Biohealth Innovation
The Baltimore-area ranks fourth on a new Forbes list of the hottest tech markets in the country.
The report, conducted by Praxis Strategy Group, made its calculations based on STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) employment from 2001 to 2012 in the country’s 51 largest metropolitan areas.
The report says Baltimore’s STEM employment has grown 17.9 percent since 2001. In the last two years, STEM employment rose by 3.9 percent.
The Federal Communications Commission will make $400 million available annually to healthcare providers to expand the development of broadband telehealth networks from a pilot to a permanent program. The pilot program has supported 50 provider healthcare networks in 38 states.
The telehealth networks will link urban medical centers to rural clinics or offer instant access to electronic health records (EHRs). The agency will begin accepting applications for the grants in late summer, according to the Jan. 7 announcement by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
GlaxoSmithKline is looking to fatten its drug pipeline through another venture capital investment with a $50 million commitment to a California fund.
The drug giant on Wednesday said it would invest in the $250 million Sanderling Biotech Venture Fund. The fund will be managed out of San Mateo, Calif.
The commitment is one of several made by GSK (NYS: GSK) to several funds focused on helping emerging and early-stage companies advancing potential drug candidates.
Using cervical fluid obtained during routine Pap tests, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a test to detect ovarian and endometrial cancers. In a pilot study, the "PapGene" test, which relies on genomic sequencing of cancer-specific mutations, accurately detected all 24 (100 percent) endometrial cancers and nine of 22 (41 percent) ovarian cancers. Results of the experiments are published in the January 9 issue of the journal, Science Translational Medicine.
The investigators note that larger scale studies are needed before clinical implementation can begin, but they believe the test has the potential to pioneer genomic-based cancer screening tests.
AstraZeneca has been talking about the importance of expanding its network of collaborations at the JPMorgan healthcare conference in San Francisco.
Blogging from the meeting, Shaun Grady, vice president of strategic partnering and business development at the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker, noted that AstraZeneca and its MedImmune unit have a team of 60 "scouting for opportunities that fit our therapeutic and commercial focus". He added that the firm has scheduled a record number of meetings at the event, approximately 320 in total.
Venture capitalists invested $1.4 billion in digital health companies in 2012, according to a report from Rock Health, FierceHealthIT reports (Gold, FierceHealthIT, 1/8).
The figure represents a 45% increase from the $986 million invested in 2011. In addition, the total number of venture capital deals in the digital health sector increased by 56% between 2011 and 2012.
The Tech Council of Maryland called on legislators Monday to triple the funding for the state's research and development tax credit and double the scope of its popular biotech tax credit, among other measures.
The Tech Council of Maryland places the expansion of the R&D credit from $6 million to $18 million among its top priorities for the 2013 General Assembly session, which convenes in Annapolis on Wednesday. The measure failed to win approval last year despite passing the Senate. The Tech Council also wants to see that credit made available for companies that haven't yet reached profitability.
Life sciences company Plasmonix will begin selling its first product, QuantArray, early this year. The Baltimore County startup plans to commercialize two other products later in 2013, the QuantaWell 100 and the Quanta NP, and will seek $2 million to $3 million for another round of financing, CEO William Gjust says.
Plasmonix’ develops support tools to detect cells in medical research and clinical diagnostics by enhancing luminescent and fluorescent signals using metal nanoparticles. QuantArray, its latest product, has various applications in performing assays, a test that analyzes components, and enhances luminescent signals hundred-fold over conventional methods. The technology can be be applied not only in the life sciences, but also apparel, paint and cosmetics.
QIAGEN N.V. (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced three separate agreements that add multiple biomarkers to QIAGEN's deep development pipeline of diagnostics for Personalized Healthcare applications to guide treatments with various medicines based on a patient's genomic information.
QIAGEN intends to develop new diagnostics to guide treatment decisions (including companion diagnostics paired with medicines) based on these biomarkers for use in therapeutic areas such as rheumatoid arthritis, lung cancer and colorectal cancer. Most of these assays will be designed to run on the QIAsymphony RGQ modular laboratory workflow automation system as well as QIAGEN's next-generation sequencing workflows currently in development. By guiding treatment decisions for specific therapies in individual patients, the use of these biomarkers as companion diagnostics can help improve patient outcomes and better utilize healthcare resources.
The Maryland Technology Development Corp. (Tedco) is restructuring some of its grant programs and taking on oversight responsibilities for others. The changes are in line with the organization’s effort to focus more on supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. Here are some of the changes:
New Enterprise Associates raised the most money of any venture capital firm in 2012.
New Enterprise, headquartered in Chevy Chase and has a Timonium office, raised $2.6 billion last year. That topped the 182 venture capital firms that raised a total of $20.6 billion in 2012, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. That dollar figure was up 10 percent from 2011.
Rockville-based MacroGenics Inc. has struck a drug development deal with Gilead Sciences Inc. that could ultimately be worth $1 billion.
The licensing agreement is for the development and potential commercialization for drugs directed at up to four undisclosed targets.
HHS' Health Resources and Services Administration has announced plans to distribute $1.9 million for the creation of six telehealth resource centers, mHIMSS reports (Wicklund, mHIMSS, 1/3).
About the Grants HRSA is administering the grants through the Telehealth Resource Center Grant Program, which provides funding to projects that use telehealth networks to improve health care services (Roney, Becker's Hospital Review, 1/4).
The grants will help launch five regional centers and one national center.
HRSA will administer grants of up to:
IBBR (www.ibbr.umd.edu) is a joint research institute, which brings together partner institutions including the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP); University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB); and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The next Director will have the opportunity to recruit faculty and staff, acquire needed instrumentation for transformational research, develop new and innovative technological solutions, and create partnerships with commercial entities to facilitate translation to clinical practice.
The University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are seeking an outstanding individual to serve as Director of the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) with the vision of making IBBR a premier biotechnology research institute. A primary role of the new Director will be to lead and significantly expand a joint NIST/UM research effort that combines basic, measurement and translational research for the development, manufacturing and standardization of advanced therapeutics and supporting diagnostics.
For more information: Position Description
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has been ranked first among global pharmaceuticals companies assessed for their efforts to improve access to medicine in developing countries, in the 2012 Access to Medicine (ATM) Index released recently by the Access to Medicine Foundation.
An independent initiative, the Access to Medicine Index ranks the world’s 20 largest companies according to their efforts to make their products more available, affordable and accessible in developing countries, highlighting policy and practice that either facilitate or hinder access to medicine.
On December 27, 2012, the US Small Business Administration (SBA) published a final rule to amend regulations governing eligibility for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs and to implement provisions of the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011. The Reauthorization was included in the FY12 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which reauthorized the SBIR Program for six years and now allows small firms that are majority-owned by venture capital operating companies (VCOCs), hedge funds, or private equity firms to compete for SBIR grants.
This advisory briefly summarizes the most important changes to the SBIR eligibility rules and discusses how investments in or acquisitions of SBIR-funded companies may be affected.
Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has joined the board of T. Rowe Price Group as an independent director, the Baltimore-based investment firm announced Thursday.
Hrabowski has led the university since 1992, and was recognized last year by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. According to Price, Hrabowski sits on a number of civic boards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Urban Institute, the Marguerite Casey Foundation and the France-Merrick Foundation. He also serves as a director for McCormick & Co. Inc. and the Baltimore Equitable Society.
"Disease is too complex to just think your way through it," says Raimond Winslow, director of The Institute for Computational Medicine at Johns Hopkins. "We can no longer work with what I call purely mental models of how biological systems function in either health or disease."
Thankfully, we have technology to lend a hand.
The burgeoning and highly complex field of computational medicine is showing promise for the treatment of illnesses such as Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer and more, as technology and troves of data are harnessed to investigate the underpinnings and map the progression of diseases.
Emergent Biosolutions Inc. said it has secured exclusive right to manufacture and sell VaxInnate Corp.'s pandemic influenza vaccine candidate in the United States.
Under a license agreement with VaxInnate, Emergent Biosolutions acquired exclusive U.S. commercial rights to next generation pandemic influenza vaccine candidate.
This license enables Emergent to fulfill the requirement to secure a pandemic influenza vaccine candidate under its contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the company noted.
Maryland policymakers have taken encouraging steps the past two years to strengthen the state’s technology and life sciences economy.
Two years ago, they expanded access to capital for early-, mid- and late-stage growth companies through the InvestMaryland program.
Last year, they accelerated the transfer of novel technologies from universities into the hands of private companies through the Maryland Innovation Initi
Every day, inside our body, there is a war going on. Microscopic invaders of one kind or another try to make a meal of us, and our immune system fights back, seeking out the invaders and destroying them. One of our body’s most important foot-soldiers in this war is the T cell, a type of white blood cell with receptors that can recognize foreign substances. Like all white blood cells, T cells originate in the bone marrow, but then they migrate to an organ called the thymus (hence the “T” in “T cell”), where they evolve into specialized immune system warriors. Mature T cells, which leave the thymus and circulate around the body, come in different types. One type, the cytotoxic T cell, specializes in attacking and killing cells of the body that are infected by viruses, bacteria, or cancer.
Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYS: EBS) announced today that it has signed a license agreement with VaxInnate Corporation under which Emergent acquired the exclusive right to manufacture and sell VaxInnate's pandemic influenza vaccine candidate in the United States. The product candidate, a recombinant vaccine, has the potential to be produced quickly, at high yields and in a cost-effective manner. This license enables Emergent to fulfill the requirement to secure a pandemic influenza vaccine candidate under its contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which established Emergent as a Center for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing (Center) in June 2012. VaxInnate will continue to develop its pandemic influenza vaccine candidate under its current BARDA contract and Emergent will manufacture the pandemic influenza vaccine candidate using flexible manufacturing technology.
The U.S. Small Business Association (SBA) published a final rule on Thursday that will implement changes to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, such as eligibility criteria that now includes companies that are majority-owned by multiple domestic VCs. The rule is implementing the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act, which was signed into law this year and extended the SBIR program through Sept. 30, 2017. The changes take effect on Jan. 28, 2013 (see BioCentury, Oct. 17, 2011).
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was awarded a four-year, $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to promote the effective use of oral cholera vaccine around the world. The Delivering Oral Vaccine Effectively (DOVE) program will provide relief agencies and governments with technical assistance on how to use oral cholera vaccine, evaluate current vaccine-use practices and develop new field surveillance methods for monitoring and controlling outbreaks of the disease.
Cholera is an infectious disease caused by drinking unsanitary water. The disease is estimated to be responsible for between 100,000 to 200,000 deaths worldwide each year and infects as many as 2.5 million people annually. The oral cholera vaccine is over 70 percent effective and costs $1.85 per dose, but is not yet widely used in preventing outbreaks.
CytImmune and AstraZeneca have entered into an agreement to study the feasibility of a new cancer nanomedicine that will bind an oncology compound from AstraZeneca to CytImmune's CYT-6091 nanomedicine platform.
CYT-6091, which is comprised of gold nanoparticles bound with an immune avoiding molecule (PEG-Thiol) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF), has been successfully tested at the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD in a phase I clinical trial in advanced-stage cancer patients. As seen in that study, the gold nanoparticles trafficked to tumors, not to healthy tissue, resulting in an improvement in the safety of systemically administered TNF formulated as CYT-6091.
The pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca is expected to announce this week that its oncology unit in Waltham is collaborating with a Maryland company to develop an innovative cancer therapy. The proposed treatment involves delivering powerful cancer drugs on the backs of gold nanoparticles made by CytImmune, of Rockville, Md., that are so tiny 5,000 of them can fit in the width of a human hair.
At that size, the gold flecks make a particularly good vehicle because they can easily carry other molecules, like cancer drugs. They are also believed safe to use in the body.
Reston-based New Atlantic Ventures, which invests in technology start-ups, has launched its fourth venture capital fund.
The New Atlantic Venture Fund IV expects to raise $125 million, with its first investors contributing $42.5 million in the fund's initial sale last week.
New Atlantic Ventures currently holds stakes in more than two dozen start-ups, including six in the Washington area. It currently has $230 million in capital under management.
As we anticipate a new year characterized by unprecedented interest in healthcare innovation, pay particular attention to the following three emerging tensions in the space.
Tension 1: Preventive Health vs Excessive Medicalization
A core tenet of medicine is that it’s better to prevent a disease (or at least catch it early) than to treat it after it has firmly taken hold. This is the rationale for both our interest in screening exams (such as mammography) as well as the focus on risk factor reduction (e.g. treating high blood pressure and high cholesterol to prevent heart attacks).
A Maryland corporation established to help accelerate the commercialization of new technologies has awarded nearly $300,000 to three Johns Hopkins-related projects that hold promise for ushering new medical devices to the marketplace.
In its first round of investments, the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) on Dec. 19 awarded three awards to BOSS Medical LLC, a Johns Hopkins University start-up company, and to two School of Medicine faculty members who are working on other medical devices.
Clear Guide Medical LLC is readying its first product, a medical device used in minimally invasive ultrasound surgeries that will be for sale in early 2014. Federal and state grants received this year aided the commercialization process for the Johns Hopkins spinoff, which hopes to receive another state grant early next year.
The Baltimore life sciences company received a total of $550,000 from the federal National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation, in 2011 and 2012, and $125,000 from the Maryland Technology Development Corp. in 2010 and 2012. It is waiting to hear about another grant from the latter, for $100,000.
Lonza today announced together with Sartorius Stedim Biotech (SSB), a leading international pharmaceutical and biotech supplier, a long-term global collaboration, supply and distribution agreement in the field of cell culture media. Cell culture media are growth substances and nutrients for cells or microorganisms and are required in every biopharmaceutical manufacturing process.
In the agreement, SSB will assume global sales and marketing of media and buffers used in the manufacture of protein-based therapeutics and vaccines, while Lonza will continue to carry out development, manufacture and logistics operations for these products. New product development will be mutually performed. The cell culture media, which are usually sold in liquid or powder form to biopharmaceutical customers, are to be successively converted to packaged forms as ready-to-use, pre-filled SSB sterile single-use bags. Furthermore, Lonza and SSB have agreed that these cell culture media will be sold under both brands in a co-branding arrangement. Lonza will maintain commercial responsibility for global sales and marketing of media used for research purposes and in the manufacture of cell-based therapeutics and gene therapy as well as for manufacturing for any of Lonza’s custom manufacturing customers.
Join us for the upcoming Tech Transfer Speakers Series event on January 9th, 2013:
"Do You Know the Export Control Regulations Impacting Your Technology Business?"
How well do you know the export control regulations affecting the technology industry? Right now there are dramatic changes to the export control requirements that technology firms need to be aware of to avoid fines. Questions such as: Do I need a license from the government to have a foreign national work on my technology here ? How can I find out if my technology requires a license for its export ? What about fundamental and basic research- is a license required ? Will I need to have an export license for government contracts ? If I have an office overseas working on research, is an export license required ? These questions and more will be addressed.
Presenter:
Stephen Hall
Senior Policy Analyst
Office of Exporter Services, Bureau of Industry and Security
United States Department of Commerce
For more information, and to register: http://techtransferspeakers.eventbrite.com/
Investment in research & development in the U.S. life science industry will turn a corner in 2013 after three years of reduced spending, if a new market analysis is correct.
In their 2013 R&D Funding Forecast (PDF), research and development organization Battelle and R&D Magazine propose that U.S. life science companies will bump up their total R&D spending from $181.6 billion in 2012 to $189.3 billion in 2013. Better access to healthcare information, via data analysis, will accelerate and enhance pharmaceutical R&D and adoption of connected health technologies, they say.
In an unexpected move that could have significant implications for Maryland, Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski will be named the first female chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.
The Baltimore native and Maryland Democrat, who had been the most senior member of the U.S. Senate without a committee gavel, was suddenly in line to head the influential spending panel following behind-the-scenes maneuvering for chairmanships that played out after the death Monday of its former chairman, Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.
The Democratic caucus is expected to formally approve her chairmanship Thursday.
Two Johns Hopkins researchers and a medical device company are the first recipients of grants from the Maryland Innovation Initiative.
The Innovation Initiative, a program intended to promote commercialization of university research, awarded $300,000 to the three recipients.