Surgeons trying a new way to save the life of a baby born with half a heart stood over her open chest and waited for the FedEx box.

Millions of travelers suffer from jet lag every year. And now Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ: VNDA) said one of its drugs successfully addressed the problem with hundreds of volunteers in a late-stage clinical trial.

Symbiont Health, maker of innovative technology to detect falls for seniors and nursing home patients, took home the $15,000 grand prize at yesterday’s Pitch Dingman Competition, the University of Maryland’s business competition chaired by businessman and philanthropist Robert G. Hisaoka. The competition awarded nearly $30,000 in seed funding to top student entrepreneurs in a “Shark Tank”-style pitch session, hosted by the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business.

Sonavex, Inc. announced today the final closure of its expanded $4.5M Series A and filing of a 510(k) submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its EchoMark device. The proceeds will accelerate Sonavex’s commercial launch later this year and support further product development. Participants in the additional financing included Fusion Fund (aka NewGen Capital), FundRx, and existing investors.

Get answers from experienced entrepreneurs and legal/business professionals on how to build a successful startup company. Receive free and impartial advice, brainstorm business strategies, investigate funding opportunities and learn about the vast resources available to entrepreneurs.

Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 4-6 p.m.

TAP Building, 387 Technology Drive, Room 1105, UMD

Rexahn Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE American:RNN), a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing innovative, targeted therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, today announced financial results for the year ended December 31, 2017.

The dispute is already underway. In August, the Trump administration initiated a sweeping investigation into Chinese trade practices, including whether Chinese firms are investing in U.S. companies to steal their technology and whether they are forcing joint ventures, pressuring American companies that invest in China to transfer technology to a Chinese partner, or hacking U.S. companies’ software.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has announced a new initiative designed to provide patients access to their electronic health records and share their data with their preferred health care providers.

New compounds targeting epigenetics have shown remarkable early activity in patients with lymphoma, according to data presented at the TAT (Targeted Anticancer Therapies) International Congress 2018 in Paris, France. ESMO's phase-I oncology meeting featured early clinical studies with BET inhibitors and EZH2 inhibitors.

Life science industry impacts N.J. economy in big way, C&W report says By Emily Bader New Jersey | Mar 7, 2018 at 11:44 am

The life science industry is fueling New Jersey’s economy through revenue and job growth, according to a report by Cushman & Wakefield.

Will Your Company be the Buzz of BIO?

Are you an innovative biotech company that is R&D-intensive and looking to develop strategic partnerships within the industry? Nominate your company to be the Buzz of BIO!

Winners receive complimentary registration that includes BIO One-on-One Partnering™, a Company Presentation slot in the BIO Business Forum, and marketing promotion to thousands of industry leaders.

Nominations End March 16

Summer R.I.S.E. (Real Interesting Summer Experience) is a unique opportunity for Montgomery County youth to explore potential careers and for our local businesses to participate in developing a talent pipeline. The initiative is led by WorkSource Montgomery, Inc. (WSM), Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) and supported by county and state government partners, local businesses and non-profit organizations. Local businesses and governmental organizations volunteer to bring rising high school juniors and seniors into their workplaces to provide hands‐on, real world career experiences.

Officials from Amazon.com toured sites in Washington, Montgomery County, Md., and Northern Virginia last week — the latest sign that the tech giant is seriously considering adding a second headquarters with as many as 50,000 jobs to the D.C. area, according to officials in all three jurisdictions.

PointClickCare Technologies, the leading cloud-based software vendor for the long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) market, announced today its strategic partnership with Redox Inc., the leading integration platform for healthcare data exchange. Together, PointClickCare and Redox will work to bridge the gap between the acute and post-acute markets, empowering health systems with the visibility required for a truly coordinated and collaborative approach to care delivery across the healthcare continuum.

After a year of surging growth, Supernus Pharmaceuticals Inc. is building out a new home double its current size.

A team of students from Virginia Tech claimed victory at the fourth annual Deloitte Foundation Cyber Threat Competition for their analysis and incident response approach to a simulated cyber event. Anirudh Bagde, Danny Colmenares, Nicholas Herman and Andy Wong, the school's team members, each received $2,000 in scholarship money.

Did you know you are required to file for and receive a Hazardous Use Permit every year if you are storing, handling or using any hazardous substance in excess of 5 gallons or 50 pounds? (Failure to do so could result in civil and criminal penalties.)  Learn how to do this at the free training session, March 8th, at the Germantown Innovation Center, hosted by BioHealth Innovation and Montgomery County’s Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security

Bring your laptop and materials inventory to a 15 minute 1:1 meetings with County staff and they will help you register your materials as required on the County’s website.  (Pre-registration for these appointments is REQUIRED). 

To schedule an appointment, send your top 3 time preferences to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Meeting slots are assigned on a first-come, first-served basis:
8:45, 9:00, 9:15 a.m. – Open
9:30-11:30 a.m. - Booked
11:30, 11:45 a.m.  – Open
12:00, 12:15 p.m. - Open

More information:  https://Hazmat.MontgomeryCountyMD.gov

Entrepreneurship is on the rise in Hampton Roads and there’s an event to celebrate it.

757 LAUNCH, from 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. on March 30 at the Selden Market in Norfolk, will showcase three new resources to support area entrepreneurs and startups.

A new incubator is helping its first companies at Johns Hopkins this school year. Run by a group of undergraduate students, The Hatchery Incubator is helping undergraduate students who are starting companies.

It’s an initiative of TCO Labs, a nonprofit organization founded by students that’s looking to provide more startup resources on campus.

The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society has acquired Healthbox, looking to tap the business accelerator for its consulting and fund management capabilities.

Silicon Valley is home to an abundance of VC firms, all of them competing to get in on the next big deal. But VCs also exist (and succeed) outside of the Bay Area. While Washington, D.C. may not be an obvious location to establish a venture capital firm, Lavrock Ventures set its sights on the political capital. The firm announced today that it has closed its first fund at $25 million to invest in early-stage startups at the intersection of enterprise software, cybersecurity, and national security.

Personal Genome Diagnostics is adding to its IP portfolio to further develop new kinds of cancer tests.

A licensing deal announced Wednesday gives the Canton-based company exclusive rights to develop and commercialize products based on a key discovery at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Baltimore's Sisu Global Health Inc. is launching its first medical device product and planning for growth in 2018.

Sisu, founded in 2014, specializes in creating health technologies to solve public health problems. The company is backed by $2.1 million in funding from various sources including local investors Camden Partners, the Abell Foundation and state-backed Maryland Technology Development Corp. It also won an investment from venture capitalist and AOL co-founder Steve Case, through his Rise of the Rest initiative.

When: Tuesday, March 27, 2018 from 4:00 PM to 7:30 PM EDT

Where: Montgomery College Pinkney Innovation Complex: Science & Technology 20200 Observation Drive Germantown, MD 20876

Join us for our first Women in Pharma event! This community is for those in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry and is a community of mentors, resources across all levels, and provide educational sessions that will be an enabler for career success and work-life balance. All are welcome.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is undertaking an ambitious plan to assess Federal technology transfer efforts to enable greater “Return on Investment” (ROI) from the Federal Government’s $140 Billion annual investment in research and development (R&D). NIST is uniquely positioned to implement this initiative through our government-wide leadership role within the Department of Commerce, including delegated (link is external) regulatory authority and responsibility for annual reporting to the President and Congress.

Studying such real-world evidence offers manufacturers a powerful tool to prove the value of their drugs - something Roche (ROG.S) aims to leverage, for example, with last month’s $2 billion purchase of Flatiron Health.

For decades, state and local economies have leaned heavily on their anchor institutions during times of economic uncertainty and transition. An analysis finds that total employment in “Eds and Meds” industries increased in every state from 2005 to 2015. This article breaks down the growth and geography of Eds and Meds employment at the state level, while next week’s issue of the Digest will explore this data by metropolitan area.

The i.Invest Competition is designed to help entrepreneurial-minded youth, ages 13 -19, further advance their business development and pitching skills and connect with mentors, judges and investors from across the country. The competition will:

• Showcase the entrepreneurial spirit of the nation’s brightest young leaders;
• Provide a venue for entrepreneurs to test their business plan and pitching capabilities;
• Offer opportunities for entrepreneurs to earn seed funding and connect with investors and potential customers;
• Position entrepreneurs to collaborate with mentors and coaches on the development of viable business models; and
• Provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to win cash and in-kind prizes.

Natalia Majewska spent the summer after her junior year at Northwestern University interning in a lab at MedImmune, the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based global biologics research and development arm of pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. There, she worked in a lab developing synthetic proteins. 

A new biotech company is opening in Gaithersburg, and is bringing with it 100 new jobs in the next three to five years.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has awarded Emergent BioSolutions Inc. a $26 million contract to continue to supply a medical treatment to the government.

Across the globe, a collection of healthcare professionals gather around their computer screens in their respective offices in Beijing, Brussels, London, and Los Angeles. A skilled U.S.-based oncologist leads this virtual board in discussing a 38-year-old British patient with advanced lung cancer. Using virtual reality technology, the team is able to simultaneously review the patient’s entire disease profile, including her medical history and lifestyle, and see high-resolution pathology images and all sorts of other biological data.

The Maryland Tech Council (MTC) has announced the finalists for its 30th Anniversary Industry Awards Celebration. Winners will be revealed at a celebration on May 17, 2018 at The Hotel at The University of Maryland. The event, which draws more than 600 executives from the technology and life science communities, celebrates individuals and companies that have made a significant impact in their sectors.

Senti Biosciences, a startup that's looking to make a new treatment that's upending how we treat cancer, just raised $53 million.

"The first opportunity we have to delight or to upset a client is when they walk through the door either physically or virtually."

Sounds like a tech executive, right? Jeff Bezos even? The Amazon boss often talks about delighting customers, after all, although until recently the ecommerce giant didn't really have doors to physically walk through.