Has venture capital always been a bad model for the life sciences?

Andrew Lo, director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, dismissed the sector outright on stage Sunday at the Cleveland Clinic Medical Innovation Summit. His rationale:

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2016 FLC awards. One of the most coveted honors in the technology transfer field, the FLC awards have been presented to over 200 federal laboratories since their inception in 1984. To reflect the diversity in scope and number of technology transfer efforts undertaken by federal laboratories and their partners, seven categories of awards will be presented.

138 Startups Now Compete for Fan Favorite and Finalist Designations Until Midday on Friday, November 6

Startup Maryland™ unveils the 138 video pitches from the participants in the 2015 Pitch Across Maryland competition. After posting the video pitches from Maryland entrepreneurs that were captured during the three-week Pitch Across Maryland bus tour, Startup Maryland is proud to announce that the two Video Pitch Competitions are now underway. You can find the various Playlists for each tour stop location where companies pitched on the Startup Maryland YouTube Channel.

Vtesse, Inc. announced today the addition of Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Neurological Sciences and Biochemistry at Rush University Medical Center to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and that Michael Massaro has joined the company as Vice President, Clinical Operations. Today’s news comes on the heels of Vtesse’s recent announcement that Rush University Medical Center has enrolled three patients in its pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial with VTS-270 for treatment of Niemann-Pick Type C1 Disease (NPC). Vtesse expects up to 20 sites (across the United States and the European Union) to participate in this clinical trial.  

“We seek SAB members who are both experienced clinicians and diligent researchers, and who also possess a strong passion to develop new treatment options and compassion for patients and their safety,” said Ben Machielse, Drs., President and Chief Executive Officer of Vtesse, Inc. “Dr. Berry-Kravis brings this unique combination to our SAB, which will support the clinical development of VTS-270. Her clinical research experience in rare diseases, such as Fragile X Syndrome, will help us advance our efforts with VTS-270. Dr. Berry-Kravis is serving as a co-lead principal investigator in our Phase 2b/3 clinical study of VTS-270 in addition to joining our SAB.”

Enthusiastic, animated, and innovative, Christopher Meenan left no doubt why he was among UMB’s 2015 Founders Week award winners with an insightful and entertaining Entrepreneur of the Year presentation “Health Informatics: A New Frontier for Innovation in Medicine” on Oct. 21.

Meenan, a faculty research associate in the School of Medicine’s Department of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, recalled tales of his early career in the finance industry when Y2K was feared to be an “apocalyptic event” and later when he worked at America Online, which was striving “to be innovative” by putting 30 million people on the Internet.

It's part of a a new program called Imprimis Cares that will make over 7,800 FDA-approved generic drugs available at an affordable price.

A pharmaceutical company announced Thursday that it plans to introduce a significantly lower-cost version of Daraprim, the drug that made headlines last month after jumping from $13.50 per pill to $750.

Like Disney and the Dodgers before it, Cedars-Sinai is partnering on an industry-specific technology accelerator in Los Angeles. The nonprofit hospital in the Beverly Grove neighborhood has teamed on the first-ever Techstars Healthcare Accelerator.

The program will offer 10 entrepreneurs and startups in the global healthcare industry $120,000 in funding plus mentorship and guidance from senior leadership at Cedars-Sinai and access to Techstars’ network of more than 7,000 founders, mentors, investors and corporate partners. At the end of three months, the participating companies will participate in a demo day, presenting their work to investors, mentors, company executives and the community at large.

Doctors have just discovered a previously unknown relationship between the long-term recovery of spinal cord injury victims and high blood pressure during their initial surgeries. This may seem like a small bit of medical news—though it will have immediate clinical implications—but what's important is how it was discovered in the first place.

This wasn’t the result of a new, long-term study, but a meta-analysis of $60 million worth of basic research written off as useless 20 years ago by a team of neuroscientists and statisticians led by the University of California San Francisco and partnering with the software firm Ayasdi, using mathematical and machine learning techniques that hadn’t been invented yet when the trials took place. 

When Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes agreed to be interviewed at the Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.D Live conference here in Laguna Beach, California, she didn’t know that the event would end up taking place a week after the Journal published an in-depth exposé charging that the company’s blood-testing system had serious problems and that it was actually using commercially available devices for much of its work.

MedImmune, a Greater Washington biotechnology cornerstone, is racing to fill the pipeline for parent AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) with drug candidates that harness the power of the immune system, even against cancer. And it's using precision medicine to do it.

A production delay of the FluMist flu vaccine has U.K. pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca scrambling to alleviate shortages at doctors offices this flu season.

Only 5 million doses of the vaccine made by Gaithersburg-based MedImmune, the biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE: AZN), has been delivered so far this season. AstraZeneca originally said it planned to distribute 15 million doses.

Free tasty food, brightly coloured bicycles and high salaries are well-known hallmarks of the Googleplex—Google’s famed headquarters in Mountain View, California. But it was not these perks that led cardiologist Jessica Mega to pause her thriving academic career at Harvard Medical School to become the chief medical officer of the company’s life-sciences team. She was lured by the ambitions of the effort, soon to be incorporated under Google’s parent firm Alphabet. Nurtured by Google’s expertise in data analytics and engineering, the biology team is expected to create miniaturized electronic devices and to use these and other means to collect and analyse more health data, more continuously, than is possible today.

UC San Francisco (UCSF) has launched a collaboration with international pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline plc (GSK) to promote early-stage research with the potential to translate into new therapies for cancer, obesity and antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Through the collaboration, researchers from UCSF will work alongside GSK scientists to identify and jointly expedite promising basic research. In a shift from traditional sponsored-research agreements, the program will provide early-stage funding for validating academic discoveries that are not otherwise supported by traditional grant mechanisms.

GlaxoSmithKline and five other major drugmakers have teamed up with the UK government to launch the world’s first venture capital fund dedicated to finding new ways to prevent and treat dementia.

The Department of Health, the charity Alzheimer’s Research UK and the six pharmaceutical firms have raised $100m (£65m) to invest in early-stage, novel treatments for Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and other forms of dementia. GSK’s boss, Sir Andrew Witty, has been one of the main driving forces behind the initiative, in which the company is joined by the US drugmakers Johnson & Johnson, Biogen, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, and Japan’s Takeda.

The Seattle-based Microsoft Ventures Accelerator is a four-month program that connects startup founders with mentors and gives them the tools to help grow their business. The accelerator has 24 graduates to date, and is looking for its next class.

Specifically, Microsoft Ventures is looking for companies that focus on machine learning.

Rockville-based health care IT provider DrFirst has secured $25 million in equity financing from Goldman Sachs, elevating its raise in the last year to $42 million.

DrFirst, which specializes in electronic prescription software services, said in a news release it will use the new investment to expand sales and marketing resources. It will also develop resources for new and existing products.

Roche (SIX: RO, ROG; OTCQX: RHHBY) announced today that it has received FDA approval for the cobas® HBV and cobas® HCV viral load tests, the first assays approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use on the cobas® 6800 and cobas® 8800 Systems. The fully automated systems offer the fastest time to results, the highest throughput and the longest walk-away time available among automated molecular platforms, providing laboratories both improved operating efficiency and flexibility to adapt to changing testing needs. The new tests are the next generation of Roche's viral load tests, which clinicians use to manage the treatment of patients chronically infected with hepatitis B or hepatitis C virus.

On October 8, 2011, I said goodbye to my loved ones and didn’t know if I would ever see them again. 15 hours later I was in the ICU having become the 11th person in the United Kingdom to undergo an intestinal transplant at The Churchill Hospital, Oxford.

As part of transplant I had an ileostomy. This is where part of the intestine is brought to the outside of your body and your bodily waste is collected in a pouch known as an ostomy pouch. You lose control of the very thing you take for granted. On top of that, everyone wants access to output data and the only way of doing this is manually emptying into a jug. There had to be an alternative.

MedImmune, the biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, recently joined the Human Vaccines Project to develop vaccines and immunotherapies for infectious diseases and cancer, according to a press release.

The Human Vaccines Project aims to accelerate vaccine development by deciphering the human immune system with the support of leading academic research centers, governments and nonprofit groups.

Entrepreneur Office Hours: Get Answers Now! Two Locations: College Park and Baltimore  

Free, Open Entrepreneur Office Hours for University of Maryland Students, Faculty and Staff, and Regional Entrepreneurs with Bio or Tech-Based Startups or Ideas  

Get answers now 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.

The California Life Sciences Institute (CLSI), the non-profit partner of the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA), today formally joined forces with the Bay Area BioEconomy Initiative (BAB), a non-profit organization committed to strengthening the life science economy of the San Francisco Bay Area by fostering innovation and collaboration.

Founded in 2013, under the leadership of Tony Coles, Una Ryan, and Matthew Hudes, BAB has worked with industry, universities, investors, medical centers, health insurers and payors, high-tech companies and government to advance several key strategic imperatives to support the Bay Area life sciences industry. As a result, BAB has emerged as a new model for cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Even more than usual, fragmented and redundant digital healthcare innovation threatens to frustrate the innovation ecosystem. Dave Francis of RBC Securities put it well: “There are a lot of zombie digital health start-ups that get $1.5 million and a customer from a regional health system, and go no further.” He spoke at the October, 2015 Health 2.0 Conference.

The start-ups whose pitches I attended at Health 2.0 illustrate this point well. Out of about 35 pitches that I attended, close to half were pursuing markets that I know several other companies are also pursuing, including a dozen or so that overlapped with other companies presenting at the conference, e.g.:

PURPOSE: 65% of registration proceeds will go towards the ROAR campaign to renovate vacant & abandon Baltimore homes for families, in need.

WHEN: Tuesday, October 20, 2015 | 6:30pm-8:30pm

WHERE: Johns Hopkins East, 1101 East 33rd Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218 | 3rd Floor Conference Room.

PRESENTER: Dr. Jayfus Tucker Doswell | President/CEO Juxtopia

When it comes to capturing venture capital funding Maryland tops the region in both deals and dollars.

In a ranking of all 50 states and D.C., Maryland ranked No. 11 in venture capital funding in the third quarter of 2015. It ranked No. 7 in its share of nationwide deals during the same time.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Commercial Service is coordinating participation in the Hannover Messe, the world’s largest Industrial Trade Fair, to be held in April 25-29, 2016 in Hannover, Germany. This year, the United States is the official partner country for the first time and therefore will offer substantial visibility to U.S. based exhibitors who participate in any of the five trade shows, including one for Research and Technology, as well as an Investment Pavilion.

The Research & Technology trade show would be a great platform for U.S. Exhibitors, including Large and Start-up Companies, Academia, Technical Institutions, and Labs, to present their research activities in these fields .

AstraZeneca and Peregrine are expanding their ongoing onco-immunotherapy pact to allow for a Phase II trial of an experimental lung cancer combination treatment.  

The companies said they will test a combination of Peregrine’s phosphatidylserine-targeted immune-activator bavituximab and AZ’ anti-PD-L1 immune checkpoint inhibitor durvalumab (MEDI4736) in a global Phase II study in patients with previously treated squamous or non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer. 

M Square, the University of Maryland Research Park, won this year’s Association of University Research Parks’ Outstanding Research Park award.

The award ceremony took place earlier this month during the AURP Annual Awards of Excellence at the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus in New York.

Silver Spring-based United Therapeutics Corp. on Thursday announced its board had authorized the repurchase of up to an additional $500 million worth of its common stock, for as long as a year, starting Jan. 1. Purchases may be made in the open market or in privately negotiated transactions from time to time as determined by the ...

An entrepreneur as well as a scientist, Kunal Parikh has spent years developing drug-delivery platforms to improve patient treatment. He plans to spend the next year pursuing patents for these technologies; submitting his research for publication in scholarly journals; visiting hospitals and manufacturing plants to conduct implementation research; and continuing to lead and mentor the team of scientists, engineers, and clinicians who work alongside him.

One year doesn't seem like enough time.

The kind of opportunity that technology and energy markets once offered is beckoning investors to property near biotech clusters. Emerging from the recession, technology and energy markets commanded the attention of commercial real-estate investors that wanted to tap into improving occupancy and rental rates largely absent elsewhere.

A similar dynamic is germinating in biotech clusters, which are typically marked by a high concentration of life-science companies near academic research institutions.

Trade-Ideas LLC identified Sucampo Pharmaceuticals ( SCMP) as a "dead cat bounce" (down big yesterday but up big today) candidate. In addition to specific proprietary factors, Trade-Ideas identified Sucampo Pharmaceuticals as such a stock due to the following factors:

Join us Nov. 19 for the 16th annual Bioscience Day at the University of Maryland, where we'll explore "Systems Biology: Advancing Life Sciences and Medicine."

Registration is free and lunch is provided.

Johns Hopkins researchers on Thursday unveiled a new medical research app that could help them better detect and manage epileptic seizures. The free app, called EpiWatch, is designed for the Apple Watch and iPhones. The app will collect data from patients before, during and after a seizure. Researchers are hopeful that after collecting data for one or two years, they will be able to develop an app that can detect most seizure types and generate an alert to call for help, if needed.

Malvern, Pennsylvania-based Galera Therapeutics, a biotech company focused on treating cancer patients, has closed $37 million in Series B funding. Novo Ventures led the round with participation from previous backers New Enterprise Associates, Novartis Venture Fund, Correlation Ventures and Galera Angels. In conjunction with the funding, Dr. Thomas Dyrberg, a managing partner of Novo Ventures, has been added to Galera’s board of directors.

People can lose their hearing for a variety of reasons, from age to loud noises, but there’s one thing they all have in common. There are no drugs to help them. Several companies have formed in recent years to address this gap, and now there’s another coming to the party a bit late, but with deep pockets—a new startup called Decibel Therapeutics, which is embarking on a broad effort to figure out what makes us go deaf in the first place.