Milken Institute publishes its 2018 State Technology and Science Index.

Growing up in Devon in the 1980s, brothers James* and Matt* had to be careful with their antics–a cut or bruise could land them in hospital.

To those who have been following the space, it’s no surprise that 2018 has been a record year for venture capital investing in healthcare. With $28.8 billion raised through the end of November (and big deals like the $400 million Series C raised by Relay Therapeutics last week) startups in the sector have raised more money this year than any year before in the last 10 years that VC funding database Pitchbook has tracked investments in the space.

Biotech landlord and developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities has purchased an office complex in Palo Alto's Stanford Research Park from Stanford University for $100.3 million.

Maryland universities are creating new academic programs they say could help the state adapt to a changing innovation economy and help meet needs for tomorrow's educators. The Education Policy and Student Life committee of the University System of Maryland’s Board of Regents moved forward this week with eight new programs proposed from system universities.

Maryland’s overall venture capital haul for 2018 totaled crossed the billion-dollar mark for the first time since 2001, according to the PwC/CB Insights MoneyTree report.

Without a doubt, Frederick’s life sciences and biotechnology industry is closing out the year with strong growth, and starting 2019 with a solid foundation built on numerous innovative organizations and several areas of expertise.  

The Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) and its board are pleased to welcome Bill Tompkins as Chief Operating Officer. Bill brings to Montgomery County a strong corporate and trade association background, having served in multiple senior level roles for Fortune 500 and other organizations.

The hire is well known in the business community for her previous roles at local organizations.

Pappas Capital has raised $85.8 million toward a venture-capital fund, according to a filing with the SEC.

A. M. Pappas Life Science Ventures V attracted capital from 29 LPs.

Study participants will use emocha's platform to video record themselves each day for 24 weeks as they take buprenorphine.

While the high cost of living in San Francisco has famously grabbed headlines, the costs of simply meeting there, even for a few days, are becoming untenable for some.

As 9,000 official badge holders—alongside what could feel like three times as many unofficial attendees—swarmed downtown San Francisco for the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, much of the opening small talk in the hastily bedless hotel suites-turned-meeting rooms began with, “Can you believe some of these prices?”

BIO, in partnership with the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA), is proud to announce today that we are launching Innovature, an initiative to engage people in a dialogue on the promise of innovation in food and agriculture and the tangible benefits it brings to our planet, our health, and our food.

The goal of Innovature is to grow awareness, acceptance and adoption of gene editing in food and agriculture, and seed positive ground for future innovations that address some of society's most pressing challenges, such as climate change, hunger and sustainability.

Popper and Co., a strategy consulting and transaction advisory firm guiding medical technology and life sciences companies working on the leading-edge of diagnostics and patient management, announced today the addition of Vincent Linder, PhD and Gene Vivino to its growing team of industry and clinical senior advisors. Both Dr. Linder and Mr. Vivino provide strong industry knowledge and extensive operating experience, in addition to broad networks in both Europe and Asia. 

To date, the conversation around CAR-T cell therapies in cancers has focused on the most visible considerations: efficacy, toxicity and cost. But while those factors are important, another one deserves equal consideration: manufacturing.

Join us for the January 23, 2019 for PATHFINDER INNOVATION PROGRAM

Learn more about:

• Overview and Reporting Requirements for Type of Entity
• Impact of Accounting Methods 
• Start-up Company Issues
• International Investment
• Tax Law Changes
• State Tax Concerns
• Tax Planning

Schedule

12:00 p.m - Networking Lunch

12:30 - 1:30 p.m. - Discussion with Q&A*  - Tom Christiana, Partner – Aronson, LLC

1:30 – 4:00 p.m. - One-on-one Meetings**

RSVP by noon, January 22, at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

No charge to attend but pre-registration is required.*Attend in person (1 Church St, Rockville) or by videoconference**Attendance at discussion is required to participate in 1:1

Download Flyer »

Montgomery beat out Boston and the Philadelphia areas to win the project.

BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) announced today that John P. Sullivan has joined BHI as a new Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), working with Ethel Rubin, PhD, ventures team head, to provide product, corporate and private investment strategy for NIH portfolio companies.

“We are pleased to have Mr. Sullivan join the team of EIRs serving NIH,” said Richard Bendis, BHI President and CEO. “His expertise in building, operating and acquiring health technology businesses will certainly be an asset as he works to provide the institution with industry insights and commercialization perspectives.”

Established with NIH in 2012, the EIR program is designed to connect NIH-funded start-ups with experienced industry experts who can help them maneuver through multi-disciplinary technical challenges and the business and regulatory environment to deploy new healthcare and biomedical technologies. 

A sign of the BioHealth Capital Region’s industry growth is the increase in hiring taking place throughout the region.   More than 1800 job opportunities are listed on BioHealth Innovation’s website (www.BioHealthInnovation.org/Jobs).  Many with relatively young companies expanding their regulatory, manufacturing and R&D teams.  To post positions, Email:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

HOLD THE DATE - January 29, 2019  8 am. – 12:30 p.m.

Meet 1:1 with SBIR program managers. Learn more about their funding programs (SBIR and more!) 

8-8:30 Networking and Registration

8:30 – 10:00 a.m. – Program Overviews*

10:00 – 12:30 p.m. – 1:1 Meetings with Program Managers**

Agencies represented include:   
NSF, NIH NIA, NIH NCATS, NIH NCI, NIH NHLBI, NIH NIDA, US Army (invited)

*The program overview will be available by videoconference.

**You do not have to participate in 1:1 meetings.  However, to do so, you must attend the overview session in person.
PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED:  RSVP by noon 1/27:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Please join me in celebrating two exciting leadership changes at JHTV. Steve Kousouris, who has been serving as Interim Executive Director of Technology Transfer at JHTV since June, has assumed this role permanently effective Jan.1. Additionally, Mark Bailey, previously Associate Director of Finance, will assume responsibility for the portfolio that Steve has overseen since 2013 in the capacity of Director, Finance & Administration.

Autolus Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ: AUTL), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing next-generation programmed T cell therapies, today announced that it has signed a long-term, full-building lease with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE: ARE) for the construction and development of an 85,000 square foot build-to-suit facility to be located in the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center in Rockville, Maryland. The new facility will house offices for Autolus' U.S.-based research and development, commercial and corporate functions and serve as its first full commercial-scale manufacturing center, with a planned capacity to produce 5,000 T cell therapies annually. In addition, Autolus has established a temporary U.S. headquarters in Rockville until the new facility is ready for occupancy, which is currently expected to occur in 2021.

2018 was a record year for biopharma initial public offerings (IPOs), with an all-time high of $6.3 billion raised by 58 U.S. companies as of December 17, according to Renaissance Capital, compared with 36 companies garnering some $4 billion in 2017.

For months, it had been clear that 2018 would be a banner year for pharmaceutical innovation. The question was, by how much would it shatter the previous (1996) record of 50 approvals (excluding diagnostics and imaging agents)? We now know. It exceeded it by over 20 percent. Last year, U.S. regulators approved a total of 61 drugs – 59 by FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), plus two recombinant therapies (Andexxa and Jivi) by its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER).

Indicators of Innovation, a report issued today by the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, shows New Jersey at a challenging crossroads in its efforts to reclaim itself as the “Innovation State.”

Brianna Wronko has an engineering degree from an Ivy League school and is the CEO of a health-care diagnostics company. Until this week, she never thought she’d be stuck holding business meetings in a San Francisco hotel bathroom.

Pharmaceutical companies are starting to see the retail supply chain as more than just a way to get drugs from point A to point B. It can be an opportunity to ensure better products and services and create a competitive advantage with consumers – but only if data is connected and well managed.

A pair of Baltimore-based digital health startups were among the award winners at the conclusion of the Accenture HealthTech Innovation Challenge this week.

The Food and Drug Administration plans to create a new office to improve the review of new medicines — one that will develop a standardized approach to using personalized medicine, digital data, and patients’ own reports, according to Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

GlaxoSmithKline - Advancing the science of vaccines and improving lives around the world.

Is the pain stabbing or burning? On a scale from 1 to 10, is it a 6 or an 8?

Over and over, 17-year-old Sarah Taylor struggled to make doctors understand her sometimes debilitating levels of pain, first from joint-damaging childhood arthritis and then from fibromyalgia.

Precision medicine is using knowledge about a person’s genetic code to tailor treatments to that individual for the most optimal outcome. Think of sequencing tumors and then determining a treatment regimen based on biomarkers or genetic variants.

MOVE over Caltech, Georgia Tech, and MIT – the University of Oxford has been named the best university in the world for computer science degrees for 2019. The ranking compares the top computer science programs in the world. ETH Zurich ranked number 2 on the list, followed by Stanford University (No. 3), the University of Cambridge (No. 4), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (No. 5).