Baltimore-based Capsulomics won the top award in Utah last month at a pitch competition that was part of a boot camp for early-stage companies founded by military members, veterans and military spouses.

In the world of drug discovery and development, there is increasing pressure to get novel products to market faster, cheaper and ahead of the competition. This is exactly what Insilico Medicine is helping leading pharmaceutical companies to achieve through their artificial intelligence technology for drug discovery.

The BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) continues to thrive and currently occupies the fourth spot in the most recent Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology (GEN) top ten U.S. biohealth cluster rankings. More importantly, the collaborative efforts across industry, academia, government and nonprofits within the BHCR have generated powerful momentum that is now producing tangible results: The region has moved up two spots in GEN’s rankings in the last five years.

United Therapeutics Corporation (UTHR) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted for review the New Drug Application (NDA) for Trevyent® (treprostinil) for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). The FDA assigned the NDA a Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) target action date of April 27, 2020. Trevyent is a post-phase III development-stage drug-device combination product that combines two-day, single use, disposable PatchPump® technology with treprostinil, for the subcutaneous treatment of PAH.  

Are you finding it harder to recruit, hire and retain the biotech workforce you need?

Well, you’re not alone.  With the demand for talent at an all-time high, competition has never been greater. 

With product candidates acquired from AstraZeneca (AZN) and MedImmune, Viela Bio (VIE) is clinical-stage biotechnology to be followed carefully. Besides, at Phase 3 of development, the company could deliver positive results in 2020, which may make the share price run. After the IPO, we expect Viela to have an enterprise value between $180 and $310 million. With that, in our opinion, savvy individuals will try to acquire shares at an enterprise value of $200 million.

Venture funding for digital health companies reached an all-time high in the first half of 2019, totaling $5.1 billion across 318 deals, according to a recent report.

QIAGEN N.V. has announced that it has decided to integrate its global sales resources into its Business Areas (Life Sciences, Molecular Diagnostics and Bioinformatics). This transition is expected to allow the Business Areas to oversee the full value chain from innovation to commercialization, which is expected to further increase focus and agility. QIAGEN plans to provide an update during the fourth quarter of 2019.

Spotlights on Inspiring New Collaborative Approaches to Discovery and Development of Treatments and Cures

University of Maryland researchers have discovered that seemingly identical cells can use different protein molecules to carry out the same function in an important cellular process. The scientists named this newly discovered variability "functional mosaicism," and it has significant implications for the development of therapeutic treatments, which are often designed to target a specific molecule, or a gene that produces a specific molecule.

Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. (ITI), a privately held, Maryland-based biotechnology company, announced today that it has appointed brain tumor expert E. Antonio ‘Nino’ Chiocca, M.D., Ph.D., Harvey W. Cushing Professor of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School Neurosurgeon-in-Chief and Chairman, Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital to its scientific advisory board. ITI is currently applying its investigational UNITE™ platform in immuno-oncology, particularly for virally driven brain cancers, and Dr. Chiocca’s extensive expertise in this field will be instrumental to these efforts.

By invitation only: For questions email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Gaithersburg, MD

Are you an experienced biohealth entrepreneur seeking new opportunities in the BioHealth Capital Region? BioHealth Innovation is developing a database of experienced industry personnel willing to work in potential C-suite positions with our university and startup partners. If you would like to have your contact information and vita included in this database for their review and have not done so already, please submit your information to BHI via this form.   

Congress and the Trump administration are considering proposals to reduce the price of drugs, but there is a strong causal link between current drug prices and revenues on one hand and future drug research and treatments on the other. Policymakers should keep in mind this trade-off between short-term affordability and long-term innovation: Reducing drug revenues today will lead to a decline in future R&D and a decrease in the number of new drug discoveries.

708 Quince Orchard Road, Gaithersburg, Maryland

Three move-in ready laboratory/office modules; each approximately 1,200 RSF with communal services and amenities designed to facilitate collaboration.

• Fully fit out laboratory space
• Office space includes one furnished office and two workstations
• Communal space includes reception/lobby area, pantry, conference rooms, IT closet, autoclave, glass wash, and ice maker
• BioHealth Innovation will provide their Startup and Entrepreneur-in-Residence programs and various supporting services to guide and facilitate the growth of early-stage companies
• FitLab, Alexandria’s state-of-the-art fitness center, is located in close proximity

Viewed simply by dollar value, the value of mergers-and-acquisitions (M&A) activity appeared to be zooming in the first half of this year: Statistics compiled for GEN by Informa Pharma Intelligence’s Medtrack and Strategic Transactions services showed a total $184.05 billion worth of deals for which values were disclosed, up nearly 38% from the $133.73 billion recorded for January–June 2018.

Each Cyclops had a single eye because, legend has it, the mythical giants traded the other one with the god Hades in return for the ability to see into the future. But Hades tricked them: the only vision the Cyclopes were shown was the day they would die. They carried this knowledge through their lives as a burden—the unending torture of being forewarned and yet having no ability to do anything about it.

Two more Bay Area companies hit unicorn valuations of $1 billion or more at the end of the week as part of more than $550 million in funding that was disclosed in the region. Here's more on that and other venture news.

Viela Bio today announced that peer-reviewed journal, The Lancet, has published results from its pivotal study of inebilizumab in patients with neuromyelitis optica spectrum disorder (NMOSD). NMOSD is a rare, severe, relapsing, neuroinflammatory autoimmune disease that can result in severe muscle weakness and paralysis, loss of vision, respiratory failure and neuropathic pain.

There were 5 New Hires and Promotions in the #BioHealthCapitalRegion in the month of August! Check out all the #PeopleOnTheMove Here Facility Logix LLC Ceres Nanosciences, Inc. Vaccitech CRB

Veralox specializes in developing drugs to address unmet medical needs. It is currently working on therapies to target type 1 diabetes and a medication-induced immune disorder.

Healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson today announced the six winners of the Champions of Science Africa Innovation Challenge 2.0 at the 28th World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town.

The winning teams will get share of $300 000 prize pool, along with extensive mentoring and network building to support the expansion and sustainability of the companies and their programmes.

Microsoft Corp. is teaming up with U.K. drugmaker AstraZeneca Plc on creating a health-tech incubator in Paris aimed at bringing new solutions to the field’s most difficult problems.

M. Javad Aman, PhD, President and CEO of Integrated BioTherapeutics, explains how his Montgomery County company is focused on discovery research for the development of new vaccines and therapies to fight emerging infectious diseases.

College Park, Maryland, will serve as a SBIR Road Tour stop for the state of Maryland, and will provide attendees with an opportunity to hear directly from the participating federal agency program managers that administer over 5,000 new awards annually. Register today for a one-on-one appointment with your choice of agencies!

The SBIR Road Tour is a national outreach effort connecting entrepreneurs working on advanced technologies to the country’s largest source of early stage funding – the SBIR/STTR programs. Also known as America’s Seed Fund, the SBIR/STTR programs provide over $3 billion in funding to small businesses each year in a wide variety of technology areas.

Forbes released its annual list of the country's most innovative leaders, comprising 100 founders and CEOs known for encouraging creative and highly successful innovation at their organizations.

Johns Hopkins University is launching a new center for psychedelic research that will use psychedelic drugs to study the mind and therapies for diseases like addiction.

Machfu, an industrial Internet of Things technology company, announced today that it has been awarded the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II extension grant for $1 million by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Machfu won the Phase II award in 2017.

Vensana Capital—an independent, medtech-focused venture capital investment firm supported by Versant Ventures—has launched with a $225 million fund and ambitions to support new breakthroughs in medical devices, diagnostics and data science.

Organizers of the $150K "Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!" competition today announced the 12 finalists who are advancing to the live pitch component of the competition scheduled for Sept. 22 during the 7th Annual Pediatric Device Innovation Symposium hosted by Children's National Health System. The pitch competition, sponsored by the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI), focuses on Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) innovations, a pediatric subspecialty that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) identifies as having a significant unmet need for medical devices.

Making a therapeutic that contains biological components is just the start of creating a medicine. Then, biopharmaceutical companies must capture that drug and ensure that it’s free of contamination. New techniques and technologies can accomplish that capture and cleanup more simply and economically.

Bristol-Myers Squibb has allied with biotech accelerator BioMotiv. The deal sets Bristol-Myers up to found and fund biotechs with BioMotiv before going on to acquire them outright once a preclinical candidate is identified. 

REGENXBIO Inc. (Nasdaq: RGNX), a leading clinical-stage biotechnology company seeking to improve lives through the curative potential of gene therapy based on its proprietary NAV® Technology Platform, and Clearside Biomedical, Inc. (Nasdaq: CLSD), a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing and delivering treatments that restore and preserve vision for people with serious back of the eye diseases, today announced an option and license agreement for exclusive worldwide rights to Clearside's proprietary, in-office SCS Microinjector™ for the delivery of RGX-314 to the suprachoroidal space to treat wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD), diabetic retinopathy (DR) and other conditions for which anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) treatment is currently the standard of care. REGENXBIO plans to evaluate RGX-314 using Clearside's SCS Microinjector for in-office, non-surgical delivery into the suprachoroidal space, while continuing to advance its RGX-314 subretinal delivery program currently in development for wet AMD and DR.

Low interest rates and high stock valuations are fueling U.S. life sciences CEOs’ growing appetite for mergers and acquisitions, KPMG’s CEO Outlook found.

It’s a pivotal moment for the MedImmune spinout, which has put the fate of its first prospective product in regulators' hands.