Biohealth Innovation
This week, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius posted separate entries on the White House Blog touting the effect of federal initiatives on health IT adoption and health industry innovation, FierceHealthIT reports.
The posts were written in response to a New York Times commentary published by columnist Thomas Friedman last week about health industry innovation related to the Affordable Care Act and other federal initiatives.
The Greater Washington Board of Trade is forming a joint task force with the Greater Baltimore Committee and the Economic Alliance of Greater Baltimore to promote the region as a global hotbed for the cybersecurity industry.
The Baltimore-Washington Cyber Task Force plans to work with both public and private sector groups to develop a strategy for cyber industry growth around the new U.S. Cyber Command at the Army's Fort Meade, located halfway between Washington and Baltimore.
A team of students at the Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering has designed for NASA a new stethoscope that delivers accurate heart- and body-sounds to medics who are trying to assess astronauts’ health on long missions in noisy spacecraft.
Space is serene, because no air means no sound. But inside the average spacecraft, with its whirring fans, humming computers and buzzing instruments, is about as raucous as a party filled with laughing, talking people.
React Labs, an early stage company commercializing a comprehensive mobile technology platform for real-time polling, has been awarded $100,000 in funding from the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII), company officials announce today.
Founded by University of Maryland Professor Philip Resnik, who holds joint appointments in the Department of Linguistics and at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), React Labs offers a mobile application that allows a very large numbers of participants to register their moment-by-moment reactions to live and televised events, providing a highly engaging user experience and producing rich, detailed data for analysis.
Maryland was recently named the top state in the nation for entrepreneurship and innovation. The state has the second highest concentration of STEM employment and adds STEM jobs faster than all but five other states.
With Maryland’s commitment to growth in science, technology, engineering and math, UMBC continues to develop and expand its professional programs to meet the needs of the state’s STEM-centric workforce.
The board of GenVec Inc. has voted to liquidate and dissolve the struggling Gaithersburg biotech, it announced Tuesday in a securities filing.
The move follows a string of setbacks for GenVec, which three years ago saw its lead pancreatic cancer drug candidate, TNFerade, fail in late-stage trials. In 2011, longtime CEO Paul Fischer announced his retirement from the company.
Please join us for an exclusive, invitation-only event to be held in conjunction with PwC and the Technology Council of Maryland.
This event has been designed especially with you in mind. You'll have the opportunity to network with your peers in an intimate setting and learn what it took companies within your industry to grow and become $1 billion market leaders. Presenter Brian Williams is a successful life sciences entrepreneur. Now consulting for PwC, Brian will present a roadmap other life science companies have followed to experience explosive growth in a dynamic and demanding environment.
Amid the volatile blend of opportunity and challenge that characterize the global life sciences industry, only a few small companies have managed to catapult their revenue over the $1 billion mark over the past two decades. Whether they chose to expand their focus and product portfolios, enter new geographies, or grow their core business, these aspiring giants pursued three distinct strategies to jump start growth:
We hope you can join us to explore these topics and discuss their applicability to you and your company.
When:
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Time:
8:00 - 8:30 am - Registration and networking
8:30 – 10:30 am - Program
Location: The Universities at Shady Grove Conference Center
9630 Gudelsky Drive
Building II, Room 11-1042
Rockville, Maryland
If you have any questions regarding the event, please Deana Mary at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or 703.918.3631<
It’s tough to move the needle on a multi-billion-dollar venture fund. That’s one reason New Enterprise Associates, which has managed mega-funds about as long as anyone in the business, makes a habit of taking large stakes in portfolio companies.
That strategy can pay off well in the event of a big exit – which is what happened last week with the IPO of data analysis provider Tableau Software. NEA, a backer in all of Tableau’s venture funding rounds, was the largest shareholder at the time of the offering. And as Tableau shares soared post-debut, NEA’s stake did as well. The firm sold 1 million shares in the offering for $31 million, and its remaining 18.6 million shares were worth more than $900 million as of last week.
QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) and SIP Biotech Development Co., Ltd. (BioBAY) today announced the opening of QIAGEN (Suzhou) Translational Medicine Center, a translational medicine R&D Corporation which aims to accelerate the discovery and validation of biomarkers, and to create companion diagnostics for the Chinese market. QIAGEN (Suzhou) is a joint venture of QIAGEN and BioBAY, the innovative life sciences cluster in Suzhou Industrial Park near Shanghai. The companies announced the launch of QIAGEN (Suzhou) today in an opening ceremony on the BioBAY campus, which currently hosts more than 330 companies and research groups.
QIAGEN (Suzhou) will provide services and consulting with state-of-the-art QIAGEN molecular technologies for international and Chinese pharmaceutical companies, as well as research institutes to enable translational medicine, the multidisciplinary process of advancing discoveries from laboratory bench to the patient's bedside. The center will work with partners located at BioBAY and elsewhere in China to provide fully integrated biomarker solutions to accelerate drug development, as well as to commercialize companion diagnostics. The four key service sections include biobanking, pharmacogenetics, next generation sequencing (NGS) and pharmacogenomics. This innovative alliance builds on QIAGEN's leading global position in Personalized Healthcare, using genomic information to produce individualized treatment decisions for patients. QIAGEN (Suzhou) is expected to grow to about 50 employees within three years.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notice:
Request for Applications (RFAs):
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.
Purpose
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and participating Institutes invite grant applications for research on the development of safe, real-time, non-invasive (or minimally invasive), in vivo methods to assess the development and function of the human placenta.
Background
The placenta is essential for the maintenance of pregnancy. The prominent function of the placenta is in the transfer of nutrients, gases and waste products between the mother and fetus. It is effectively the lung, gut, and kidney of the fetus. Abnormalities of placental development and function are known to underlie many major pathologies of pregnancy including spontaneous preterm birth, fetal growth restriction, and preeclampsia. Most information on placental biology is obtained studying placental tissue obtained from pathological pregnancies, such as a preterm deliveries occurring predominately in the third trimester, or from term deliveries in which placental development has already crested. Hence, there is a paucity of information obtained earlier in gestation, a period of time when many of the pregnancy pathologies are believed to have their origins, as well as very limited information gleaned throughout gestation from normal pregnancies. The development of real-time, non-invasive (or minimally invasive) methods to assess the development and functionality of the placenta in vivo throughout gestation would serve as valuable research tools to enhance our understanding of placental biology and rooted pathologies. The development of these tools could lead to the identification of markers and predictors of pregnancy outcome, and provide a future foundation for better pregnancy monitoring in the clinical setting.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) has entered into a collaborative agreement with Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the company’s portfolio of clinical stage antibacterial assets for treating hospital and biothreat infections.
The contract is unique in that it is the first in which BARDA has taken a portfolio approach to funding drug development with industry.
Poor maternal, infant, and child health as well as inadequate coverage of family planning remain significant global health problems facing low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) today. Despite a 47% reduction since 1990, nearly 300,000 women still die annually from causes directly related to pregnancy. The majority of these deaths are attributed to preventable obstetric complications prior to, during, and following delivery, with developing countries carrying the vast majority (99%) of the burden. Additionally, although mortality for children under five years of age has decreased from 12 million annually at the beginning of the last century (in 1900), to 6.9 million annually in 2011, the burden of these deaths now falls primarily in LMICs, with most of these deaths also due to preventable causes. In these same countries mobile phone coverage and access has become nearly ubiquitous, with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) estimating in 2013 that the number of mobile phone subscriptions (6.8 billion) is nearly equal to the human population of 7.1 billion. The opportunity this represents is one that has not been lost on the global health community.
Medical technology pioneer AstraZeneca has chosen the Cambridge Biomedical Campus at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital site in Cambridge UK for its new global headquarters.
It will make a formal announcement in June. The Biomedical Campus has been chosen over Granta Park where AZ’s biologics division MedImmune has massively grown its presence. None of the parties involved are making any comment. The decision is a major boost for the Biomedical Campus where The Queen today officially opened the MRC’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
The Tech Council of Maryland (TCM), Maryland’s largest technology trade association with more than 400 biotechnology and technology members employing more than 200,000 in the region, last night announced the winners of its 2013 TCM Awards. The 25th annual celebration was attended by more than 750 technology and business leaders from around the state.
“Maryland is ripe with innovative companies – from ones focused on high tech and IT solutions that make businesses and governments run smoothly and securely, to biotech companies that are developing cutting-edge cures for serious diseases,” said Doug Doerfler, chairman of TCM’s Board and founding president and CEO of MaxCyte, Inc. “Winners of the 2013 Tech Awards exemplify this broad cross section of individuals and companies that make up the Tech Council membership and are key to driving advances in all aspects of technology.”
June 13th - The Ritz-Carlton, Washington, DC
There is a critical unmet need in the U.S. and around the world for the development of pediatric medical devices, with support coming only from a scarce number of available grants and some private investments and philanthropy. The testing and marketing of new devices for children raise unique challenges as well. Finally, there has been much controversy around the 510(k) process for device approvals, which leads to additional need for new innovative approaches that improve the regulatory pathways for medical device development.
As we shift to a value-based healthcare system, regulatory bodies, innovators, and manufacturers must find the right balance between two noble goals: encouraging and enabling innovative medical advancements and ensuring that patients receive treatment that is as safe and effective as possible.
Please join us on June 13, 2013, for a day long symposium with leaders from the FDA, NIH, IOM, and industry, as well as policymakers, clinicians, lawyers, scientists, and bioethicists from around the world to discuss these critical issues in pediatric surgical innovation and device development.
In a unique program called Preparing the Future (PTF), 334 students have completed classroom and hands-on training to equip them to address the HIV epidemic, according to Alexandra "Allie" Reitz, the programýs coordinator for the JACQUES Initiative (JI) of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.
The PTF at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) is designed as a model for the nation and is supported by a grant from Gilead Sciencesý HIV FOCUS Program, for the JACQUES Initiative (JI). By participating, UMB students "gain invaluable communication skills through the PTF's interprofessional approach," says Reitz.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) plc and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), have agreed to a first of its kind collaboration that will support the development of several antibiotics to fight antibiotic resistance and bioterrorism.
This public-private agreement marks the first time that HHS has taken a “portfolio approach” to funding drug development with a private sector company. This unique collaboration provides flexibility to move funding around GSK’s antibacterial portfolio, rather than focusing on just one drug candidate and allow medicines to be studied for the potential treatment of both conventional and biothreat pathogens.
Our world needs entrepreneurs
Their ability to innovate, to inspire others, to power a business along the difficult journey from start-up to market leader is truly extraordinary. The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award celebrates these special people who have created many of the world’s most dynamic and successful companies. We invite you to join us in celebrating their success at the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year 2013 Maryland Awards Gala.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Baltimore Marriott Waterfront
700 Aliceanna Street | Baltimore, MD 21202
6:00 p.m. — Cocktail reception
7:00 p.m. — Dinner and awards ceremony
Black tie
Today is Demo Day for Techstars Boston. I love Techstars Demo Days for many reasons, not the least of which is the amazing community that gathers to hear the brief, well-rehearsed pitches from the various start-ups who have spent months planning for this big event.
As accelerators like Techstars gain in popularity, many entrepreneurs wonder whether they should be applying and, if admitted, joining an accelerator and when they shouldn't. I get this question a lot from my students, particularly as they're graduating and scrambling to figure out where they should start their company, how to raise capital and whether an accelerator is right for them. Here are a few guidelines that I would think about if I were an entrepreneur making such a decisions.
There are lots of myths about venture capital and biotech in particular, as noted previously on this blog. Many of these myths are deeply held beliefs about returns, what works and what doesn’t, and the state of the industry. Told often enough, these beliefs are presumed to be true by many observers, including practitioners in the field, Limited Partners, and pundits.
Surprisingly, data exists to address lots of these points, and I’ve attempted here to summarize (and link to) a number of prior posts aimed at debunking these myths and sharing a few observations on them.
GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK), the U.K.’s largest drugmaker, will work with the U.S. government to develop antibiotics for resistant infections and bioterrorist threats in an agreement valued at as much as $200 million.
The company will collaborate with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which will provide $40 million for the initial 18-month agreement, London-based Glaxo said in a statement today. If the accord is renewed over five years, the department will provide as much as $200 million, the drugmaker said.
GlaxoSmithKline has created a contest for academic researchers that it hopes will accelerate the speed by which academic research can be turned into novel therapies.
The London pharmaceutical company, which has large operations in the Philadelphia region, on Tuesday launched a competition program it is calling Discovery Fast Track.
The Public Health Service Act indicates that the purpose of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) is to advance translational sciences by coordinating and developing resources that leverage basic research in support of translational science; and by developing partnerships and working cooperatively to foster synergy in ways that do not create duplication, redundancy and competition with industry activities.
The Affordable Care Act, aka health care reform, aka Obamacare, is spurring a massive creation of new business opportunities.
So says Bryan Sivak, the chief technical officer and entrepreneur-in-residence at the Department of Health and Human Services, the cabinet-level agency that regulates the $2.8 trillion U.S. health care market. Sivak joined VentureBeat’s HealthBeat conference today via a video conference (see photo above).
Just one of the areas that’s becoming fertile ground for entrepreneurial innovation: the health insurance exchanges mandated by the law.
Doug Doerfler, CEO of Gaithersburg-based MaxCyte Inc., was this month named the Tech Council of Maryland's new chairman. He steps into the position with a wealth of TCM experience under his belt, having spent three years as chairman of the trade group's biotech division. I caught up with Doerfler on his plans for TCM, the interplay between its IT and bio contingents and the search for a new full-time CEO.
More than half of all eligible providers nationwide have received federal incentive payments for demonstrating meaningful use of electronic health records, rates that have more than doubled since last year alone, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced Wednesday.
Sebelius says HHS has met and exceeded its goal for 50 percent of doctor offices and 80 percent of eligible hospitals to have adopted EHRs by 2013's end.
The StartRight! Women's Business Plan Competition was founded in 2003 by Rockville Economic Development Inc. (REDI) to encourage and support women’s entrepreneurship. Currently in its tenth year, StartRight! awards prizes for winning business plans annually. The women who join our competition receive more than the opportunity to win a top prize of $5,000 – they also receive valuable coaching and feedback on their business plan!
There are 3 Prize Categories - Total of $15,000 in prizes with a top prize of $5,000! You select the category in which you wish you plan to be entered.
If you have additional questions or need assistance, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call us at 301-315-8096.
Zina Moukheiber said the New York Digital Health Accelerator Is a Model to Emulate at the beginning of the program. With the proliferation of accelerators, I thought I’d share an insider’s perspective on what it was like to be in the program now that it is complete. I’ll also share some ideas on how can take it to the next level building off of their already-strong foundation.
Zina described the program as follows:
One of the toughest hurdles for health IT start-ups is getting in front of customers. Doctors are reluctant to pay, and sales cycles at hospitals can take months. Entrepreneurs often inspired by a negative personal experience, and moved to fix the problem, find later that their product doesn’t fit the hospital’s “workflow,” or offers no incentive for doctors to adopt it.
Biotech has never quite taken flight in Northern Virginia. Whether that's due to the lack of a big corporate anchor or blue-chip research university, the dearth of wet labs, the attraction of a stronger scene in Montgomery County or pure dumb happenstance is anyone's guess.
But on this side of the D.C. suburbs, the life sciences are not thriving. The story of Virginia biotech right now has much more to do with Charlottesville than it does with Fairfax.
Optimistic and confident in their abilities, a diverse and growing percentage of U.S. citizens engage in entrepreneurship, according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).
U.S. entrepreneurship rates climbed to the highest level in more than a decade according to the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) U.S. Report issued today by Babson College and Baruch College. In 2012, the average Total Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity rate (TEA) increased to nearly 13 percent, an all-time high since GEM first began tracking entrepreneurship rates in 1999.
“Despite a sluggish economy, 2012 was marked by U.S. entrepreneurs reporting greater optimism and confidence in their abilities to start new businesses,” commented the GEM Report’s lead author, Donna J. Kelley, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship at Babson College. “In fact, nearly 13 percent of the U.S. adult population was engaged in entrepreneurship with the vast majority starting businesses to pursue an opportunity rather than out of necessity. On the downside, Americans closing businesses were twice as likely as those in other innovation-driven economies to cite difficulties financing their ventures.”
The threshold for reporting on marketing stunts is a high one, and United Therapeutics Corp. has just cleared it.
Reaching us by mail today is the Silver Spring biotech's 2012 annual report, written as a spoof of a children's book and called "Good Year UTHR." UTHR, of course, is the ticker symbol for United Therapeutics, which has a history of doing this sort of thing.
Hall of Fame award underlines long history of commitment to Maryland technology community
The Tech Council of Maryland honored Lockheed Martin with the 2013 Hall of Fame Award at its 25th annual Tech Awards Celebration, held at the Bethesda North Marriot Hotel and Conference Center in Bethesda, Md.
The Tech Awards Celebration is the mid-Atlantic region’s largest and most prestigious awards ceremony that recognizes leaders and innovators in the technology and life science communities from Maryland and the surrounding regions.
The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission (Commission) has completed its review of the 171 applications received in response to its FY 2013 Requests for Applications (RFAs). The board of directors of the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO) approved the Commission's recommendation to fund 31 new proposals with the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund's (MSCRF) $10.4 million FY2013 budget. These projects, which include pre-clinical research and a clinical trial, will advance the field of regenerative medicine.
"These awards are critical to ensuring that the groundbreaking research being done has the opportunity to move to the commercial marketplace," said Governor Martin O'Malley. "I congratulate this year's grant recipients and look forward to the contributions they make to the improved health and wellbeing of our citizens."
Would it surprise you to learn that Fast Company magazine just ranked Maryland the third-most innovative state in the nation? Or that Maryland took the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's No. 1 spot for both innovation and entrepreneurship? It's a fact: In our state's dynamic mix of world-class universities and professional schools, institutes for advanced research, teaching hospitals, think tanks, hubs for start-up businesses and more, there exists this mysterious, economically essential activity known as innovation.
So if we are as innovative as Fast Company and the leaders of free enterprise say we are — and I believe it's true — we have to ask ourselves a couple of questions: How did it happen? And how can we keep it going?