The D.C. region raised $418 million in venture funding in April, May and June, according PricewaterhouseCoopers' MoneyTree report, more than twice the total of second quarter 2012.

The "DC/Metroplex," as defined by PWC, includes far-flung areas of Virginia and Maryland, not just the District and its suburbs. With the strong second quarter haul, the region has raised nearly as much in the first half of 2013 ($704 million) as it did all of last year ($735 million). For comparison, companies in the area raised $203 million in Q2 2012, and $286 million in the first three months of 2013.

Biotechnology companies can access financial and management resources through venture capitalist (VC) firms. An analysis of 1,490 VC investments shows that country-of-origin (CO) of biotech companies has an effect on the participation by VC firms in various biotech subsectors. Specifically, it is found that US biotech companies tend to have higher amount received per VC firm, greater number of VC firms investing in them and greater biotech investment experience of the investing VC firms. Asia-Pacific biotech companies have consistently less VC firms investing in them and these investing VC firms tend to have less biotech investment experience. VC firms with greater biotech investment experience are also investing in European biotech companies more than those from the Americas less US. CO also correlates with outcomes in the four of the six key biotech subsectors studied. These findings suggest a strong CO effect of VC investment in biotech companies.

Venture capitalists invested $318 million in young Maryland companies from April through June, an increase of 115 percent from the first quarter, according to a report released Friday by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

About half of that financing, or $150 million, went to Precision for Medicine Inc., a Chevy Chase company that provides services for medical drug discovery, the report said. That was the highest amount any business in the country raised in the quarter and was matched only by a New York e-commerce website.

Venture capital funding for health IT totaled $623 million during the second quarter of 2013, according to a report by Mercom Capital Group, FierceHealthIT, reports.

The report found that there were 168 health IT-related venture capital deals in Q2 2013, compared with 104 the previous quarter. At the half-year mark, health IT-related venture capital funding was nearly equal to all of such funding in 2012, the report found.

Students at the University of York are challenging what they see as the closed worlds of nanotechnology and healthcare by crowdsourcing funds to produce a new type of treatment for cancer using magnetic nanoparticles.

Atif Syed and Zakareya Hussein, students in the department of electronics and nanotechnology engineering, are using US-based funding site Microryza to find $3,000 to develop a pharmaceutical patch that delivers tiny nanoparticles into the body via hair follicles.

“We are a team of guerrilla fundraisers who have launched a global campaign to fund research into a potential treatment for the cancer that killed Steve Jobs. The potential therapy, a cancer-busting virus, is currently sitting in a freezer in Sweden – but it can’t be tested for lack of just £2million” was iCancer’s pitch on Indiegogo, a crowdfunding portal. The company brought in more than $160,000 from this campaign.

Microryza is another crowdfunding platform exclusively for scientific research projects, available only to PhDs and professors who can attempt to raise money through this private channel instead of applying for grants.  “This solution helps close the gap for potential and promising, but unfunded projects,” Bill Gates says about Microryza. With Kickstartr’s popularity, there has been an explosion of growth in crowdfunding portals, both general as well as ones targeting a specific niche.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) today announced the appointment of General George A. Joulwan (retired) to the company’s Board of Directors. General Joulwan has a highly distinguished military career that spans 36 years from 1961 to his retirement in 1997. Highlights of General Joulwan’s military service include: Serving as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR); Commander in Chief, U.S. Southern Command; Commanding General, V Corps and Commanding General, 3rd Armored Division, United States Army Europe and U.S. Seventh Army, Germany. He has received numerous military decorations and foreign awards and decorations for his bravery and service, including two Silver Stars for valor.

Fuad El-Hibri, executive chairman of the board of Emergent BioSolutions, stated, “General Joulwan has devoted his four-decade career to serving the country, protecting our freedoms, and architecting peace around the world. He is a true and distinguished public servant, who is highly-respected in the global military community. As we expand our portfolio with specialized products that address the needs of U.S. and worldwide governments, his expertise and stature will be invaluable in guiding Emergent's management team towards further growth.”

Montgomery Business Development Corporation is pleased to announce the launch of their new website montgomerybusiness.org.

The enhanced website includes business-friendly features, data resources and information to support existing and future business and development in our vibrant economy.

About 20 kids garbed in lab coats, booties and goggles entered a laboratory on Friday through a door marked with a bright-red “BIOHAZARD” sticker.

Filling the small room, they gathered around lab coordinator and microbiologist Cindy Reichelderfer, who held up several petri dishes in which scientists had tested for the presence of anthrax.

A group of former executives from Martek Biosciences Corp. have formed a new company that plans to open memory and brain wellness clinics around the country.

Steve Dubin, who was Martek’s CEO, and David Abramson, who was the company’s president, are part of the group that formed NeurExpand Brain Performance Center. They are partnering with Dr. Majid Fotuhi, a Lutherville neurologist, who developed a 12-week program that uses diet, brain exercise and other factors to improve memory. Fotuhi is the author of several books on memory and is a Harvard Medical School graduate with a Ph.D. in neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University, according to his website.

Overseas medical technology companies continue to stream into Greater Boston, lured by the area’s famous ecosystem of researchers, startups, and potential collaborators.

One company that flew in under the radar was Qiagen N.V., a Dutch holding company with corporate offices in Germany, which quietly acquired two privately held Massachusetts companies last year and may—or may not—be expanding its foothold in the Boston area.

Rexahn Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE MKT: RNN), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, announced today that it has signed an exclusive license agreement with the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) for a novel drug delivery platform, Nano-Polymer-Drug Conjugate Systems (NPDCS). This technology targets the delivery of currently marketed chemotherapeutic agents directly into cancerous tumors. The direct delivery of chemotherapeutic drugs into the tumors has been shown to result in increased efficacy and reduced toxicity.

The NPDCS platform combines existing chemotherapeutic agents with a proprietary polymer carrier that contains a signaling moiety which directs the drug into the tumor. This approach minimizes the levels of freely circulating anti-cancer agents in the body, which can dramatically reduce potential adverse events, and maximizes anti-tumor activity by accumulating in the cancer tumor. NPDCS is a broad platform that has the potential to generate multiple therapeutic candidates going forward.

Summer wouldn't be complete without a trip to the sandy shores of an ocean, bay, lake or river. As the gritty stuff gets in between your toes, you may wonder why beaches are distinctive sandy stretches and why sand looks and feels the way it does.

And then again, you might not — you didn't come to the beach to think, did you? But for those in an asking mood, a sandy beach is essentially where pulverized, weathered rock along with some fragments of shelled creatures and other biota have collected, tossed up by the waves and as sediment from inland areas.

National Cancer Institute scientists have released the largest-ever database of cancer-related genetic variations, providing researchers the most comprehensive way so far to figure out how to target treatments for the disease.

Open access worldwide to the new database, based on genome studies, is expected to help researchers accelerate development of new drugs and better match patients with therapies, NCI said in a statement on Monday.

Here's another reason the dysfunctional federal budget process is bad for Americans: besides hurting the economy and hitting us in the pocketbook, partisan feuding over budget cuts could undermine our health and even shorten our lives.

That's because House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and others in Congress have been using the budget process to target research in the behavioral and social sciences for elimination, even though they're indispensable to understanding and improving Americans' health.

A Silver Spring company is looking to build the county’s first net zero facility, a building that would produce enough energy to sustain itself annually.

United Therapeutics —a biotechnology company that works on the development and commercialization of unique medical products — is expanding its campus with the new facility on the corner of Spring Street and Colesville Road in downtown Silver Spring. The building at 1000 Spring Street will have solar panels, a green roof and special placement of windows to allow for natural light and cross breezes to push hot air out of the facility, among other environmentally sustainable features, according to a presentation the design team gave to the Silver Spring Citizens Advisory Board on July 8.

The Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) program, an initiative of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) in the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, has awarded $3.8 million to 17 teams combining Maryland companies with university researchers to bring technology products closer to market, program officials announce today.

MIPS, a technology acceleration program, grants money matched with company funds to faculty engaged in each project.

Johns Hopkins Hospital has reclaimed the top position on U.S. News & World Report’s 2013-2014 list of best hospitals.

The return to No. 1 comes a year after Massachusetts General Hospital edged out Hopkins for the top spot on last year’s honor roll list. Hopkins had been No. 1 since 1991.

Renee M. Winsky of Davidsonville has been named president and CEO of Leadership Maryland, a statewide leadership development program.

She replaces Nancy Minieri, who founded the organization in 1992. Minieri announced in March that she will retire at the end of this year.

Winsky is a 2005 graduate of Leadership Maryland. In the yearlong program, participants learn about problems and opportunities facing the state. More than 900 people have taken the course, including elected officials, business executives, educators and nonprofit directors.

Topic:   "EIRs, SBIRs, and more with BioHealth Innovation, Inc."

Presenters:

• Richard Bendis, President and CEO
• Ethan Byler, Director, Innovation Programs
• Todd Chappell, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, NIH-OTT
• Dr. Ken Malone, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, UMD Ventures
• Ram Aiyar, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, NHLBI

BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) is a regional innovation intermediary that accelerates and facilitates technology transfer and commercialization of market-relevant research in federal labs, universities, and biohealth companies in the Region. It is a private-public partnership that connects the Region’s innovation assets to provide integrated technical knowledge, financial means, and entrepreneurial/managerial expertise to turn promise into prosperity for the region while advancing human health.

BHI’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program is designed to be an active partner with research institutions to source, fund, and grow high-potential, early-stage products through project-focused companies. The entrepreneurs in the program support the formation of new companies based upon innovative discoveries in the areas of drugs, vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and medical devices from the intramural research programs at the NIH and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as from universities and businesses.

BHI's Commercial Relevance Program (CRP) offers biohealth companies support in preparing applications for federal funding inclusive of SBIRs, STTRs, and other federal government awards. Companies submit their federal funding concepts and receive pre-proposal feedback to help troubleshoot and strengthen your application. Further support from professional consultants and service providers is available to assist in improving your application.

BHI recently published the Central Maryland BioHealth Entrepreneur's Resource and Finance Guide 2013. The Guide serves as a compendium of resources to biohealth innovators and entrepreneurs working to start and grow new companies and technologies in the region.

The Partnering Agreements with United Therapeutics 2005-2013 report provides an in-depth insight into the partnering interests and activites of one of the worlds leading biopharma companies.

This report provides all the information you require to better understand United Therapeutics and its partnering interests and activities over the past seven years.

On demand company reports are prepared upon purchase to ensure inclusion of the most up to date deal and company data.

QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced it has received approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to market the therascreen EGFR test as a companion diagnostic to guide the use of Boehringer Ingelheim's new targeted therapy, GILOTRIFTM (afatinib), for treatment of metastatic NSCLC in patients whose tumors have certain EGFR gene mutations. More than 200,000 new lung cancer cases are diagnosed every year in the United States, with NSCLC accounting for approximately 85% of cases, leading to an estimated 160,000 deaths.

The therascreen EGFR test enables doctors to identify EGFR mutation-positive patients eligible for treatment with GILOTRIFTM (afatinib). The FDA approval of the therascreen EGFR test marks a further milestone in the global expansion of QIAGEN's Personalized Healthcare franchise - and adds a third FDA-approved or cleared diagnostic kit to run on QIAGEN's efficient Rotor-Gene Q MDx. Approximately 120,000 metastatic NSCLC patients each year in the U.S. could benefit from testing for EGFR mutations, a total potential testing market of about $35 million, according to QIAGEN estimates.

Bethesda tops a list of The Most Educated Places in America

Personal finance site NerdWallet Inc. ranked cities based on high school drop out rates and the percentage of the population with associate degrees, bachelor's degrees, master's degrees and professional or doctoral degrees.

Lower overall costs of occupancy — coupled with academic resources and an educated work force — have made clusters outside the nation's largest metro areas more attractive to multinational pharmaceutical companies focusing on right-sizing and R&D productivity. In the Midwest, Chicago remains an emerging cluster, while Minneapolis is holding steady as a top-10 cluster for the second year in a row. JLL’s second annual life sciences cluster report ranks top-10 cities for life sciences companies in 2013.

Innovation is a vague word and is too overused today, in the words of Bryan Sivak.

That was kind of a bold statement to make at a conference focused on, well, innovation.

In his keynote address at CONVERGE, the chief technology officer for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the department’s philosophy is that innovation happens as a direct result of the freedom to experiment, a much more descriptive and meaningful phrase.

Kauffman Foundation FastTrac®, has joined with Montgomery College to support future and current business owners before, during, and after the startup process. Entrepreneurs will receive the information, resources, and networks necessary to start and grow successful businesses.

Three courses will be offered:

• FastTrac NewVenture
• FastTrac GrowthVenture
• FastTrac TechVenture

For more information: Program Flyer 

At the funding panel discussion Wednesday at CONVERGE, a serial entrepreneur asked about crowdfunding.

First we got the stock answer of “don’t see how it’s possible for healthcare companies.” Then the conversation turned to cap tables.

Elliott Menschik of Dreamit Ventures said that having 50-60 people on a cap table is becoming normal.

Microryza.com (not the catchiest of names) is a crowdfunding platform for research that raises money over the Internet from individuals who are willing to donate small amounts to fund a specific project. The average donation according to Microryza is $92.

In return for a 5 percent cut of funds raised and a 3 percent credit card processing fee, Microryza provides researchers access to a website where they can solicit money from the public to fund their research. Crowdfunding is typically an all-or-nothing deal, where donors only have to pay their pledged support if the project is fully funded within a defined period of time.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures announced today a collaboration between Frank Robb, Ph.D., at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, and Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and Rockville, Maryland-based Fina Biosolutions LLC to devise new ways to manufacture a key component used in many vaccines. The international nonprofit organization, PATH, which spurs new innovation with the goal of delivering high-impact, low-cost global health solutions such as lifesaving vaccines, will fund the partnership's development efforts as part of its pneumococcal vaccine project.

"A new and improved vaccine production method is the goal of this public-private partnership between my lab and Fina Biosolutions," said Dr. Robb. "It is designed to yield broader availability of an important vaccine component, which is highly effective, but prohibitively expensive for some applications, particularly in the developing world."

CMS has proposed a policy change that would expand payments for telehealth services under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for 2014, Modern Physician reports.

Details of the Proposal

The proposed change would affect locations identified as rural "health professional shortage areas."

Indiana University scientists have transformed mouse embryonic stem cells into key structures of the inner ear. The discovery provides new insights into the sensory organ's developmental process and sets the stage for laboratory models of disease, drug discovery and potential treatments for hearing loss and balance disorders.

A research team led by Eri Hashino, Ph.D., Ruth C. Holton Professor of Otolaryngology at Indiana University School of Medicine, reported that by using a three-dimensional cell culture method, they were able to coax stem cells to develop into inner-ear sensory epithelia -- containing hair cells, supporting cells and neurons -- that detect sound, head movements and gravity. The research was reportedly online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The biotech IPO window is officially open.

Eleven second-quarter biotech initial public offerings totaling $1 billion — the strongest quarterly biotech market for venture-backed IPOs since third-quarter 2000 — fueled an overall surge in IPOs, according to the National Venture Capital Association and news and data company Thomson Reuters.

Even as the White House has backed off on a few of its deadlines for administering the Affordable Care Act, the Obama Administration is staying the course on its efforts to transition paper files to electronic health records in doctor's offices.

President Barack Obama met with several chief executives of health-care technology companies, government leaders and nonprofit public-service organizations on Monday for a conversation on how technology, big data and innovation can be used to bring down the costs and improve the quality of health care in the U.S., according to a statement from the White House.

The head of the nation's medical research agency and leaders of Johns Hopkins hospital and medical school warned Monday that progress in fighting diseases could be slowed, jobs lost and scientists driven overseas unless across-the-board federal funding cuts are reversed.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, joined Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, Hopkins executives and a stroke survivor at Hopkins' Children's Center to appeal for restoration of $1.5 billion in NIH funding cuts as part of the budget "sequester" approved last winter by Congress.

A total of 150 investors are vying for Maryland’s biotechnology tax credit this year, compared with 125 applicants last year.

Maryland’s Biotechnology Investment Incentive Tax Credit program gives tax credits to individuals and companies that invest in Maryland-based biotechnology startups. The program will give out $10 million in tax credits for fiscal 2014.