Leading global start up accelerator Dreamit today announced that it has renewed its partnerships with industry leaders Independence Blue Cross (Independence) and Penn Medicine to advance entrepreneurship and innovation in health care. The continued support follows significant upgrades to the Dreamit Health program announced earlier this year. The new model includes key changes designed to appeal to a broader range of entrepreneurs, including a no-cash/no-equity offer to draw later-stage companies and serial entrepreneurs who would not typically consider an accelerator program.

Biological researchers should be able to share datasets the same way they share published scientific articles — at least, that’s what the National Institutes of Health is trying to ensure with a new project. 

NIH is building a virtual space called “the Commons,” where researchers can one day do just that: share data, software and any other virtual tools or research processes in a way that’s “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable,” or “FAIR.”

Rewards for creative people; investments in new ideas that challenge the power of the Pope and sovereign rulers, that give impetus to science and give birth to the new class of merchant nobles creators of wealth with their businesses: this the Renaissance.

The American Medical Association has invested $15 million to become founding partner of Health2047, a high-tech incubator that will explore innovative solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing the nation's 1.1 million physicians and their patients.

Sucampo Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:SCMP) has acquired an option to commercialize a drug candidate aimed at preventing colon cancer among a high-risk group of patients in a deal worth up to $190 million. Sucampo unveiled Monday its agreement with Tuscon, Arizona-based Cancer Prevention Pharmaceuticals Inc. for the option to acquire an exclusive license to commercialize for a drug candidate in Phase III clinical trials. The therapy is aimed at treating a genetic condition called Familial Adenomatous Polyposis, or FAP, which can develop into colon cancer if it's left untreated.

Thursday January 21, 2016 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM EST

Johns Hopkins Montgomery County Campus is also a site for the popular Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Geared toward retirees, these non-credit classes cover topics including opera, literature, history, politics and more.

The campus is home to approximately 35 research companies and entrepreneurs. Scientists on campus are studying cervical cancer, Alzheimer's disease, cell therapy, proteins and other health issues. Other companies focus on technology, medical devices and consulting services. The Rockville Science Center's administrative offices are located here. Start-up companies, second-stage businesses and more established companies are welcome.

Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Sucampo) (Nasdaq: SCMP) announced an option and collaboration agreement under which Cancer Prevention Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CPP) has granted Sucampo the sole option to acquire an exclusive license to commercialize CPP-1X/sulindac combination product in North America. This product is currently in a Phase 3 clinical trial for the treatment of familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP).

Ah. Another January, another J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference — where this year’s biggest biopharma deals are just a cocktail and a handshake away. As swaths of C-suite execs descend upon San Francisco, here’s an overview of some of the ideas we expect to see in motion at the conference (cattle yard) this week:

We’re one step closer to open-source collaboration in the life sciences – and could come a hell of a lot closer to completely revolutionizing cancer treatment – thanks to a promising new alliance formed by the top brass in biopharma.

Meant to accelerate the potential of immunotherapy in treating cancer, The National Immunotherapy Coalition has just been launched by leaders from Amgen, Celgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and NantWorks – along with Independence Blue Cross and many others. Here’s why:

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) announced today that it has received a favorable private letter ruling from the Internal Revenue Service related to the planned spin-off of its biosciences business. Subject to its terms, the ruling confirms that certain aspects of the planned transaction, including those related to the qualification of the business as an active trade or business, will not preclude the spin-off from qualifying as tax-free to Emergent and its stockholders.

Our region’s business community has a self-esteem problem. We nod shamefully when we are told we depend on government dollars for success.

Wrong.

The world’s largest DNA sequencing company says it will form a new company to develop blood tests that cost $1,000 or less and can detect many types of cancer before symptoms arise.

Illumina, based in San Diego, said its blood tests should reach the market by 2019, and would be offered through doctors’ offices or possibly a network of testing centers.

Deloitte today announced a strategic alliance agreement with AT&T aimed at accelerating the adoption of smart city technology across U.S. cities. The telco and global management consultancy, along with several other hand-picked alliance members, strive to enhance livability and improve the efficiencies of local governments through optimal use of today's technology.

Six startups have been selected for the Emerging Technology Centers’ AccelerateBaltimore program and one will receive an extra investment of $100,000. Now in its fifth year, AccelerateBaltimore is a four month program that aims to help promising startup companies come closer to bringing their products or services to market. The program is backed by $170,000 from the Abell Foundation. The money largely goes toward the $25,000 award given to each participating company.

OriGene Technologies, Inc. (OriGene), a leading manufacturer of high quality antibodies and gene-centric tools, announced today that they have been awarded a Phase II SBIR contract from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to develop high-affinity, anti-peptide antibodies for mass-spectrometry-based serum biomarker detection/ quantification assays.

Guy Marcus, a 24-year-old Ph.D. candidate in physics at the Johns Hopkins University, is one of 30 young scientists named to Forbes magazine's annual "30 Under 30" list.

As usual, we bring you the top five entries from our most recent list. This week, it's the top venture capital recipients in Maryland, based on funding received between the first and third quarters of 2015.

Vtesse, Inc. announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted its drug candidate, VTS-270 for treatment of Niemann-Pick Type C1 Disease (NPC), Breakthrough Therapy designation status. Both the FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had previously granted Orphan Drug status to VTS-270, which is currently in a pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial.

David Narrow, who graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2013 with a master's degree in biomedical engineering, has been named one of Forbes magazine's "30 Under 30" notable entrepreneurs in the health care industry.

Narrow, 25, is the CEO of Sonavex, a company that works to improve outcomes for surgical patients by providing clinicians cutting-edge visualization through the use of imaging technology. Sonavex is presently based in North Baltimore and is part of FastForward at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, a business accelerator program that supports startup companies.

Accelerator Corporation, a leading life science investment and management firm, today announced the Series A financing of Petra Pharma Corporation to develop small molecule inhibitors for the treatment of cancer and metabolic diseases in alliance with Weill Cornell Medicine. The investors participating in the $48 million Series A investment in Petra Pharma include Accelerator New York's investment syndicate partners: AbbVie, Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Harris & Harris Group, Inc., Innovate NY Fund, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., The Partnership Fund for New York City, Pfizer Venture Investments, Watson Fund and WuXi PharmaTech.

Under Armour’s partnership with IBM Watson is the latest in a series of announcements from the consumer health and fitness business that illustrate how the company is thinking about big data applications not only to provide timely, helpful insights on athletic training to a customer base of 180 million but also how to get them to buy more gear.

Nat Turner and Zach Weinberg are young, successful and ambitious. The pair formerly started an ad tech company that Google acquired for $81 million, Invite Media, and for the past two years they've been tackling a much bigger problem: cancer.

Turner and Weinberg launched Flatiron Health after seeing family and friends battle the brutal disease. Flatiron Health is taking a data-driven approach to cancer. It analyzes the results of cancer treatments and turns the information and findings it gathers into software solutions the medical community can subscribe to. Now they've raised $175 million from pharmaceutical giant Roche, which will also be purchasing some of Flatiron Health's software, The New York Times' Katie Benner reports.

A cancer startup just raised millions in a funding round led by a pharmaceutical giant.

That could be the sign of bigger things to come.

Billions of dollars have been made from cancer drugs that inhibit the ubiquitin-proteasome system, otherwise known as the cellular garbage dump. By turning off the cell’s garbage disposal system, these drugs enable proteins to build up to a point where malignant cells commit suicide.

Medigene AG (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: MDG1) announced today that the Supervisory Board has resolved important changes and additions to the senior management team to better align the organisational structure with the strategic goals of the company in immuno-oncology and to expand Medigene's presence in the United States. The Supervisory Board has appointed Prof Dolores Schendel as the new Chief Executive Officer of the company, with effect from 1 February 2016. Prof Schendel joined Medigene's Executive Board as Chief Scientific Officer in May 2014. She was co-founder of Trianta Immunotherapy GmbH (now Medigene Immunotherapies GmbH), which was acquired by Medigene at the beginning of 2014 and whose platforms are the basis of Medigene's scientific strategy.

Germantown startup NextCure Inc. has raised $67 million in Series A financing for a plan to commercialize the work of a scientist credited with discovering a key pathway for how cancer drugs harness the immune system, it was announced Wednesday.

Many articles these days talk about reasons why companies should consider innovation as a core discipline.    A quick Google search on “why innovate” produces 23,600,000 results.  There is a plethora of opinions regarding innovation and why it is important.  Competition is usually one of the reasons but not the only one, especially when looking how the world will be in the near future.  Innovation becomes a critical survival skill when looking at predictions for how we will live, work, and communicate as early as 2020.

At the end of every year, Edge reaches out to the smartest people on the planet and asks them a single question in an attempt to find the ideas and concepts that are changing the world of science. This year’s two-part question was: “What do you consider the most interesting recent [scientific] news? What makes it important?”

Baltimore, by a curious mixture of geographic positioning, educated talent, proximity to pork, and determined capital, is poised to become a crucial part of the East Coast technology cluster.

"BioIT Solutions of Silver Spring, Maryland has been selected as one of the 50 Most Valuable Tech Companies by Insights Success magazine in their December issue. We are the only company in the list focused on the biotechnology industry."

Do you work in Greater Washington and love your employer? Then you probably work at a federal agency. We asked Glassdoor, a job-recruiting site that allows employees to anonymously grade their company and their CEO, to crunch the numbers to find out who the most-liked employers are in Greater Washington. We recently compiled a list of most-liked CEOs, too.

The crisis in soaring drug prices has produced not merely a new class of public enemies to skewer -- step forward, Martin Shkreli! -- but the best evidence yet that the nation's healthcare regulatory priorities are out of whack.

AT&T next month will open a center focused on digital health innovations within the Texas Medical Center's state-of-the-art Innovation Institute, the communications giant announced on Tuesday.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016 2:00 pm

When developing a new drug or technology, innovators are generally focused on achieving regulatory approval. But often they don’t spend enough time considering how the product will be paid for once it is approved. This NHLBI Small Biz Hangout will focus on basic components of reimbursement that every innovator needs to understand—coverage, coding, and payment. Attendees will hear guidance on how to implement an effective reimbursement strategy while their product is still in development.

What is technology transfer / business development and what are the career opportunities in the field? What are the skills required and how does one acquire them? How can an scientist start a non-traditional career such as this? These are the questions to be answered in this presentation from two former bench scientists from the National Cancer Institute.