Entrepreneurs on college campuses got another boost Thursday with Boston-area Xfund closing a $100 million fund to bankroll new ideas and support startups it’s backed so far.

The recent bumpy landing of Philae on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a ten year journey, and more than 1.4 billion euros in investment, is a fantastic example of European science, expertise and collaboration at work.

Biopharmaceuticals are among the most sophisticated and elegant achievements of modern science. The huge, complex structures of these drugs don’t just look extraordinary in the 3-D modeling systems used to design them; they also perform their jobs remarkably well, offering high efficacy and few side effects. And there is much more to come: existing treatment archetypes are evolving and becoming more sophisticated all the time, and continuing research is yielding entirely new types of products.

Learn How to Get Seed Funding Investment for Your Business from the Government! Featuring SBIR program managers from leading Federal agencies invited including DOD, NIH, NCI, and Homeland Security plus case studies from experienced SBIR recipients and much more! Network with the SBIR program managers during an Expo and meet other business owners.

This event is generously supported by Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County; Maryland Technology Development Corporation; BioHealth Innovation; and the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development.

Eyeing the biotech IPO boom earlier this year, Ariosa Diagnostics planned to go public as it battled larger competitors in the prenatal testing field. But the San Jose, CA-based company backed off in late April, and that was its last chance. Multinational healthcare firm Roche has bought Ariosa for an undisclosed amount, the companies announced today.

Most people’s to-do lists are, almost by definition, pretty dull, filled with those quotidian little tasks that tend to slip out of our minds. Pick up the laundry. Get that thing for the kid. Buy milk, canned yams and kumquats at the local market.

A quick note: Nature announced yesterday that it will make all of its articles free to view, read, and annotate online. That applies to the historic science journal (launched in 1869) and to 48 other scientific journals in Macmillan’s Nature Publishing Group (NPG). Other titles include Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine and Nature Physics.

Federal spending on scientific research hasn’t kept up with inflation in recent years, and it’s made it harder for researchers to fund their work. Some of them are turning to another source: crowdfunding. But this funding source raises new questions for scientists.  

"Today, on this stage in the auditorium of Richard Montgomery High School - a magnet school that symbolizes the quality education that is Montgomery County - I stand before you with great humility and excitement about the future as I begin my third term as your County Executive."

"I have learned throughout my life that families are our “links” to our past, our anchors in the present, and bridges to our future. So, to my family, your love, support and patience have kept me grounded."

Every once and a while we get a clear example of the gulf between those battling over important public policy issues and can understand why the public and policy makers are confused by resulting charges and counter charges. Last week was a good illustration.

The Washington Business Journal interviewed Leslie Ford Weber, JHU's director of the Montgomery County Campus and of government and community affairs for Montgomery County. The feature ran as an Executive Profile on Nov. 14, 2014. It was written by Vandana Sinha, an assistant managing editor at the Washington Business Journal. The photo was taken by Joanne S. Lawton.

That next blockbuster drug? It all begins with a hypothesis: GlaxoSmithKline just announced the winners of its second Discovery Fast Track Challenge – a competition that teams up American and European academia with GSK researchers to speed up their search for new therapeutics.

David Chalker, 50, has excruciating pain in his hip. He’s an Army veteran and because of the pain, he had to leave his job as a machinist, which left him in a great deal of debt and unable to pay for health insurance. He, his wife, and his three daughters needed to move in with his in-laws as a result.

The stampede is back on among venture capital firms to raise new money and close more funds, after years of standing pat following the recession and years of sluggish recovery.

Small businesses are a major driver of high-technology innovation and economic growth in the United States, generating significant employment, new markets, and high-growth industries.1 In this era of globalization, optimizing the ability of small businesses to develop and commercialize new products is essential for U.S. competitiveness and national security. Developing better incentives to spur innovative ideas, technologies, and products—and ultimately to bring them to market—is thus a central policy challenge.

An experimental vaccine to prevent Ebola virus disease was well-tolerated and produced immune system responses in all 20 healthy adults who received it in a Phase 1 clinical trial conducted by researchers from the National Institutes of Health. The candidate vaccine, which was co-developed by the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), was tested at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The interim results are reported online in advance of print in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Immunotherapy is at the forefront of cancer care; however, most cancers evolve the ability to dodge the body’s defenses.

Maryland startup BeneVir is developing immunotherapy viruses that rid the body of two types of tumor cells – those that cause cancer and the ones that make it recurrent.

Funding and Research Opportunities

The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
Notices:

• NIH Implementation of the US Government Policy on Institutional Oversight of Life Sciences Dual Use Research of Concern
• (NOT-OD-15-017) National Institutes of Health
• Publication of Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for Clinical Trials Registration and Results Submission under FDAAA
• (NOT-OD-15-018) Office of the Director, NIH
• NIH Request for Public Comments on the Draft NIH Policy on Dissemination of NIH-Funded Clinical Trial Information
• (NOT-OD-15-019) Office of the Director, NIH
• Request for Information (RFI): Inviting Comments and Suggestions on the Reagent-Related Barriers to Reproducible Research
• (NOT-OD-15-020) National Institutes of Health
• Reminder: Annual Reports to the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare due January 31, 2015
• (NOT-OD-15-025) National Institutes of Health
• Notice of Intent to Publish a Funding Opportunity Announcement for Sudden Death in the Young: Population-Based Studies (U01)
• (NOT-HL-14-241)
• National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Program Announcements

• Systems Science and Health in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (R21)
• (PAR-15-047) 
• Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research
• National Cancer Institute
• National Institute on Aging
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
• National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 
• National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research
• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
• National Institute of Mental Health
• National Institute of Nursing Research
• Office of Disease Prevention
• Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.
• Systems Science and Health in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (R01)
• (PAR-15-048) 
• Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research
• National Cancer Institute
• National Institute on Aging
• National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
• National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering
• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development 
• National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research
• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
• National Institute of Mental Health
• National Institute of Nursing Research
• Office of Disease Prevention
• Application Receipt/Submission Date(s): Multiple dates, see announcement.

In 2015, hospitals will – and should – make more advanced use of "third platform" technologies based on mobile tools, social channels, data analytics and the cloud, according to a recent report from IDC Health Insights.

With healthcare costs unsustainable, but these new technologies now ubiquitous, IDC officials say hospital CIOs will increasingly be turning to new tools – especially as consumers expect healthcare to be as responsive to their wants and needs as other industries.

The color of your urine could be telling you something about your health condition. Yes, your standard yellow is where you want to be, but the different shades of the rainbow make an appearance on occasion.

Angel investors are often rich individuals who provide startups with capital for their start-up costs. The term comes from Broadway, where it was originally used to describe the wealthy individuals who provided money for theatrical productions.

Any small business or venture capital company interested in Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding opportunities should pay close attention to the Small Business Administration's (SBA) recent request for public comments, by January 6, 2015, on data rights and Phase III funding, and a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report identifying the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) as the two agencies presently accepting applications from majority-owned portfolio companies.

Lacrosse sticks, construction models and surgical tools — these are all things Baltimore companies are making with the help of 3-D printing.

Three-dimensional printing was invented decades ago but has really taken off in the last few years. Printers are more affordable (you can get one for your desktop for the price of a MacBook Pro). And printing material has advanced significantly, to include more durable plastics, metal and more.

British drugmaker AstraZeneca plans to spend $200 million over the next three years, expanding its manufacturing facility in Frederick, Md., and hiring an additional 300 workers at the site, executives said.

The decision further cements Gaithersburg-based MedImmune, an AstraZeneca company, as the crown jewel of Maryland’s life sciences industry.

Nestled in a quiet industrial park in Redmond, Washington, not too far from the Microsoft headquarters, is a small biotech start-up with both an interesting technology they are bringing to market, as well as a capital partner that suggests some ways in which global biotech research, venture capital and commercialization are going to change.

The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC), a nationwide network of federal laboratories that cultivates best-practice strategies for advancing technology transfer (T2) from the laboratory to the marketplace, today announced the launch of FLCBusiness, an interactive business resource tool.

As the sound of pile driver at the Edward St. John’s Learning and Teaching Center construction site boomed across Campus Drive, officials broke ground Friday morning on another project: a bioengineering building aimed at forwarding research in a relatively new field.

Britain's GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L) has asked its shareholders to vote at a meeting on Dec. 18 on its proposed major deal with Switzerland's Novartis (NOVN.VX), which will see the two pharmaceutical group trade more than $20 billion of assets.

Digital technologies such as electronic medical records, mobile devices, and analytics offer the potential to transform health care. Whether it’s a patient using her smartphone to better manage her diabetes, a provider monitoring a patient for arrhythmia remotely, or an electronic health-record system alerting a clinician of a potential drug allergy, digital technologies can create meaningful value for patients and practitioners alike. Yet there are significant barriers to the development and adoption of such technologies that academic medical centers are uniquely positioned to overcome.

Myron M. Levine, MD, DTPH, director of the University of Maryland School of Medicine Center for Vaccine Development (CVD), and Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, announced today the start of a clinical trial in Baltimore to evaluate different dosage levels of a promising experimental Ebola vaccine developed by the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK

British drugmaker AstraZeneca is doubling down on Maryland, spending $200 million to expand its Frederick manufacturing facility a year after shifting hundreds of out-of-state jobs to Montgomery County.

There are presently massive shifts occurring in the competitive global landscape of health, and particularly in the life sciences. As we approach 2015, it is imperative that leaders in the health space understand the trends and shifts happening around them, not only in the US, but also in international markets, cities and service lines.

Drug giant AstraZeneca will expand its biologics manufacturing center in Frederick and add hundreds of jobs to its operations there.

The drug giant will spend more than $200 million to increase production capacity. MedImmune, AstraZeneca's biologics research and development arm, has more than 120 drugs in its research pipeline, including more than 30 in clinical development. AstraZeneca says the expansion will support its research.

Local companies, along with County Executive Leggett, are exploring incredible international business opportunities in the Indian market as part of the County's business mission to India November 13 through 22. Read the press release to learn more.

Few businesses owned by venture capital firms have been awarded Small Business Innovation Research awards since this program was opened to them two years ago.

Through the SBIR program, 11 federal agencies spend at least 2.8 percent of their outside research budgets with small businesses. Only two of these agencies — the National Institutes of Health and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy — have allowed VC-owned businesses to compete for SBIR awards, according to a new Government Accountability Office study.