Headwinds ranging from an expected renewal of political wrangling over the price of prescription drugs to increasing pressure on sales of established treatments have largely, but not entirely, kept pharmaceutical companies from enjoying the increases of their biotech counterparts, as reflected in the share prices of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) consisting of pharma equities.

The Netherlands has officially delivered the new Amsterdam headquarters to the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The new office, located in the Zuidas area of Amsterdam, will enable EMA to continue carrying out their activities by assessing medicines without any interruption. Minister Bruno Bruins (Health, Care and Sports) complimented all parties involved with this special achievement, as the new build was completed within a very short time frame: “It is a beautiful and important achievement that EMA will be able to move in this new building in time as promised. Built at a high pace and in a very short time frame.

Image: https://investinholland.com - from video

Dr. Stacy Fisher, a cardiologist with the University of Maryland Medical System, had a patient with an aortic abnormality. He was not getting enough blood flow through one of the vessels that feed the brain. Because of the narrowing, Fisher recommended surgery to move the vessel where it could get better blood flow. The patient, who ...

ROCKVILLE, MD – The National Foundation for Cancer Research (NFCR) last Thursday, November 14, conducted its latest Salisbury Award Competition for Entrepreneurial Translational Research. This event featured 16 individual cancer research projects from 15 institutions, selected from among a total of 36 applications. It concluded with an evening ceremony at which finalists were recognized, the winner and runners-up were named and the founding Salisbury family of NFCR was honored.

Image: Representatives of the 16 selected cancer research projects, among 36 applicants, who participated in the Salisbury Award Competition. - https://www.nfcr.org

Configo Health, a company developing artificial intelligence-powered data analytics solutions for pediatric healthcare facilities, launched Nov. 18 with the announcement of Texas Children's Hospital and Children's National Hospital as founding investors.

Configo Health extracts administrative data from pediatric hospitals to create a comprehensive dataset of near-real-time benchmarked data. The HIPAA-protected information is available for use by patients, public ratings organizations and pediatric care facilities, which can use the compiled performance data to reduce readmissions and improve outcomes.

The A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland has produced remarkable engineers, scientists, life science professionals and entrepreneurs that have shaped the Biohealth Capital Region (BHCR) for well over a century. 2019 marks the Clark School’s 125th anniversary as one of the most important STEM talent pipelines in the region and nation.

Image: https://biobuzz.io

I have spent decades as a health-care executive and pediatric surgeon. I am often asked to reflect on the biggest advancements that have been developed to save children’s lives. 

While I can acknowledge that there are many technologies available to surgeons today that did not exist when I first began operating, I can’t ignore the fact that innovation in medical devices and technology for children continues to occur much more slowly than it does for adults. 

Image: https://thehill.com

It's the first expansion outside of the U.S. for the Loudoun company.

Image: Crystal Icenhour is the CEO of Aperiomics in Sterling. Credit -   JOANNE S. LAWTON

After a long suspenseful day, University of Maryland, Baltimore County earned the top spot as national winner of the U.S. Department of Energy's CyberForce Competition.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced University of Maryland, Baltimore County as the national winner of DOE's fifth CyberForce Competition™, held on November 16, 2019 at 10 of the national laboratories across America. The competition challenged 105 collegiate teams to build simulated energy infrastructure and defend it from cyberattacks. Regional first place winners were recognized by each participating laboratory.

Image: CAPTION The team from University of Maryland, Baltimore County won the national DOE CyberForce Competition over the weekend, besting more than 100 teams from 10 national laboratories across the country. CREDIT Argonne National Laboratory

BLACKSBURG, VA (WVNS) — A program at Virginia Tech empowers students with knowledge and skills to build or launch companies. According to a release, the Apex Center for Entrepreneurship is on track to engage more than 3,000 students across the college campus.

Apex Director Sean Collins shared that the center is building the 21st century workforce, and is helping entrepreneurs work in cross-functional teams, navigate ambiguity, assess risk, and build new technology fluency.

Image: https://www.wvnstv.com

A group of academic, biotech, biopharma, and healthcare leaders at Harvard and across Massachusetts plan to create a new center for innovation and manufacturing next-generation medicines, according to a Monday press release.

The center, which is estimated to cost $50 million dollars, will be an independent non-profit located in the Greater Boston area. The board of directors of the new center includes leaders from Harvard, MIT, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, GE Healthcare Life Sciences, and Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc.

Image: Senior members of Harvard's central administration, including University Provost Alan M. Garber '76, work in Massachusetts Hall. Photo: Sydney R. Mason

From gene editing to microfluidics, the scope for innovation in the field of life sciences is vast and ever-expanding. Yet many researchers don’t know how to make the leap from academia to industry.

Concordia’s District 3 aims to do something about that.

The District 3 Innovation Centre is working with the City of Montreal to help the biosciences and life sciences industries address shortages of scientific talent, as well as to train graduates who seek jobs to match their skill set.

"I'm thrilled to be joining Deloitte and continue to follow my passion for understanding how data science methods and technologies can be applied to biomedical data to yield a better understanding of biology," Bonazzi said. "I'm looking forward to supporting agencies in their mission to utilize data science to better understand and use complex biomedical data."

Plans are moving forward for another Bay Area biotech campus. Alexandria Real Estate Equities is transforming a chunk of property in San Carlos into a 1.6 million-square-foot biotech campus.

According to the San Francisco Business Times, the real estate development company submitted plans for its proposed biotech campus. The site in question includes multiple office buildings, including the former corporate headquarters of Kelly-Moore Paints. Most of the buildings on the swath of property are decades old. Alexandria Real Estate Equities intends to turn the space into six new buildings, each about five to seven floors for biotech companies to use. In addition to the buildings, the site will also include an amenities structure, parking garages and a small park, according to the Business Times.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. & GAITHERSBURG, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vor Biopharma, an oncology company pioneering engineered hematopoietic stem cells (eHSCs) for the treatment of cancer, and MaxCyte, Inc., a global cell-based therapies and life sciences company, today announced a clinical and commercial license agreement under which Vor will use MaxCyte’s Flow Electroporation® technology to produce eHSCs and initiate Investigational New Drug (IND)-enabling studies to accelerate its progress towards the clinic.

ROCKVILLE, Md., Nov. 25, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Emmes today announced that Lynn Lewis has joined the company as chief business officer, a newly created position.  Her overall focus is to build deeper relationships with existing clients and to develop new business opportunities, particularly among biotech and pharmaceutical companies.

Lewis will be responsible for sales, marketing, communications, strategic planning and partnerships, and proposal development.

Dr. Anne Lindblad, president and chief executive officer of Emmes, said, "Lynn understands the importance of science in our business.  She will extend our reputation and value as a trusted scientific partner with those who share our passion for designing and executing important studies aimed at improving human health."

Recorded at the BioHealth Capital Region Investor Forum: Christian Barrow, Executive Director of Life Sciences Banking with JPMorgan Chase, guests on BioTalk to talk about his background working with life science companies, healthcare Investing, and the BioHealth Capital Region.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/35zhnxI, Google Podcasts http://bit.ly/34kY1MP, and TuneIn http://bit.ly/2QQScTs

Chris Barrow is a senior banker with J. P. Morgan commercial bank. Chris joined J.P. Morgan in 2012 in the Philadelphia office, where he and his team focus on providing financial solutions to life sciences companies located in the Mid-Atlantic - Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Chris has over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry with roles that have spanned from public accounting to banking.

Chris’ current job is to help life science companies – biotech, specialty pharmaceutical, specialty pharmacy, medical device, med-tech, medical diagnostics and contract research organizations – gain access to JPMorgan’s well-known healthcare commercial and investment banking resources.

Prior to his current role, Chris started his career with EY (inactive CA and CPA licenses). He subsequently served as a senior banker for Bank of America. In this capacity, he was responsible for origination and structuring of debt products to general industry companies located in Pennsylvania.

Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a graduate diploma in Accounting both from McGill University. He currently resides in Doylestown, Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.

Recorded at the BioHealth Capital Region Investor Forum: Christian Barrow, Executive Director of Life Sciences Banking with JPMorgan Chase, guests on BioTalk to talk about his background working with life science companies, healthcare Investing, and the BioHealth Capital Region.

Listen now on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/35zhnxI, Google Podcasts http://bit.ly/34kY1MP, and TuneIn http://bit.ly/2QQScTs

Chris Barrow is a senior banker with J. P. Morgan commercial bank. Chris joined J.P. Morgan in 2012 in the Philadelphia office, where he and his team focus on providing financial solutions to life sciences companies located in the Mid-Atlantic - Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Chris has over 25 years of experience in the financial services industry with roles that have spanned from public accounting to banking.

Chris’ current job is to help life science companies – biotech, specialty pharmaceutical, specialty pharmacy, medical device, med-tech, medical diagnostics and contract research organizations – gain access to JPMorgan’s well-known healthcare commercial and investment banking resources.

Prior to his current role, Chris started his career with EY (inactive CA and CPA licenses). He subsequently served as a senior banker for Bank of America. In this capacity, he was responsible for origination and structuring of debt products to general industry companies located in Pennsylvania.

Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in Biology and a graduate diploma in Accounting both from McGill University. He currently resides in Doylestown, Pennsylvania with his wife and two children.

Usually BioHealth Founder and CEO, Rich Bendis, is the host asking questions of his guests on the BioTalk Podcast. However, Rich was recently a guest on the “The ZIDDANDFIXX Show: Angels Talk” Podcast for their 26th Episode titled “The Golden Triangle: DC joins San Francisco and Boston.” They discussed Venture Capital, Angel Investment, and the BioHealth Capital Region.

Ziad Moukheiber of Boston Harbor Angels (East Coast), and Faz Bashi (West Coast) of Life Science Angels have a good time chatting about Angel Investing, Entrepreneurship, Restaurants, Politics with good friends and always with great humor and lots of laughter!

Listen now!

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is in the news lately and for good reason. Diseases that were once easy to treat are becoming increasingly difficult to cure. But the largest contributor to AMR is a disease that rarely makes headlines – drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB), the world’s only airborne drug-resistant infection. DR-TB makes up a third of the world’s burden of AMR and in 2017, there were more than half a million cases of DR-TB globally – including some right here in the District of Columbia. It is estimated that two-thirds of individuals with DR-TB do not even know they are infected, posing a threat to their own health and to global health security.

One company gets absorbed into a larger brand and a host of companies flower as a result. The Biohealth Capital Region’s (BHCR) cycle of creative destruction has continued with Harpoon Medical. This was the story shared at the TEDCO Entrepreneur Expo’s session titled, “Success Breeds Success.” 

Image: https://biobuzz.io

Leeds, UK, 14 November 2019: LUNAC Therapeutics (LUNAC), a UK based drug discovery company focused on the identification and development of advanced anticoagulants with minimal bleeding risk, today announced it has spun out of the University of Leeds with £2.65M funding in the first close of a Series A financing round. The investment is being led by Epidarex Capital and the University of Leeds. The Company was founded based on IP generated by Prof Helen Philippou and Dr Richard Foster, through unique insights built on a decade of academic research into Factor XII which has been supported by the Wellcome Trust, British Heart Foundation and the Medical Research Council.

Qiagen NV shares jumped the most in 17 years after people with knowledge of the matter said Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. is considering a takeover of the molecular testing firm.

Thermo Fisher has approached the Dutch company about a potential purchase that could become one of its biggest-ever acquisitions, the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Shares of Qiagen rose 13% to 33.20 euros at 1:10 p.m. in Frankfurt, giving it a market value of $8.3 billion.

Earlier this year we reported on the First of Its Kind Apprenticeship Program at GSK’s Rockville, Maryland Site. We are happy to provide an update on that story with news that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has expanded their apprenticeship program to now include Biopharmaceutical Associates.

GSK is an industry-leading pharmaceutical, consumer products and healthcare company and is known for taking a future-oriented approach to their talent strategies. The Validation Technician Apprenticeship was the first of its kind in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. They have also begun to explore Virtual Reality training as a model that can be used to speed up employee development.

Virginia Tech is coming to Children’s National Hospital’s new campus at the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

The partnership will bring a 12,000-square-foot biomedical research complex to the 12-acre Children’s National Research and Innovation Campus, slated to deliver in December 2020 as part of the project’s first phase. In the university's first D.C. location, Virginia Tech's Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at Virginia Tech Carilion will establish a D.C. team to work with Children’s National on translational research projects, faculty recruiting, intellectual property work and commercialization, and trainings for students and fellows — all focused on pediatric cancers of the brain and nervous system.

Newswise — If the saying that two heads are better than one is true, then joining two fields of science may be better than one to spur more advances in medicine. With a $6.7 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers will bring together immunologists, oncologists and biomedical engineers in an effort to build new tools to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases.

November 14, 2019, Baltimore, MD – Rasio Therapeutics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company that develops novel medicines using cutting-edge computer-aided drug design technology, today announced the appointment of Todd Chappell, a veteran medtech and pharmaceutical industry executive, as the company’s CEO.

FRANKFURT, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Qiagen NV shares jumped to their highest in almost 19 years on Monday after the German genetic testing company said it would start talks with several potential suitors.

Germany-listed shares in the company were up 12.6% at 0926 GMT, giving the group an equity market value of about 8.7 billion euros ($9.6 billion).

Johns Hopkins University has become the first university in the world to partner with Innovation for Defense, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Innovation Hub's new initiative. Also called I4D, the Norfolk, Virginia–based center aims to bring together a variety of partners to design solutions to challenges the organization faces.

Join the world's largest multi-sector technology commercialization program. The Innovation Showcase offers a unique and vetted pipeline for corporate, federal and VC prospectors to discover and connect with emerging technologies.

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Nov. 08, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Empire State Development (ESD) announced the 10 companies selected to take part in the Round III of New York State’s Luminate NY accelerator competition in Rochester. The finalists selected include optics, photonics and imaging startups which were selected after pitching their innovative ideas to an advisory panel comprised of industry experts during the Lightning Awards at the Strong National Museum of Play on Nov. 7. Each company will receive an initial investment of $100,000 and will be a part of Luminate’s third cohort, which will begin in January 2020 at the Sibley Building in downtown Rochester. The six-month program will help the selected companies speed the commercialization of their technologies and business. In June, the teams will compete during Demo Day for $2 million in follow-on funding. Funding for the $25 million program is being provided through the Finger Lakes Forward Upstate Revitalization Initiative award and is being administered by NextCorps.

ROCKVILLE, Md., Nov. 12, 2019—Montgomery County Council President Nancy Navarro will be joined by County Executive Marc Elrich, Councilmembers, and business and community leaders for a press conference today at 11 a.m. at the Council Office Building (100 Maryland Ave., fourth floor) in Rockville to announce a new County Economic Development Platform that is focused on business development, housing, transportation, and workforce development. In addition, at the Council’s Nov. 12 meeting at 1 p.m. Council President Navarro will introduce a resolution to unify and formalize the Council’s focus on economic development.

Join us for a final event of the year where several of the region’s experienced entrepreneurs will share the lessons they have learned along their journeys in building their current and past companies.

Hear from an amazing panel of entreprenurs who have collectively been founders and CxO's of 12 companies, raised hundreds of millions of dollars and negotiated more than a half dozen acquisitions and exits.

BHI is seeking a full time energetic and motivated individual with relevant marketing experience and an interest in growing with our organization to serve as our full time Marketing and Communications Coordinator. The Marketing and Communications Coordinator will perform a variety of duties that support the organization’s mission, including formulating and executing a strategic marketing plan for the organization that encompasses BHI’s goals for the next three years and providing ongoing marketing collateral creation and marketing administrative support.

Click here for more information.

BHI is seeking a full time energetic and motivated individual with relevant marketing experience and an interest in growing with our organization to serve as our full time Marketing and Communications Coordinator. The Marketing and Communications Coordinator will perform a variety of duties that support the organization’s mission, including formulating and executing a strategic marketing plan for the organization that encompasses BHI’s goals for the next three years and providing ongoing marketing collateral creation and marketing administrative support.

Click here for more information.