

Harris co-founded 1776 in 2012 with Evan Burfield. Harris had previously worked at Startup America Partnership (which later changed its name to UP America) as managing director, and before that she was Vice Chair of Interpoint. Burfield founded netDecide and Synteractive.

A unique summer internship program established by the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) and funded in part by the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), has enabled 12 students to work across disciplines in a community setting.

Based at the Rockville, Md., campus where UMB offers a growing array of programs, the eight-week internship was conducted within the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Four graduate and eight undergraduate students experienced interdisciplinary teamwork by visiting several service agencies throughout Montgomery County.

Luminal, a Frederick and D.C.-based cloud management startup, on Thursday announced a $10 million Series B round led by New Enterprise Associates.

Joining NEA are prior investors Core Capital Partners and the Maryland Venture Fund. The latest financing brings Luminal's total funding to $13.8 million.

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

NIH Guide Notices:

• NIH Offers Commercialization Assistance Program to Phase II SBIR and STTR Awardees
• (NOT-OD-14-110) National Institutes of Health
• Revised Policy: Descriptions on the Use of Individual Development Plans (IDPs) for Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Researchers Required in Annual Progress Reports beginning October 1, 2014
• (NOT-OD-14-113) National Institutes of Health
• Notice of NICHD's Participation in PA-14-016 "Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Short-Term Institutional Research Training Grant (Parent T35)
• (NOT-HD-14-026)
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

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.

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has been used for thousands of years to prevent and treat disease and promote wellness.  But, in many western countries, there had been historic resistance to its use because it “was not supported by rigorous scientific study.”

That’s not true today.

Digital health has a pretty erratic grade point average, or so says Dana Mead, a parter at venture firm Kleiner Perkins, Caufield & Byers. He outlined and graded what he called the five most important elements of the digital health ecosystem at Qualcomm Life‘s Connect2014 conference this week in San Diego, and this is how he slices it:

1. Access to Capital – A

Looking at data over the last quarter, Mead said that about $700 million in funding has been raised in digital health. That’s more than medical device startups raise, about two-thirds of what pharma and biotech raise and about a third of what software/IT companies raised in the same time period. So, not a bad showing for digital health, Mead said.

The Rockville Science Center has found a temporary office home in the midst of an ongoing search for a permanent facility.

The science center’s administrative office, previously at the VisArts at Rockville center, moved this month to the Johns Hopkins University’s campus in Rockville.

Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals (Sigma-Tau) has signed an exclusive US license agreement with Ireland-based Crosscare, to market and distribute Colief Infant Drops for the treatment of colic.

As part of the deal, Sigma-Tau will be responsible for the sales, marketing and distribution of Colief in the US.

Sigma-Tau has planned a re-launch of Colief at healthcare professionals as well as consumers in August 2014.

The rich are getting richer when it comes to publicly traded biotechnology companies, judging by their ballooning market capitalization. It’s a product of the current Wall Street surge—some call it a bubble—that continued in the first half of 2013, with 52 companies going public and the overall market closing at record highs.

Following is a list of 25 biotechnology companies, ranked by their market cap as of July 24 as furnished by the exchanges on which they trade their shares, or by other publicly available sources, such as any of several free stock information websites. Figures of non-U.S. companies were converted to U.S. dollars from various currencies.

Monday, September 22, 2014

NHLBI’s Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC) hosts this semi-annual Regional Innovation Conference to connect small businesses, angel investors, venture capitalists, strategic partners, and business leaders from the biotech, medical device, and pharmaceutical industries. Attendees will see featured presentations from NHLBI-funded companies, and learn from staff about recent changes in the Federal SBIR/STTR program, and other funding opportunities and cost-free resources available to small businesses.

Previous conferences have been held in Boston, MA, San Francisco, CA, San Diego, CA, and Rockville, MD.

Highlights/ Features:

• Company presentations 
• Hear about innovative technologies for heart, lung, blood and sleep disorder and disease indications from companies who have received (non-dilutive) SBIR/STTR funding 
• How to market your innovation 
• Our expert panel of investors, legal advisors, and successful entrepreneurs will talk about the highs and lows of early-stage life science investment 
• Networking 
• Ample opportunities to network with potential partners,  investors, and NHLBI staff

Johns Hopkins University’s FastForward business accelerator is so popular the school is expanding it to a second location.

FastForward, which is part of Hopkins’ Whiting School of Engineering, launched last year and is already at capacity with a total of 33 startups and projects. Administrators plan to expand the program in January to accommodate the high demand among students and faculty.

The BioMaryland Center is partnering with Maryland's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH) and the Center for Medical Technology Policy (CMTP) to incorporate improved health care quality and cost reduction criteria in the selection process for the BioMaryland Center's annual Biotechnology Awards program. $1M will be awarded to projects, $50,000-200,000 each, advancing technologies toward commercialization--with preference given to projects which improve patient outcomes and reduce costs.

October 1st is the deadline to apply for the next round of Biotechnology Development Awards. More information regarding the program is available online.

How to Apply: Two application forms (the Non-confidential Applicant and Project Summary form and the Confidential Application Details form) and a business plan must be submitted electronically by 5 p.m. EST on October 1, 2014.