Biohealth Innovation
Maryland is No. 1 — or is it No. 7? On third thought, it might be 41st.
Critics and champions of the Free State’s business climate and tax policy have plenty to argue about most days, and all-over-the-place business climate rankings do little to quell the conflict.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce last month rated Maryland No. 1 for entrepreneurship and innovation, piling on to an Entrepreneur Magazine ranking calling Maryland the best state in which to start a business.
Big pharmaceutical companies strike licensing deals with small companies in hopes of finding new, highly profitable medicine without the cost of buying a whole company.
Small companies get funding other ways, such as venture capital firms, but the money from licensing arrangements can mean the difference between continuing operations and closing shop.
The NHLBI Division of Extramural Research Activities (DERA) is pleased to announce the addition of Dr Lawrence Mahan, as the Director of the Office of Translational Alliances and Coordination (OTAC). Dr. Mahan’s professional experience spans academia, government and industry in both basic and applied biomedical research. Additionally it includes global business and strategic alliance development, strategic planning, technology evaluation, entrepreneurship guidance, and consulting on platform technology development in the life sciences.
Most recently Dr. Mahan served as Director of Innovation and Business Development for Children’s National Medical Center and its research institutes, the Children’s Research Institute and the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation, where he managed intellectual property, strategic business alliance development and the advancement of academic entrepreneurship.
Investing in biotechnology is a riskier bet these days. The community of life sciences venture capital firms is contracting, despite scientific advances across many fields like genomics, immunology, and diagnostics. Many promising new enterprises fail to produce marketable drugs, and even successful therapies may struggle to gain markets in an environment of health care cost cutting.
That’s exactly why Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) chose to expand its programs that nurture very early stage biotechnology and device startups in the Bay area, J&J executives said as they opened the company’s California Innovation Center in Menlo Park, CA, this week.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notices:
Program Announcements (PA):
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.
Pathologists and clinical laboratory professionals who regularly analyze images will be interested in the findings of a research study designed to assess how the phenomenon called “inattentional blindness” among radiologists could cause them to possibly miss things hiding in plain sight.
‘Inattentional Blindness’ Occurs Even Among Highly-trained Radiologists
In a recent study, psychological scientists from Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital found that 83% of radiologists didn’t notice an image of a gorilla embedded in a computed tomography (CT) lung scan.
University of Maryland (UM) Ventures and SilcsBio, LLC announced today that SilcsBio has obtained exclusive rights to a technology licensed from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). UM Ventures is an ambitious joint research commercialization effort of the UMB and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). SilcsBio is a supplier of computer-directed drug discovery software and services.
"The license, which we obtained from UMB, creates the core of our product line," said Kelli Booth, SilcsBio's Chief Operating Officer. "It's great to have a university so supportive of our state's start-up community."
Health Tech Hatch, a site launched last fall as a crowdfunding site specifically for health startups, is joining forces with one of the biggest crowdfunding platforms on the web, Indiegogo.
From the beginning, the company planned to help health startups both crowdfund and beta test their products with patients and physicians. But now, founder and CEO Patricia Salber said Health Tech Hatch plans to focus more closely on the beta testing side, while working on the crowdfunding piece through Indiegogo.
Through collaboration between Johnson & Johnson Innovation and the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), Janssen will create a 5,000-square-foot lab space within QB3’s 24,000-square-foot incubator space in San Francisco.
The company said that the new Bay Area incubator will use the San Diego model for its innovation space.
Governor Martin O’Malley today announced that Rachel King, co-founder and CEO of GlycoMimetics in Gaithersburg, has been named chair of the Maryland Life Sciences Advisory Board (LSAB). King will replace chair H. Thomas Watkins, former President and Chief Executive Officer of Human Genome Sciences, Inc., who has served on the Board since Governor O’Malley and the Maryland General Assembly created it in 2007. As chair, Watkins led the Board through a strategic planning process that, working closely with Governor O’Malley, resulted in BioMaryland 2020, a 10-year, $1.3 billion strategy for moving Maryland’s life sciences industry forward.
In a first-of-its-kind operation in the United States, a team of doctors at Duke University Hospital helped create a bioengineered blood vessel and transplanted it into the arm of a patient with end-stage kidney disease.
The procedure, the first U.S. clinical trial to test the safety and effectiveness of the bioengineered blood vessel, is a milestone in the field of tissue engineering. The new vein is an off-the-shelf, human cell-based product with no biological properties that would cause organ rejection.
NIH has reissued its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Omnibus Grant Solicitation announcement, which states that small businesses that are majority-owned by multiple venture capital operating companies are eligible to apply for (1) these SBIR grants and (2) any other NIH SBIR funding opportunities announced after January 28, 2013. The NIH grant solicitation announcement can be found here.
With this re-issuance, small businesses that are majority-owned by multiple venture capital operating companies (VCOCs), hedge funds and/or private equity firms are now eligibleto apply to the NIH SBIR program and compete for up to 25% of NIH’s SBIR set-aside.
Healthcare providers are taking telemedicine to new heights, with the market seeing growth of a whopping 237 percent within a five-year period, according to a new Kalorama report.
Officials say the telemedicine patient monitoring market grew from $4.2 billion in 2007 to more than $10 billion in 2012. According to the report, the market itself is considered small- to moderate in size but makes up for it with its notable number of competitors and "increasing awareness of effectiveness."
More than 60 companies showed off their health data applications at Datapalooza IV this week and Krishna Yeshwant, a partner at Google Ventures, was the MC for a demo session on Tuesday afternoon.
As one of the presenters was fighting with his PowerPoint demonstration and the projection system, Yeshwant answered a few questions about opportunities for healthcare startups with the search company’s investment group. He said that the outlook has changed for healthcare IT startups now that Obamacare is here to stay.
San Francisco digital health accelerator Rock Health is kicking off its fifth program next week, and it has some unique startups in the mix.
Bound to be the most talked about is Augmedix, which is developing a healthcare app for Google Glass. Co-founders Ian Shakil and Pelu Tran haven’t said much about exactly what kind of app they’re working on, but it apparently will leverage Glass’s augmented reality and voice activation to help doctors keep their focus on patients. Augmedix has already raised $55,000 from 32 Upstart backers.
The Chinese Biopharmaceutical Association, USA (CBA) will host the 18th Annual Conference at the University of Maryland Shady Grove Conference Center on Saturday, June 15th, 2013. The theme of this year’s conference is “Global Partnership in Biopharmaceutics and Translational Medicine;” it will address the critical importance of establishing worldwide collaboration to capture the great opportunity for the advancement of modern medicine and biopharmaceuticals.
The Conference
The Conference includes five sessions:
Baltimore ranks No. 4 on a new NerdWallet list of the best cities for recent college grads to live in.
The report from the financial literacy and consumer advocacy website is based on the median cost of rent, “walkability” of cities, number of young people, bars, and of course, unemployment rates.
Eight minutes: this is approximately (1) how long it takes sunlight to reach the earth; (2) how long it takes to hard-boil an egg (if you eat them) and (3) how long medical residents — doctors in training — spend with patients per day on average.
What’s more, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland have found that those eight minute are less than the amount of time that residents used to spend with patients (and make the standard 15 minutes allotted to a medical office visit seem generous).
If you’re a medical intern, most of what you need to do your job can be pulled off a computer screen: Blood test results. Paged messages. Orders to start a medication. All but, of course, how sick a patient is.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland, suspecting that more and more of an intern’s time is spent in front of a computer, looked into just how today’s intern spends her working hours on an inpatient ward. They asked trained college students to shadow 29 internal medicine interns from two different Baltimore teaching hospitals and document how much time they spent talking to patients, eating lunch, reading charts, and the like — over the course of three weeks. Their recently published results confirm a trend that old-timers nostalgically lament and that those of us in training know to be all too true: Only a small percentage of our time is spent in direct patient care.
Remember Plexxikon? The Berkeley, CA-based company had a lot of talent for structural biology-based drug design, an impressive new treatment for melanoma, and a strong management team.
Two years ago, nobody on Wall Street cared one whit. Plexxikon flirted with the idea of going public, found little interest, and sold itself off to Japan-based Daiichi Sankyo for a more than 10-fold return on investment. It was a poster child for how dead the biotech IPO market was in 2010 and 2011.
Through new agreements with the Canadian BC Cancer Agency and Columbia University, the company now has access to biomarkers for lymphoma, glioblastoma, and several other cancers. These biomarkers will be developed into diagnostic assays that can assist physicians in choosing targeted treatments, Qiagen says.
The company’s glioblastoma cancer biomarker, acquired from Columbia University, detects the presence of FGFR-TACC fusion genes. The lymphoma biomarker, acquired from BC Cancer Agency, detects the Y641 EZH2 gene mutation. This type of lymphoma is targeted by pharmaceutical manufacturers like Epizyme and Constellation.
QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced two agreements adding promising new biomarkers involving glioblastoma, lymphoma and other cancers to QIAGEN's expanding portfolio of potential companion diagnostics that is being developed to help doctors use a patient's genomic information to guide treatment decisions.
In the glioblastoma project, QIAGEN has entered into an exclusive worldwide licensing option on FGFR-TACC fusion genes with Columbia University in New York. QIAGEN intends to develop this biomarker into a diagnostic test for routine use in diagnostic workups, which may enable doctors to identify glioblastoma patients who could benefit from targeted treatments now under development. Glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive form of primary brain tumor, a serious unmet medical need because the disease is generally fatal despite aggressive therapy. Fusions between members of the FGFR and TACC gene families also have been identified recently as present in several other malignancies, including bladder cancers.
Five top Japanese drug companies are to open their "libraries" of experimental compounds to scrutiny by scientists hunting new treatments for malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases affecting the world's poor.
The initiative, announced on Thursday, is the first project under a new $100 million partnership between the drugmakers, the Japanese government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund research into neglected tropical diseases.
By Eve Green
Partner companies Theravance and the GlaxoSmithKline have received Food and Drug Administration clearance for their new drug for the treatment of COPD, Breo Ellipta. COPD encompasses what used to be known as emphysema and chronic bronchitis – the new drug should be an improvement on current treatment options which can ease the symptoms of this disease. COPD, which is strongly linked to smoking, is the third most significant cause of death in America.
Curtis Rosebraugh, director of FDA Office of Drug Evaluation II, commented that this new long-term maintenance treatment for COPD will provide new care options for the millions of people in the USA who suffer from the condition. The companies have stated that the drug should be available during the third quarter of 2013. Breo Ellipta, which requires a single dose per day, should surpass existing treatments which require two doses.
COPD
COPD stands for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a progressive condition (one which continually worsens) which causes breathing problems in those who suffer from it. The symptoms are coughing and the associated overproduction of mucus, shortness of breath especially during exercise and tightness of chest. COPD is also associated with a greater susceptibility to chest-infections. Doctors used to refer to 'emphysema' and 'chronic bronchitis', though these are now officially grouped under this general condition.
A disease which is currently under-diagnosed, this condition refers to the inflammation and subsequent damage to the interior of the lungs, and results in lower efficiency in taking on oxygen and in problems with the mechanics of breathing. Smoking is the top cause of COPD, though a genetic predisposition can cause it in some people. While the damage which it causes cannot be repaired, sufferers who subsequently quit smoking can slow down the progress of the disease.
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.