Fledgling biotechs and medical-technology startups in the U.S. and Europe have found a new source of funding for their costly research: China.

Business partnering, education and networking was the focus of 3500 biohealth industry leaders who attended the BIO International Convention (BIO) Conference earlier this month in Boston.  At the event, BIO set the GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for the Largest Business Partnering Event with 41,400 partnering meetings.  Many of these meetings took place in the pavilion hosted by the Maryland Department of Commerce which included space for meetings BioHealth Innovation, Montgomery County Economic Development Corp (MCEDC), Rockville Economic Development (REDI), the City of Gaithersburg, Viva White Oak, PIC-MC (Montgomery College), University of Maryland Ventures, Johns Hopkins University, Fina BioSolutions, Integrated Pharma Services,  Pharmaceuticals International, Inc., Emergent BioSolutions, AsclepiX, and US FDA’s Tech Transfer Office.  Others from the BioHealth Capital Region who attended included:  ABL, American Gene Technologies, AstraZeneca / MedImmune, Altimmune, BioMarker Strategies, Bytegrid, Children’s National Health, CRBE, Creatv Microtech, GlycoMimetics, IDT Biologica, Immunomics, Intrexon, Leidos Health, MacroGenics, Maryland Tech Council, MaxCyte, Newport Board Group, Novodux Paragon Bioservices, REGENXBIO, MacroGenics, Neuronascent, Scheer Partners, Smithers Avanza, TEDCO, the University of Maryland Baltimore, and the University of Maryland’s Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology Research.

The StartRight! Women's Business Plan Competition was founded in 2004 by Rockville Economic Development, Inc. (REDI) to encourage and support women’s entrepreneurship. Now run by the Maryland Women's Business Center, an initiative of REDI, StartRight! awards prizes for winning business plans each year. The women who enter our competition receive more than the opportunity to win a top prize of $5,000; they also receive valuable coaching and feedback on their business plan!

Complete plans are due electronically by July 12^th.  For more information, click here.  

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, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Fast Track designation for RGX-111. RGX-111 is a novel, one-time investigational treatment for Mucopolysaccharidosis Type I (MPS I), that is designed to deliver the human iduronidase (IDUA) gene directly to the central nervous system (CNS) using the NAV AAV9 vector.

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, today announced that it has received an accelerated license payment of $100 million under its license agreement (the License Agreement) with AveXis, Inc. (AveXis) for the development and commercialization of products to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), due to the acquisition of AveXis by Novartis AG (Novartis).

RoosterBio Inc. has joined the new NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies, known as CMaT. The center, launched in 2017 with a $20 million investment from the National Science Foundation, aims to revolutionize the treatment of cancer, heart disease, autoimmune diseases and other disorders by enabling scalable manufacturing and broad use of potentially curative therapies that utilize living cells – such as immune cells and stem cells – as “drugs.”

Baltimore biotechnology firm WindMIL Therapeutics has raised a $32.5 million to support clinical trials and further development for new cancer therapies.

For half a century, doctors have said human organ transplants will someday be replaced by xenotransplantation, or putting animal organs into people.

Johns Hopkins spinout LifeSprout recently closed on $6.5 million in funding as it looks to bring soft tissue replacement technology to market, according to CEO Sashank Reddy.

Based on data collected by Livability.com, a website that explores what makes small-to-medium sized cities ideal places to live, the City of Gaithersburg ranked in the top 10 of a 2018 listing of Best Cities for STEM Workers, coming in at #6. The site analyzed data from 2,000 cities and towns across the country, looking at such factors as share of total jobs that fall into the STEM category, the median income for those jobs, and the median income for STEM jobs in relation to overall median income within each city. Number one on the list was Huntsville, Alabama.

The Gaithersburg-based company is raising $5 million, ahead of a planned Series A round of at least $30 million in the first quarter of 2019, to bring a therapy for drug-resistant bacteria to market as soon as possible.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (NYSE: ARE), an urban office REIT uniquely focused on collaborative life science and technology campuses in AAA innovation cluster locations, celebrated the first anniversary of Alexandria LaunchLabs®, which opened at the Alexandria Center® for Life Science – New York City in June 2017.

The life science industry is growing rapidly around the country and New York City is poised for an explosion of new companies—but there isn’t enough real estate to accommodate them in Gotham, according to industry experts at the first-ever Life Sciences 2018 Real Estate Development Symposium on June 12.

The state’s Biotechnology Task Force released a 44-page report of recommendations to the state that could help New Jersey reinvigorate its life sciences sector.

Many of the themes from the report echo comments from the Biotechnology Innovation Organization’s annual conference in Boston recently.

Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 1:00 PM

Come meet our Spring Cohort of next generation technology ventures in: AR/ VR, Smart Parking, Intelligent Buildings, Mobile Wallet, Multi-modal Transport, Cyber Security, that are changing the way we design, build, and operate cities!

Paid Public Parking is available in the garage beneath the Virginia Tech Research Centre. Garage entrance is off 9th Street at the corner of Glebe Road.

The Rare Genomics (RG) Institute is delighted to announce the winners of the 2017 BeHEARD (Helping Empower and Accelerate Research Discoveries) science challenge, a global competition that offers rare disease researchers, who traditionally have difficulty attracting funding, grants of the latest life science innovations and technologies. This unique crowdsourced biotechnology competition allows companies to contribute their technology to make a difference for the rare disease community.

Baltimore-based Insilico Medicine landed a new strategic investment from Chinese biotech company WuXi AppTec.

The amount of the funding was not disclosed, but the investment also includes a strategic partnership between Insilico and WuXi, which specializes in contract research for the pharmaceutical and medical device industries.

If indeed “innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower,” as Steve Jobs wrote in 2001, then this year’s Top 10 Under 40 are well on the way to becoming leaders in biopharma research and business.

United Therapeutics Corporation (NASDAQ: UTHR) and XVIVO Perfusion, Inc., a subsidiary of XVIVO Perfusion AB (STO: XVIVO), today announced that the use of XVIVO's ex-vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) technology will be incorporated into the Silver Spring, Maryland laboratory of Lung Bioengineering Inc., a subsidiary of United Therapeutics' public benefit corporation subsidiary Lung Biotechnology PBC.

You know already about the promise for CRISPR-Cas9 — it might revolutionize fields from medicine to agriculture.

It might also eventually cause tumors.

So far, the digital revolution has mostly been a disappointment in health care. Doctors stare at their screens instead of us. Specialists and emergency rooms still don’t have all our records.

Neuralstem, Inc. (Nasdaq:CUR), a biopharmaceutical company developing novel treatments for nervous system diseases, today announced that it has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract by the Department of Defense (DoD). The award of $150,000 will support the Company’s ongoing efforts to develop its NSI-566 human neural stem cell line as a candidate therapeutic for severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).

Maryland Technology Development Corp. is launching a new fund that will offer early stage investments of $50,000 to startups that may be overlooked by other funding organizations.

Biotechnology is one of the hottest areas in business and investing, so it might seem a bit counterintuitive that a new biotechnology firm just launched that won’t seek to make any profit. But the new nonprofit drugmaker seeks to do precisely that, in order to tackle some of the worst health crises in the developing world.

Eight US-based startups have been accepted onto the 2018 cohort of Trajectory Next, a second-stage accelerator run by Johns Hopkins University (JHU), University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and incubator Betamore.

Perhaps it was inevitable that with Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb speaking before an auditorium full of biotechnology executives, a particularly contentious topic would come up: the new right-to-try law.

Lockheed Martin [LMT] on Wednesday said it has added another $100 million to its venture capital fund, doubling the firepower of Lockheed Martin Ventures for investments in early-stage companies that are developing advanced technologies.

Regulatory and competitive uncertainties in the marketplace lead many life sciences companies to enter into collaborative arrangements with other companies to develop new drugs or medical devices. These arrangements allow for the leverage of expertise that may not have been available in-house – such as a pharmaceutical company that sees promising new science from a biotech startup – while also sharing in the costs and risks of new product development.

Betamore, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures and the University of Maryland, Baltimore have launched the first cohort of a new collaborative accelerator program, called Trajectory Next.

GlycoMimetics (NSDQ:GLYC) priced an underwritten public offering of 7,000,000 shares of common stock at $17.00 apiece today, reporting that it expects to bring in $119 million from the offering.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) today announced the beginning of a $50 million expansion to the company’s Camden fill/finish facility located in Baltimore, Md. The multi-year expansion is expected to be completed in 2021, and will significantly increase the company’s contract development and manufacturing capacity, redundancy, and flexibility. This expansion is also anticipated to create up to 60 new jobs in the next three years.

The company will receive $75,000 in exchange for up to 10 percent equity, plus incubation space and a customized growth strategy.

Instem, a leading provider of IT solutions to the global life sciences market, is pleased to announce that Noble Life Sciences, Inc. (Noble) has purchased a comprehensive package of preclinical software solutions, including Provantis®, the market leading preclinical data management system.

Fifteen children born with a rare muscle-wasting disease would probably not be alive today if not for an experimental treatment that tweaked their genes shortly after they were born.

Servier, an independent international pharmaceutical company, today announced the appointments of Christian Schubert, Ph.D. and Rekha Paleyanda, Ph.D., as Directors of Servier BioInnovation along with the opening of the Servier BioInnovation office in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The appointments of Dr. Schubert and Dr. Paleyanda, who will head Servier’s U.S. R&D and external innovation, and business development and licensing (BD&L) activities respectively, will operationalize the launch of Servier BioInnovation in the U.S. Located in the heart of one of the world’s leading biotechnology hubs in the Cambridge Innovation Center at Kendall Square, Servier BioInnovation will lead Servier’s expansion efforts into the U.S. innovation ecosystem.