Vtesse, Inc. today announced that the first three patients have been screened for inclusion in its pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial with VTS-270 for treatment of Niemann-Pick Type C1 Disease (NPC). This clinical trial follows a Phase 1 study conducted by researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD).

NPC is a progressive, irreversible, chronically debilitating – and ultimately lethal – genetic disease. It is caused by a defect in lipid transportation within the cell, which leads to excessive accumulation of lipids in the brain, liver and spleen. Vtesse has worked extensively with regulators in the United States and Europe with the goal of conducting its pivotal study under one global protocol that will evaluate safety and efficacy of VTS-270 to support approval of the drug by regulatory agencies in both regions.

Three years ago, MIT finance professor Andrew Lo proposed rallying private investors to raise an eye-popping $30 billion to develop cancer drugs. That idea went nowhere.

A California congressman plans to file legislation next week that would create a more modest version of Lo’s plan: A $400 million fund to finance development of drugs for rare diseases — with the federal government acting as a backstop, providing financial guarantees to attract private investment. If it works, Lo said, taxpayers could profit and patients could get access to new treatments.

It's officially election season, which is why I'll be firing up a big, campaign bus and traveling through Charm City on Monday, stopping for crab cakes, talking to business leaders and meeting with politicians and students. Only our campaign is not about asking for votes in Baltimore; instead, it's about encouraging the people of Baltimore to continue rallying around startups and entrepreneurs.

For all the tragic news in recent months — and there is real heartbreak along with festering issues that have to be addressed — there's another chapter being written in the city's dynamic history. It centers around founders who are starting companies, creating jobs and bringing economic opportunity and growth to Baltimore.

BD Life Sciences, a segment of global medical technology company BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) announced Thursday the availability of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared BD MAX™ Enteric Parasite Panel for use on the BD MAX System.

The BD MAX Enteric Parasite Panel is the latest panel in the BD MAX Enteric suite of assays that aid in the diagnosis of infectious gastroenteritis. This panel joins the BD MAX Enteric Bacterial Panel detecting the pathogens that are responsible for up to 95 percent of the bacteria causing gastroenteritis. With the availability of the BD MAX Enteric Parasite Panel, the majority of pathogens causing this disease can be detected with a fully automated, rapid and accurate platform.

Gaithersburg-based biotech MedImmune and a division of 3M unveiled plans Friday to work together on a next-generation cancer immunotherapy drug.

Under the agreement, MedImmune — the biologics research and development arm of U.K. pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) – licensed an agent called MEDI9197 from 3M Drug Delivery Systems. 3M said it developed the molecule as an injectable treatment for head and neck cancer that stimulates the body's immune system to attack and destroy tumors.

If you want to see a city with pride and passion, come to Baltimore on the Friday before a Ravens football game. The entire city is purple, our home team's color. School kids wear purple. Working men and women wear purple. The cupcakes at local bakeries are -- you guessed it -- purple.

A Ravens game might be the occasion, but our pride and passion are bigger than our team. During Orioles games, we sing "Oh" as loud as we can during the national anthem that was penned right here ("Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light"). We put Old Bay (thank you McCormick Spice, a Baltimore company) on everything from crabs to ice cream.

BioFactura proudly announces the appointment of Dr. Jeffrey Hausfeld as the newly elected Chairman of the Board and Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Hausfeld, a graduate from Yale University School of Medicine, practiced Otolaryngology and Facial Plastic Surgery in the Washington DC area for more than 23 years until he ventured into the business side of medicine. He obtained an MBA specializing in healthcare from Johns Hopkins University and a degree in Organizational Development from George Washington University. Along with having been highly acclaimed during his surgical career, Dr. Hausfeld has been a successful physician entrepreneur as well. He is the President of Memory Care Communities LLC, a syndicate which builds and operates Assisted Living facilities specifically designed for Alzheimer’s and dementia care patients. He is the Managing Director of FMS Financial Solutions, a full service debt recovery firm in Greenbelt, Maryland focusing on medical and multi-family housing debt collections. Dr. Hausfeld is one of the Founders and the Chairman of the Board of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs (http://www.sopenet.org ), a global not for profit network focused on educating healthcare and life science professionals in Bioentrepreneurship and Innovation.

Five Johns Hopkins-affiliated tech startups were selected as finalists for the pitch competition at next week's "Rise of the Rest" tour event, where they will vie for a $100,000 top prize.

The five-city "Rise of the Rest" roadshow, launched by AOL co-founder and former CEO Steve Case, kicks off in Baltimore on Monday. The tour is designed to bring attention and funding to startups outside of traditional tech hubs like Silicon Valley and New York City.

The Baltimore City Health Department has received federal grant funding worth up to $22.8 million over four years that will go toward strengthening the city’s HIV prevention strategy.

Baltimore plans to use the money from the Centers for Disease Control to target outreach and prevention programs to men who have sex with men and transgender individuals, two groups at high risk for HIV infection.

Roche Holding AG's product lineup is so strong that it can grow briskly even if it meets setbacks, the chief executive of the Swiss drugmaker told a newspaper.

"Roche could have six new active pharmaceutical ingredients approved within two years. We never had this before," Severin Schwan told Finanz und Wirtschaft in an interview published on Friday.

On September 11, representatives of Zhongshan City, China, and Montgomery County, Maryland, signed a Memorandum of Understanding launching an economic development relationship between the two jurisdictions.

Through the agreement, the two authorities agree to actively support the other’s “efforts to promote culture, art and education exchanges,” including travel programs for members of their respective communities.

A new Science|Business analysis puts the spotlight on the most innovative clusters in Europe, uncovering what it takes to translate research from bench to bedside and highlighting the crucial need for policy support, innovation pull, and access to finance

The leading life sciences clusters in Europe have a long history of excellence in medical research, and with highly educated workforces, state of the art infrastructure, and well-established technology transfer organisations, are making significant progress in translation and commercialisation, according to a new Science|Business report that takes an in-depth look at 17 of Europe’s most innovative clusters.

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels has been awarded Carnegie Corp. of New York’s 2015 Academic Leadership Award, a prestigious recognition that comes with a $500,000 grant to the Baltimore school.

Daniels will use the $500,000 grant to make the university more accessible to students of Baltimore City public schools. He plans to increase support for low-income students through the Baltimore Scholars program, expand partnerships with local K-8 schools and create new initiatives that will help prepare students for college and careers.

The pictured device, produced by Baltimore-based Harpoon Medical, seeks to provide another in a series of recent improvements in mitral valve repair technology. While perhaps less revolutionary in form than Valtech Cardio’s Cardioband that received its CE Mark approval last week, the Harpoon does promise to cut traditional surgeries down to under an hour in length and drastically reduce the required incision size (to 2-inches or less).

Evidera, a leading provider of evidence-based solutions for the healthcare industry, is pleased to announce Evalytica™, a new software platform designed to support near real-time analyses of virtually any type of real-world data source, including claims, electronic medical records, and registry data. Evalytica™ uses standard data formats and published analytic methods that provide transparency and yield results that may be used in publications or submissions. 

"Evalytica™ marks a new frontier for Evidera as a leader in technology enabled tools for generating and communicating evidence of product safety and effectiveness," said Jon Williams, President and CEO, Evidera. "The increasing focus on real-world evidence for drug safety analysis that has resulted from the FDA Sentinel, the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP), and the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics (OHDSI) initiatives make tools like Evalytica™ that much more important." 

Drugmaker AstraZeneca is harnessing the wisdom of crowds to help mix tomorrow's cancer drug cocktails. 

The company said its decision to release preclinical data from more than 50 of its medicines was unprecedented in scale and would help accelerate the hunt for synergistic tumour-fighting drug combinations. 

CASI Pharmaceuticals to Raise $25.1 Million in Private Placement of Common Stock and Warrants ROCKVILLE, Md., Sept. 21, 2015 - CASI Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (the “Company”) (Nasdaq: CASI), a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the acquisition, development and commercialization of innovative therapeutics addressing cancer and other unmet medical needs for the global market with a commercial focus on China, announced today that it has entered into definitive agreements for a $25.1 million financing led by a China investment fund manager affiliated with the same management team of our current largest shareholder, IDG-Accel China Growth Fund III, L.P.

Picture this: A global business magazine features a close-up head-shot of a 30-year-old male on its cover.

He’s of Indian descent, with an American upbringing and education, and he’s just concocted a multi-million dollar business out of thin air.

Last month, Baltimore’s burgeoning startup scene earned a top spot in Entrepreneur’s hot U.S. startup cities’ list. With a network of top entrepreneurial resources such as Betamore, Baltimore Angels and Baltimore Corps, as well as educational institutions, it’s not hard to see why Baltimore’s startups are booming.

So, you live in Baltimore, you have a great idea and you are ready make your idea a reality. Where do you start? Before taking any tangible steps, concentrate on the capital with these three questions:

An open science collaboration among academic research institutes, the public sector, and private companies has been in the works since 2006 and now the drug manufacturer AstraZeneca has decided to join the bandwagon. AstraZeneca hopes to harness the open source platform of the DREAM challenge, releasing preclinical data on drugs developed by the company, to discover synergistic cancer drug combinations.

Developed by IBM researcher Gustavo Stolovitzky, PhD, and Columbia University researcher Andrea Califano, PhD, the program has blossomed with multiple cross-collaborative projects across 50 different institutions. About 2 years back, in February 2013, DREAM joined hands with Sage Bionetworks, a non-profit research organization that believes in open sharing of complex biological data, especially big data, to accelerate discovery. DREAM Challenges have touched a variety of healthcare issues, from prostate cancer to odor detection to protein interaction networks.

The Office of Research and Development at the University of Maryland Baltimore currently has 2 openings for the position of Technology Licensing Officer. The Technology Licensing Officers draft and negotiates term sheets and contracts to ensure that University technology and intellectual property (IP) is appropriately commercialized. The incumbents lead negotiations on IP licenses, option agreements and inter-institutional agreements. The incumbents ensure that third parties of University IP meet the contractual obligations to the University and serve as the University's primary point-of-contact with prospective and current licensees. The incumbents will function as part of an interdisciplinary team that assures the University protects, markets and commercializes its technologies and discoveries.  

On a Friday afternoon in June, Staq cofounders James Curran and Mike Subelsky turned over the giant scissors to Greg Cangialosi. Sporting a Staq T-shirt, the tech community leader cut the ribbon on the adtech startup’s new offices.

Located on the fourth floor of a building above 8 Market Place, the ceremony was held one story above a space where DreamIt Health’s Baltimore accelerator program helped six health-focused startups over the winter.

Applications to be a board member of the new Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) are being accepted until 5 p.m. on Friday, October 2.

The board members will be tasked with marketing Montgomery County, attracting businesses and investments to the County, growing entrepreneurship, as well as helping existing businesses grow and succeed.

For years, the Department of Health and Human Services has been taking cues from the private sector's startup culture, encouraging employees to work on independent technology ideas.  

On Thursday, HHS held a demo day for a few teams that joined its summer accelerator program, meant to build out technology ideas that could eventually be implemented in HHS. Here were a few ideas presented at the event:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), in collaboration with over 35 federal partners, today released the updated Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015–2020 (Plan).

The final Plan represents the collective strategy of federal offices that use or influence the use of health information technology (health IT). The Plan’s work aims to improve the health IT infrastructure, help transform health care delivery, and improve individual and community health. The Plan sets a blueprint for the federal partners to implement strategies that will support the nation’s continued development of a responsive and secure health IT and information use infrastructure.

The Maryland Board of Regents on Friday approved the University of Maryland University College’s request to create a for-profit business-intelligence company. The new company will offer data-analysis technology and services to universities across the country, and the revenue will go toward the university’s endowment.

The company, called HelioCampus, will provide two main services: the technology to combine and analyze a university’s data, as well as analysts to help administrators understand what the data mean.

Once every three weeks, I spend several days in the heart of Baltimore at the University of Maryland Medical Center for my chemotherapy. On each trip, I pass two magnificent stadiums, a vibrant downtown that includes my own office at the William Donald Schaefer Tower, and thousands of busy workers in a bustling, amazing, beautiful city.

During the riots in April and during my campaign for governor last year, I toured every corner of Baltimore, from Sandtown-Winchester to Fells Point. Everywhere I went, I met people who talked with me about their optimism for a better future for the great city they love.

Apply by Thursday, September 24 for a chance to record your 3-minute investor pitch in a mobile video studio on the Startup Maryland bus when it arrives in Montgomery County on Wednesday, September 30.

At each event, 20 entrepreneurs will pitch their companies and network with the business community. Pitches are seen online by VC, angel investors and voted on by fans around Maryland! Fan favorite finalists will present at the TEDCO Entrepreneur Expo on November 17.

There are a lot of rare diseases that strike a small number of people and some of them are actually novel maladies that have to be identified and studied. The National Institutes Of Health (NIH) has just begun a new program to help doctors work with such patients, combining resources at leading institutions across the country to identify the genetic causes of various conditions. Seven centers, including the NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, are participating in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) for which a patient portal, called UDN Gateway, has been setup to recruit potential study subjects. Additionally, two DNA sequencing centers will be involved in providing genomic information gathered from patient samples.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University have developed a low-cost diagnostic tool, slightly larger than a coffee mug, that detects chlamydia within 30 minutes.

Scientists hope the apparatus, unofficially called mobiLab, will improve screening for the common and often symptomless sexually transmitted disease that, if left untreated, can cause permanent damage to a woman's reproductive system and lead to fatal ectopic pregnancies.

QIAGEN N.V. today announced its latest initiative to increase global access to advanced cervical cancer screening technologies for women most in need. It includes the commercial launch of QIAGEN's CE marked careHPV Test and the introduction of a new CE marked self-collection claim for its sampling device, the digene HC2 Collection Device.

The careHPV Test is the first HPV diagnostic specifically designed for regions with limited healthcare infrastructure. As such, the test enables the worldwide implementation and expansion of HPV-based cervical cancer screening, including in areas where women are not screened otherwise. Human papillomavirus or HPV is the primary cause of cervical cancer.

For years, Maya Nieder suffered from severe developmental delays, including difficulty communicating and hearing loss. She endured multiple operations and countless tests before exome sequencing revealed a mutation in her genes that had never been seen before. For Maya and her family, the power of sequencing her DNA found an answer and ended a four year search for the cause of her medical illnesses. Maya was the world’s first crowdfunded gene discovery innovated through Rare Genomics Institute.  Now her parents know the cause, and they can stop searching.

There are a lot of rare diseases that strike a small number of people and some of them are actually novel maladies that have to be identified and studied. The National Institutes Of Health (NIH) has just begun a new program to help doctors work with such patients, combining resources at leading institutions across the country to identify the genetic causes of various conditions. Seven centers, including the NIH headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, are participating in the Undiagnosed Diseases Network (UDN) for which a patient portal, called UDN Gateway, has been setup to recruit potential study subjects. Additionally, two DNA sequencing centers will be involved in providing genomic information gathered from patient samples.

When: Thursday October 15, 2015 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM EDT

Where: Growlers, 227 E Diamond Ave Gaithersburg, MD 20877

We are excited to be returning to Growlers in Gaithersburg on October 15th for BioBuzz MoCo with our Sponsor The Biomedical Research Institute (BRI). BRI is a nonprofit organization committed to improving global health through a variety of research and service activities. For over 60 years BRI has been an integral component of the federal government's aim to reduce the global health burden posed by infectious diseases in developing nations. BRI has made significant contributions focusing initially on cryobiology, subsequently on malaria, and more recently on schistosomiasis, a deadly parasitic disease with over 200 million people affected and a quarter million deaths a year.

Let’s stop the worrying right now. Baltimore city has its own network of growing innovation clusters.

That doesn’t take anything away from the county or the rest of Maryland or the broader mid-Atlantic region, for that matter. It’s just that it needs to be said that Baltimore’s old urban core is having a revival — and technology, creative and web businesses are playing a real role.