The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area is the hottest spot in the country for entrepreneurship according to a new report from the Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship. The ranking is based on a combination of how many new startups there are, how startups in the area have scaled in the course of a decade and how many companies show rapid growth. All told, D.C. easily beats out Austin, Columbus, San Jose and Nashville, the next ranked cities, and far ahead of Boston, New York or other hubs of innovation.

Qiagen is closer to completing its DKK683 million ($104 million) acquisition of Exiqon, a provider of RNA analysis solutions, but has decided to extend for a second time the offer period for Exiqon's shares.

Greenspring Associates raised $200 million in a new fund that focuses on investing in venture capital fund limited partners and managers that in turn invest in growth-stage companies.

For those in the health and life sciences industry, May is known as National Asthma and Allergy Awareness Month. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, more than 50 million Americans suffer from allergies, and more than 24 million Americans are affected by asthma. And while there still isn’t a known cure for these conditions, one Rockville biotechnology company is working to change that.

Bio-Trac®, in partnership with Montgomery College, is proud to offer graduate/post graduate level hands-on laboratory training workshops for research scientists within the Pinkney Innovation Complex for Science and Technology (PIC MC), an integrated academic, business and research campus.

Newly released research from the Kauffman Foundation finds that in 2016, Washington, D.C., Austin, San Jose, Columbus, and Nashville were the five highest ranked metropolitan areas for the Index of Growth Entrepreneurship. The five highest ranked states were Virginia, Utah, Maryland, Arizona, and Massachusetts. As described in the SSTI Digest last week, The Kauffman Index of Growth Entrepreneurship measures the growth of entrepreneurial businesses in the United States, complementing the foundation’s recently released Index of Startup Activity and Index of Main Street Entrepreneurship.

America wouldn’t be what it is today without innovation.

So says Steve Case, the entrepreneur who co-founded AOL, the company that helped introduce the public to the Internet. Now the chief executive of investment firm Revolution LLC, Mr. Case sat down with Dennis Berman, financial editor of The Wall Street Journal, to discuss the next wave of the Internet’s evolution and how midsize companies might take advantage of it.

When you think about the headliners at a music festival, it’s unlikely that the first person to pop into your head would be Martine Rothblatt—the founder of Sirius XM, the one-time highest-paid female CEO in the world who made a robot clone of her wife, and the founder of the Terasem religion, which believes we’ll live forever by uploading our consciousness to the cloud. But Moogfest, a four-day citywide festival of music and technology in Durham, North Carolina, was not the average music festival. Unlike other festivals that make cursory overtures to technology, Moogfest dedicated as much time to explaining how technology influences creativity as to the creative output itself, even listing headline ‘technologists’ alongside its top-billed musical acts.

A new interactive health website aims to support patients with gastrointestinal disorders by bridging the gap between office visits and helping them to comply with their doctors’ dietary, medication, and other treatment plans. The site was unveiled May 21, 2016 at Digestive Disease Week 2016 in San Diego, CA.

OpGen Inc. (NASDAQ: OPGN) raised $10.4 million in a recent funding round led by the Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, the venture capital arm of pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co.

There’s been a lot of talk about bolstering institutions like universities as places to drive the entrepreneurship Maryland needs to become a BioHealth hub. In North Baltimore, Sinai Hospital doesn’t have a connected university, but it still sees an opportunity to turn research into startups.

Did you miss the first I-270 Bio Corridor event last month? If so, you missed out on learning about and connecting with some of the top bio and life science companies and experts as well as resource partners like REDI, the MD Department of Commerce, the Montgomery County Economic Development Corp, Frederick County Office of Economic Development, Frederick City, the City of Gaithersburg Office of Economic Development and Montgomery College.

Over 100 attendees enjoyed a happy hour and discussion of how best to help the I-270 corridor grow with more bio and life science companies at CRB's new headquarters in Rockville.

This event was scheduled as a precursor to the BIO International Convention taking place this month in San Francisco, REDI, our I-270 Corridor partners, will be there in the Maryland pavilion with information and resources for those companies that may be looking for the perfect location for their bio and life science businesses, promoting the I-270 corridor a hub for this niche market.

When the federal government agreed to a major price hike for Nuo Therapeutics Inc.'s lead wound therapy product last October, officials at the Gaithersburg biotech felt it was the game changer they'd been waiting for.

Twenty-two finalists have been selected for the Maryland Incubator Company of the Year Awards.

bwtech@UMBC leads the incubator list with eight tenant companies up for awards. Previous winners include Emerging Technology Centers-based SocialToaster, Spark’s Avhana Health and Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship’s Milestone Sports.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Health and Human Services IDEA Lab are looking for a “talented, awesomely connected” entrepreneur-in-residence to shepherd creation of a new pre-certification process for IT vendors interested in working with states.

Few industries are facing as much external change as pharmaceuticals and medical products, whether it be sustained global demand and the need for drugs and devices, accelerating cost pressures on health systems, growing complexity in emerging markets, or the disruptive effect of new technologies in therapy and care provision.

The U.S. health care system has a tremendous need for novel high- (and low-) tech solutions to increase its quality, agility and affordability.

To meet this need, the National Science Foundation (NSF) supports research and early-stage development of novel biomedical products, processes and services.

Thursday, June 2, 2016 7:30 AM - 9:00 AM, Bethesda Country Club

An IPO is one of the most important events in a company’s history, and navigating the course requires an enormous amount of endurance. Choosing an investment bank, perfecting your roadshow, and meeting with investors is just the tip of the iceberg. Join Vit Vasista, Chief Financial Officer of REGENXBIO, at All the Right Moves: Planning a Successful Exit Strategy, on Thursday, June 2, from 7:30 – 9:00 a.m. Vit will share tips that were integral to REGENXBIO's successful 2015 IPO, from pitching to trading.

On May 23, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) convened at Johns Hopkins Hospital a scientific expert panel to discuss what to do about the Zika epidemic. Organizing the event within two business days was no small feat, as Cardin, scientific experts, health department leaders, hospital executives and industry representatives all had to quickly clear their very busy morning schedules. The attendance of television and newspaper outlets (such as the Baltimore Sun) meant that the discussion’s proceedings would be available to the public. From the very start, Cardin kept the tone very science-focused: The Zika epidemic is a public health emergency, and the issue is how best scientifically, collaboratively and expeditiously to handle this emergency.

Life science venture firm 5AM Ventures has raised $285 million for fund number 5, according to data from a Form D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm makes investments in life science startups at the seed and early stage of their development.

Two sets of numbers shows how far biopharma activity has progressed in Asia recently. The value of biotech venture capital funding during the first quarter zoomed to $174 million in the first quarter from $150 million in Q4 2015 and a mere $9.4 million in Q1 2015, according to Tech In Asia.

The fifth annual U.S. News STEM Solution Conference kicked off May 18 with a half-day look at STEM education in the Baltimore region and its impact on the local economy.

Pharma major Lupin today said it has received an establishment inspection report (EIR) from the USFDA on closure of inspection of its Mandideep and Aurangabad facilities.

In a BSE filing, Lupin said: "It has received establishment inspection report (EIR) for its Mandideep and Aurangabad facilities wherein the USFDA has concluded that the inspections stand closed."

“Twelve weeks ago, these projects were literally just ideas,” said Rana Quraishi, PhD, director of new ventures in the Office of Research and Development at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). Quraishi was welcoming students, intellectual property experts, and scientists to the final meeting of UMB’s first-ever course in developing and pitching a biotechnology business concept, called CIPP 980.

Longtime San Franciscans may remember the Mission Bay neighborhood, located on the southern end of the city, as the home to one of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company’s railyards. Trains ran in and out of the railyard for nearly 100 years until the 1990s.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released a federal funding opportunity (FFO) to establish and sustain up to eight Regional Alliances and Multistakeholder Partnerships to Stimulate (RAMPS) Cybersecurity Education and Workforce Development. Through this announcement, NIST will commit up to $1.6 million for state or regional consortiums that identify cybersecurity workforce development pathways that address local workforce needs. Although lead organizations must be a nonprofit or institution of higher education, NIST encourages public-private partnerships with industry and local governments. Proposals are due July 12, 2016.

Novavax Inc. has won a potentially lucrative fast-track designation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for one of its lead vaccine candidates to protect older patients against a respiratory virus known as RSV.

The Association of University Research Parks is proud to present the 2016 Awards of Excellence in research and science park development and practice.

AURP will honor industry leaders at the 2016 International Conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Please submit nominees by Friday, July 15, 2016.

The National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2) will hold its inaugural University Startups Demo Day (USDD) at the National Press Club and Congress in Washington, DC on September 20, 2016.

The USDD provides an unprecedented opportunity for corporate open innovation and venturing groups, VCs, and angels to discover, review, partner with, and fund university startups. At the same time, it raises awareness in Congress of the pivotal role that universities play in the formation of high potential startups, the creation of high value jobs across the country, and overall national competitiveness.

The USDD will showcase thirty-five (35) of the best university startups in specific technology areas. Selected by their universities, and scored by corporates, angels, and VCs, the top scoring university startups will be invited to present at the National Press Club in the first part of the day. During the second part of the day, the companies will meet and have photo ops with their senators and representatives at Congress.

The National Science Foundation’s I-Corps initiative is heavily influenced by the lean start-up methodology, which calls for rapid iteration of value propositions and customer segments based on formal and extensive interviews with the industry stakeholders of a technology or service. While this methodology has proven to be very successful overall, many universities have reported difficulty engaging faculty in the process because of the six-week commitment to the program.

Women who get a prosthetic foot after losing a leg to disease or injury have limited shoe options, but an invention by five Johns Hopkins University students may change that. The university announced Wednesday that the “Prominence” could be the first non-custom prosthetic foot to adapt to high heels up to 4 inches high.

Senseonics Holdings, Inc. (NYSE-MKT:SENS), a medical technology company focused on the development and commercialization of a long-term, implantable continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) system for people with diabetes, today announced it has signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Roche for the multi-country commercialization of Senseonics’ Eversense® Continuous Glucose Monitoring System.

GlycoMimetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: GLYC) today announced that the peer-reviewed journal, Science Translational Medicine, has published preclinical research in its May 25 issue pointing to a potential clinical application for GMI-1271 in the treatment of breast cancer. The published study details research in an in vivo model that showed the company's drug candidate, GMI-1271, a novel E-selectin antagonist, inhibits breast cancer metastasis.

From Stewart Edelstein, Executive Director, Universities at Shady Grove:

"I am pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Richee L. Smith Andrews as USG’s first Chief Development Officer.  Richee brings over 15 years of development experience and will lead USG’s efforts to secure development funding, endowments, and major gifts to support academic programing, scholarships, and student success."   

The angel investor market in 2015 had a slight increase in investment dollars and in the deal size. Total investments in 2015 were $24.6 billion, an increase of 1.9% over 2014, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. A total of 71,110 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding in 2015, a decline of 3.1% over 2014 investments. The number of active investors in 2015 was 304,930 individuals, a decrease of 3.7% from 2014. The change in both total dollars and the number of investments resulted in a deal size for 2015 that was larger than in 2014 (an increase in deal size of 5.1% from 2014). These data, combined with the yield rates and valuations, indicate that angels were selective in their investment behavior in 2015. The decrease in valuations over the last three years indicates a continuing market correction in valuations. However, the $24.6 billion of investments is a robust amount and is close to the market high of $26.0 billion that occurred in 2007.