Stafford County leaders voted to infuse $500,000 into the county’s Tech and Research Park.

The money from the county’s Economic Opportunity Fund will be used to launch a co-working space and business incubator at the Quantico Corporate Center site in North Stafford. Incubators attract start-up companies and entrepreneurs looking for temporary office and meeting space to grow their firms.

Not only have several of the top bioscience companies in our region grown in the past year, but we can already predict some of the biggest growth spurts we’ll see next.

Healthcare Interactive tacked on a few extra million dollars to its latest funding round.

The Glenwood-based company announced $3.4 million in additional funding. It’s a tack-on to the health planning company’s $8 million Series A announced in 2014.

Epigenomics AG, a German-American cancer molecular diagnostics company, with its U.S. headquaters in Germantown, MD, announced that LabCorp® to offer Epi proColon®, a blood-based test for colorectal cancer screening, in the U.S.

With its U.S. headquarters located within the Germantown Innovation Center, Epigenomics recently announced that its blood-based test for colorectal cancer screening, Epi proColon®, will be available in the U.S.  This deal is yet another example of the success of a company in Montgomery County’s Business Innovation Network, specifically in the life sciences incubator, earning significant revenue from the marketplace.  "It's truly hard to express how proud we are when an incubator company makes it through FDA approvals and gets their product to market," said Sally Sternbach, Acting Director of Montgomery County Department of Economic Development.

Redonda Miller, senior vice president of medical affairs for the Johns Hopkins Health System and vice president of medical affairs for The Johns Hopkins Hospital, will assume the role of president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital on July 1.

She will succeed current president Ronald R. Peterson, becoming the hospital's 11th president and the first woman to hold the post since the hospital was founded in 1889.

Greater Washington builds great startups – we just can’t keep them here.

Over the past 20 years, 105 D.C. area startups were sold for more than $1 billion, but only 16 of those deals kept the businesses in the region, according to a new report examining innovation in the D.C. area. And out of 6,000 business sales over the last 20 years, about 75 percent were to out-of-region purchasers.

The Tech Council of Maryland (TCM), Maryland’s largest technology trade association, announced the winners of it 28th Annual Industry Awards during a celebration at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel & Conference Center attended by more than 600 technology and business leaders.

A team of MIT and Harvard University students who invented a smartphone-connected sensor that detects lung cancer from a single breath took home the grand prize from Wednesday night’s $100K Entrepreneurship Competition.

The 2030 Group has hired a global brand consultant to help rebrand Greater Washington and expects to launch a marketing campaign early next year.

There’s no doubt that telemedicine is growing: Its usage is up 50 percent since 2013 with nearly 15 million people using such services in 2015. Here are the top five telemedicine trends happening right now.

Healthcare Interactive Inc. has raised $3.4 million to bring on more clients for its health care planning business.

The new funding is an add-on to the company’s Series A round and was led by the Maryland Venture Fund, the state’s venture capital arm. Previous investors Grotech Ventures and Harbert Management Corp. also participated. The new funding brings Healthcare Interactive’s total Series A to $11.8 million.

Wait, can this be true? From a new report by 1776, “a global incubator and seed fund,” comes this startling claim: “Boston is the #1 city in the U.S. for fostering entrepreneurial growth.”

Boston, not Silicon Valley? Really? This chart from the reports seems to say otherwise:

Join us this month at a special Baltimore BioBuzz to to showcase the region's #1 ranked strength among other Biotech industry hubs - our talent. Graduate Student groups from JHU and UMB have come together to sponsor BioBuzz and welcome all of our regional industry partners to join them. They are all seeking to connect with and impact our regional industry and ecosystem and begin to show you what their vision of tomorrow looks like.

Come out on May 26th to the Baltimore BioBuzz at Heavy Seas Ale House to meet the leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

Event is for Post-Docs & Professional Scientists currently working in the Therapeutic Areas of:

•Oncology

•Respiratory, Inflammation & Autoimmunity

•Cardiovascular & Metabolic Diseases

•Infectious Diseases & Vaccines

•Related scientific disciplines    

Event will include music, lawn games, hors d'oeuvres, drinks.

Helping individuals returning from incarceration pay for housing, mentoring high school students to build robotic cars, and providing a system to reuse dorm furnishings and supplies are among the winning ideas to emerge from the latest round of online crowdsourcing on the Johns Hopkins Idea Lab.

IBM today announced a multi-year, cognitive computing collaboration with the University of Maryland in Baltimore on an Accelerated Cognitive Cybersecurity Laboratory (ACCL). It’s the second such move in a month. In mid-April Big Blue announced plans for the Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research (C3SR) to be based at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Hong-Kong based Value Measured Investment Limited led a $10 million Series B financing in Sirnaomics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focusing on RNAi therapeutics. The funding will go towards development of anti-fibrosis treatments, with a Phase I clinical trial planned for early second half of 2016.

GenVec, Inc. (NasdaqCM: GNVC) ("GenVec" or "the Company"), today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with institutional investors for an offering of shares of common stock with gross proceeds of approximately $5 million in an at-the-market registered direct offering. The closing of the offering is expected to take place on or about May 10, 2016, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels was among the panelists at the Milken Institute's Global Conference last week, taking part in a discussion on how universities across the country are increasing their roles in regional economic development.

The panelists examined innovative models of collaboration with the private and government sectors that are spurring regional economic growth. They also discussed how universities are walking the tightrope of balancing a commitment to basic scientific research—where new knowledge is generated—with their desire and need to maximize returns from transferring technology to the private sector.

Kevin Haley doesn’t pay attention to the competition. As president of product and innovation for Under Armour, he encourages his team to ignore the noise and focus on their own game.

Kathy Snyder can go back to the beach now.

Snyder came out of retirement last year to once again take over the Maryland Chamber of Commerce when its CEO unexpectedly resigned. On Tuesday, the Chamber announced Snyder's replacement, Christine Ross, currently the CEO of the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce in Florida, will take over the organization on July 11.

After six years of existence and raising more than $20 million, Personal Genome Diagnostics has its first full-time CEO.

Douglas Ward will head the Canton-based Johns Hopkins spinout and sit on its board, the company announced Monday.

According to Johns Hopkins researchers, every year due to birth defect, trauma or cancer, more than 200,000 people will need replacement bones in their face or skull. Typically, doctors would remove a part of the patient’s fibula and try to carve it into the required shape and implant the bone back into the patient’s face. While the procedure typically results in the bone regrowing and healing the damage in the face, it isn’t the ideal solution. Depending on the damage being corrected, the bone fragment often can’t be shaped to fit the face very well, which leaves the patient with significant scarring. The removal of part the fibula also creates trauma in the patient’s leg which, when combined with the ongoing trauma in their face or skull, can be quite stressful.

UMBC and IBM Research have announced an exciting new collaboration to create the Accelerated Cognitive Cybersecurity Lab (ACCL), opening at UMBC in fall 2016. Housed within the College of Engineering and Information Technology, the ACCL will advance scientific frontiers in cybersecurity and machine learning. The new lab is supported by a multi-year commitment from IBM.

The move to open an accelerator is part of the health system's goal to create a place for personalized health ideas to "percolate," says CEO Todd Stottlemyer.

Lockheed Martin wants to inspire the next generation of American space innovators with a major Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) education project.

Launched last month, Generation Beyond aims to bring the science of space into homes and classrooms. Geared toward middle school students, the program harnesses Lockheed Martin’s experience in deep space exploration.

Harbor Designs and Manufacturing (HDM) will hold a ribbon cutting ceremony at Tuesday, May 17th to mark the opening of its new 45,000 sq. ft. engineering and manufacturing facility in the heart of a Baltimore City Economic Empowerment Zone. The new HDM facility is dedicated to the production and engineering of cutting-edge technologies built with local labor. Link to the invite.

Speaking at the annual Health Datapalooza conference today, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced a challenge to encourage health care organizations, designers, developers, digital tech companies and other innovators to design a medical bill that’s simpler, cleaner, and easier for patients to understand, and to improve patients’ experience of the overall medical billing process. The "A Bill You Can Understand" design and innovation challenge is intended to solicit new approaches and draw national attention to a common complaint with the health care system: that medical billing is a source of confusion for patients and families.

As I take part in panel discussions on the investor’s perspective on startup financing and growth, it strikes me how formulaic these events tend to be. A group of investors provides insight to a room full of rapt entrepreneur attendees. Sometimes the entrepreneurs get to ask questions, and sometimes they don’t.

Emergent BioSolutions announced April 15 that it has begun the formal process of separating some of its assets to form a separate entity, which will be known as Aptevo Therapeutics Inc. Aptevo will specifically focus on immuno-oncology technology, while Emergent will consolidate its focus on public health.

English-speaking universities continue to dominate the world, according to a new ranking from the Times Higher Education supplement released Thursday.

Of the top 24, 16 were American and six were British.

A new accelerator devoted to agricultural technology startups is launching in Research Triangle Park with $11.5 million in initial funding.

The AgTech Accelerator, which officially opened for business Thursday, anticipates raising a total of $25 million to $30 million from investors by the end of this year, said John Dombrosky, a former Syngenta executive who is CEO of the new venture.

Construction on the Universities at Shady Grove’s new biomedical sciences and engineering building is scheduled to begin this fall after local leaders persuaded Gov. Larry Hogan to reinstate funding for the project during this year’s General Assembly session.

Two biotech companies in the United States have been given the green light to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of dead people. © Shutterstock Bioquark Inc., in collaboration with Revita Life Sciences, has been given ethical permission by US health authorities to recruit 20 patients who have been declared clinically dead from a traumatic brain injury to test whether parts of their central nervous system (CNS) can be brought back to life.

This week, MdBioLab was featured on ABC7 (WJLA) and Montgomery Community Media (MCM). In the ABC7 piece, MdBioLab was on location at Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School in Upper Marlboro. Students were engaged in one of MdBioLab’s more popular activities, Mystery of the Crooked Cell in which they learn how to diagnose sickle cell disease at the molecular level. Working to achieve MdBio Foundation's mission, MdBioLab brought the students access to laboratory equipment that many had never used before.