Biohealth Innovation
The LaunchPort™ announced today that Novel Microdevices (http://www.noveldx.com) has moved to their Medtech venture center in Port Covington, Baltimore, and has established The LaunchPort™ as its primary location for their GMP development efforts.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) small business programs, which include the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs, are the largest source of early stage capital for life sciences startups in the United States. The grant money helps startups accelerate their discoveries and put their discoveries into clinical trials. The grants awarded are just that, a grant and not a loan; there is no requirement to pay back the money. The NIH grants $1.2 billion dollars every year in the combined SBIR and STTR programs.
Georgetown University ranks second among the nation’s colleges and universities in graduating women who go on to lead venture capital firms, according to a report published by the investment company Different Funds.
Image: https://thehoya.com
Richmond, VA., February 22, 2021 – Phlow Corp., a public benefit essential medicines solutions provider, and the United States Pharmacopeia (USP) today announced a strategic alliance to develop a new laboratory that will certify and validate Pharmaceutical Continuous Manufacturing processes resulting in affordable, high-quality, U.S.-manufactured essential medicines. Throughout its 200-year history of setting standards for medicine quality, USP has been providing validated scientific methods used by manufacturers and regulators to determine what “good quality” looks like. The methods developed through this strategic alliance will be available for use by other domestic generics manufacturers to encourage broader adoption of Pharmaceutical Continuous Manufacturing in order to strengthen the U.S. drug supply.
USP, a global, scientific not-for-profit organization located in Rockville, Maryland, develops public standards that establish the quality expectations for medicines, collaborating with scientific experts from the academic, industry, and healthcare practitioner communities along with the U.S. FDA. The alliance will facilitate Phlow’s application of “flow” chemistry and other continuous advanced manufacturing processes to produce the crucial ingredients that enable domestic, end-to-end drug manufacturing of essential medicines that have been or are at risk of being in shortage thereby contributing to a more resilient medicines supply chain.
Don’t miss a unique opportunity to discuss your biohealth technology innovation directly with Program Officers from NSF, various institutes at NIH (including NIA, NCI, NIDA, and NHLBI), the University of Maryland MIPS program. Learn the latest about the current areas of focus for these funding resources, Tips and Tricks for submitting successful applications, and Additional Resources to support your early stage company. Confirmed speakers and partnering meeting participants include:
Additional participants from the NIH National Cancer Institute and other resources TBA.
Click here to.. Reserve your spot (no fee) today!
Don’t miss a unique opportunity to discuss your biohealth technology innovation directly with Program Officers from NSF, various institutes at NIH, the University of Maryland MIPS program, and others. Learn the latest about the current areas of focus for nondilutive funding resources, tips for submitting successful applications, and additional resources to support your early-stage company. Confirmed speakers and partnering meeting participants include:
Register (no fee) today! www.tinyurl.com/2021SBIR
for The Rockville-based National Foundation for Cancer Research is accepting applications through Sunday evening, February 28, from academic laboratory and early stage start-up-based promising oncology technology projects for its 2021 Salisbury Award Competition for Entrepreneurial Translational Research. In addition to increased exposure, insight from a world-class judging panel and access to NFCR’s network, cash prizes totaling $10,000 will be provided to three category winners, the first one of which who will also be introduced to the AIM-HI Accelerator Fund for consideration of investment. Learn more and apply here: https://www.nfcr.org/salisbury-award/.
The National Foundation for Cancer Research is proud to present the Salisbury Award in honor of the Salisbury family’s vision and legacy of funding “high risk, high impact, and high reward” cancer research. Over 80 years of service, the three Salisburys galvanized NFCR into a significant force in cancer research worldwide.
The Salisbury Award encourages and promotes innovative scientists and early stage startups to translate their discoveries into therapies that can improve the lives of cancer patients. The initiative is designed to catalyze and advance promising research innovations onto the path of commercialization. Download the flyer and help spread the word!
Gaithersburg, MD, Feb. 22, 2021 – Cartesian Therapeutics, a fully integrated, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering mRNA-engineered cell therapy in and beyond oncology, today announced that it has initiated a Phase 2a clinical trial of its mRNA chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, Descartes-11, in patients with newly diagnosed, high-risk multiple myeloma. Based upon the company’s research and analysis, this program is understood to be the first RNA-engineered cell therapy to enter clinical development for a frontline cancer. Descartes-11 is the third product candidate to be evaluated in clinical trials resulting from Cartesian’s RNA Armory℠ engineering platform.
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Feb. 22, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Novavax, Inc. (Nasdaq: NVAX), a biotechnology company developing next-generation vaccines for serious infectious diseases, today announced the complete enrollment of PREVENT-19, its pivotal Phase 3 study in the United States and Mexico to evaluate the efficacy, safety and immunogenicity of the company’s COVID-19 vaccine. Novavax has previously reported positive interim efficacy results of NVX-CoV2373, its recombinant protein-based vaccine candidate, in an ongoing Phase 3 clinical trial taking place in the United Kingdom.
The LaunchPort™ announced today that Eyedea Medical (https://www.eyedeamedical.com/) joined the Venture Center and will make the Port Covington, Baltimore location their HQ and engineering site.
Eyedea Medical is an early-stage, ophthalmic medical device company that was spun out of the Wilmer Eye Institute and the Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design at Johns Hopkins University. Eyedea Medical was formed by a group of ophthalmologists and biomedical engineers in 2019 to alleviate the burden of corneal blindness globally through development and commercialization of a series of devices with potential to improve outcomes and access to vision-restoring corneal procedures.
Deka BioSciences CEO, John Mumm, CEO of Deka BioSciences, virtually guests on BioTalk to discuss his history in the BioHealth Capital Region, Precision Medicine, and Funding Strategies.
Listen now via Apple http://apple.co/3aIy6Ew, Google http://bit.ly/3sfEysd, Spotify http://spoti.fi/3aJq8ei, and Tunein http://bit.ly/2Me25ut.
One of the nation’s leading scientists in the desperate campaign to develop coronavirus vaccines—and in the Hollywood-esque triumph of succeeding within a year—grew up just across the street from the University of Maryland. Underlying all that work is her hope of returning to campus.
“I’m fighting the pandemic partly so I can get back to my Terps season tickets,” said Dr. Kathleen Neuzil ’83, lamenting a men’s basketball season played in a mostly empty Xfinity Center.
Image: Dr. Kathleen Neuzil '83, director of the Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, designs and oversees U.S. vaccine trials. An avid athlete and Maryland sports fan, she played softball as a UMD undergrad (below) and recently tailgated on campus with her husband and three children (bottom). (Portrait courtesy of University of Maryland, Baltimore; softball and family photos courtesy of Dr. Kathleen Neuzil ’83)
“5 Questions With…” is a weekly BioBuzz series where we reach out to interesting people in the BioHealth Capital Region to share a little about themselves, their work, and maybe something completely unrelated. This edition features 5 Questions with Paul Nolde, Fund Manager/Managing Director, Riverflow Growth Fund.
Image: https://biobuzz.io
On Feb. 15, 2021, biotechnology company Novavax and SK Bioscience, a vaccine business subsidiary of SK Group, announced an expanded collaboration and license agreement for SK Bioscience to add significant production capacity for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, currently in Phase III clinical trials.
This new agreement follows an already existing manufacturing arrangement under which SK Bioscience obtained a license to manufacture and commercialize NVX-CoV2373, Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, for sale to the Korean government. Novavax recently reported positive interim efficacy results for the vaccine candidate in an ongoing Phase III clinical trial in the United Kingdom and is also currently conducting a Phase III trial in the United States and Mexico.
Lubna Azmi sees herself as a laidback person, but even she isn't immune to the pressures and anxieties that come with planning for the future.
"I've seen how fast people's professional lives can fall apart, especially during the pandemic," says Azmi, who is a second-year international studies and sociology major at Johns Hopkins. "During quarantine, I was asking myself, have I been too selfish thinking about doing what I want to do? Should I be thinking about how to better support my family, including the family I create in the future?"
Image: Alia Poonawala (left), executive director of Hire Hopkins, and Alayna Hayes, senior director of life design for diversity, equity, and inclusion - https://hub.jhu.edu
When AstraZeneca (AZ) announced in 2019 that it was officially retiring the MedImmune brand, questions naturally arose about whether the U.K. pharma giant would continue the legacy MedImmune support for the BioHealth Capital Region’s (BHCR) life science ecosystem.
Since its founding in 1998, MedImmune had been an anchor life science company in the region, and starting around 2014, it was a key force behind the creation of BHCR brand, as well as the region’s collective push to be a top-three biotech cluster by 2023.
Image: https://biobuzz.io
As we noted in our previous story, “Diversity in Biotech, Industry’s Next Big Challenge,” there is a deep, rich, underappreciated history of African-American innovation in the life sciences and STEM fields.
There is still much work to be done to improve equity across the industry, however. From transdermal diabetes patches and life-saving hemorrhage control systems to advanced biomanufacturing and revolutionary diagnostic testing, this history’s lineage can be traced across the Mid-Atlantic biotech clusters well as throughout the country.
Image: https://biobuzz.io/
Research by an international team of investigators has demonstrated the ability of trained dogs to detect aggressive prostate cancer from urine samples, and suggests that an artificial neural network could learn from this olfactory capability. The scientists say findings from the study, which is reported in PLOS One, could feasibly be used to help direct the development of novel, machine-based tools for detecting prostate cancer, which integrate canine olfaction with the analysis of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in urine, microbial profiling, and artificial neural network (ANN)-assisted examination. Study lead Claire Guest, from Medical Detection Dogs, in the U.K., and colleagues in the U.K. and U.S., claimed, “We’ve shown it is possible to replicate the dog’s performance as sensors and brains, it is now time to put this technology in every smartphone.”
Image: https://www.genengnews.com
BETHESDA, Md., Feb. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- JAMA Network Open has published "Validation of a Machine Learning Brain Electrical Activity-Based Index to Aid in Diagnosing Concussion Among Athletes," a ground-breaking study on the accuracy of the BrainScope FDA-cleared biomarker, the Concussion Index, to indicate the likelihood and severity of concussive brain injury and to aid in evaluating an athlete's readiness to return to play.
Most office buildings around the country have remained empty over the past year as companies quickly pivoted to working remotely to help slow the pandemic's spread. However, many office campuses owned by office real estate investment trust (REIT) Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE) have been buzzing with activity during the outbreak. That's because many of its tenants have been working around the clock waging war against the virus, and they needed the company's specialized lab space to develop solutions aimed at defeating the pandemic.
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Avoro Ventures announced today that Sara Nayeem, MD, has joined the firm as a Partner, focused on its venture capital investment efforts.
Dr. Nayeem joins Avoro Ventures after 12 years with New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA), where she was a Partner in the firm’s biopharma investment practice serving on numerous company boards, in addition to providing support to fundraising, recruiting, and diversity and mentoring initiatives. She will source and manage private market investments within the biotechnology sector spanning early stage to late stage and cross-over, joining Behzad Aghazadeh, PhD, Managing Partner of Avoro Ventures and Avoro Capital Advisors, and Dr. Garheng Kong, Avoro Ventures Advisory Partner.
As a follow up to our last event Pitch Perfect: Communicating with Investors Before AND After Funding, we’re excited to bring you Pitch Perfect II: In Action.
We’ll be showcasing four startups from the SoPE and GW community. Each will give a 10 minute pitch followed by a 5 minute Q&A to our panel of experienced venture capital and angel investors.
Local incubator member and digital health company Avhana Health Inc. has been acquired by Wilmington, Del.-based digital medicine products company Amalgam Rx Inc. for an undisclosed sum.
Under terms of the purchase, which was announced Jan. 13, Avhana Health will maintain its operations in Los Angeles as a stand-alone subsidiary of Amalgam. Avhana’s chief executive, Noah Weiner, will stay on as general manager of the unit.
Image: Avhana’s Noah Weiner is focused on EHR integration.
Join the conversation with Emily Durfee, Program Manager at Healthworx, the innovation and investment arm of CareFirst. Healthworx' Challenge focuses on improving health equity at the community level .Learn about Healthworx’ mission and vision, as Emily shares insights, answer questions and explains the intention of this terrific opportunity to connect with a very important leader in Maryland's healthcare and innovation community.
Something of the dark horse in the race to get a COVID-19 vaccine out to the public, Novavax announced a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, to provide 1.1 billion doses of NVX-CoV2373, its COVID-19 vaccine candidate, for the COVAX Facility. The vaccine will be manufactured and distributed around the world by Novavax and Serum Institute of India (SII). SII has an existing deal with Gavi.
Image: https://www.biospace.com
NEW YORK – Qiagen on Thursday said that it has launched a "Digital Insights Partnership" program designed to expand the market for its bioinformatics products through various third-party collaborations and deals.
The Montgomery County biotech joins a handful of other local companies to recently debut on the public markets.
Are you a start-up in Maryland, DC or Virginia seeking feedback on your biohealth business idea, pitch deck, or commercialization plan? Schedule your feedback session with BHI EIRs here: www.tinyurl.com/EIRfeedback. These take place by videoconference via Zoom. Pre-registration and forwarding of a power point deck one week before the session is required. For questions, more information, or to be added to the wait list, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Please review the available slots below and click on the button to register. Thank you!
Are you a start-up in Maryland, DC or Virginia seeking feedback on your biohealth business idea, pitch deck, or commercialization plan? Schedule your feedback session with BHI EIRs here: www.tinyurl.com/EIRfeedback. These take place by videoconference via Zoom. Pre-registration and forwarding of a power point deck one week before the session is required. For questions, more information, or to be added to the wait list, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Please review the available slots below and click on the button to register. Thank you!
Troy A LeMaile-Stovall, CEO and Executive Director of TEDCO, joins Rich Bendis BioTalk to discuss his background, the local ecosystem, and their vision for the future here in Maryland
Listen now via Apple http://apple.co/3tMsGQ4 , Google http://bit.ly/372QPs5 , http://spoti.fi/3tV2vXI , and TuneIn http://bit.ly/3aOuuzC.
Last month, biotechnology company United Therapeutics began tearing down the historic Elion-Hitchings building in Research Triangle Park, a Mid-Century, Brutalist structure built by the famed architect Paul Rudolph.
While the move was met with dismay from architecture lovers, the demolition could portend a large expansion on the building’s 132-acre property in the coming years.
Image: United Therapeutics currently employs more than 400 people in Research Triangle Park. UNITED THERAPEUTICS.
Johns Hopkins University led all U.S. universities in research and development spending for the 41st consecutive year in fiscal year 2019, spending a record $2.917 billion.
The university's total R&D expenditure for fiscal year 2019—the most recent year for which nationwide data is available—rose 9.6% from the previous year, according to the annual National Science Foundation report on higher education R&D.
Image: https://hub.jhu.edu
Creating university communities of innovation is AURP’s core expertise. And as university innovation communities evolve, AURP announces university innovation community builders’ latest professional development opportunity — Innovation U Virtual Seminars. We’ll be featuring information and knowledge about the latest trends in innovation and university districts — the why, the how-to and “the who is doing it and where?”
Germantown, MD, February, 9, 2021 – Seraxis, a biotech company developing a cell replacement therapy for insulin-dependent diabetes today announced the successful closing of a $40M Series C private financing round. The financing was led by Eli Lilly and Company, with participation from Frazier Healthcare Partners, Polaris Ventures, JDRF T1D Fund, and other investors.