Bridging Innovations, Entrepreneurs, and Opportunities to Advance Global Biopharmaceuticals Development

Saturday, June 9, 2018

Wayne T. Hockmeyer Auditorium

MedImmune, A Member of the AstraZeneca Group

One MedImmune way, Gaithersburg, MD 20878

The Montgomery County Council approved the fiscal year (FY) 2019 operating budget on Thursday, May 24, 2018. Included in the budget is a total of $425,000 for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Matching Grant Program. The program provides matching fund for businesses that receive federal SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) grants.

Bill 41-17, Economic Development Fund – Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Matching Grant Program established a County matching fund for businesses that receive federal SBIR and STTR grants. Councilmember George Leventhal, who serves as chair of the Council’s Health and Human Services Committee and is a member of the Planning, Housing and Economic Development Committee, was the lead sponsor of Bill 41-17. All other Councilmembers were cosponsors.

Scientists struggling to find funding for research may have a new source of money: crowdfunding.

AstraZeneca has officially opened its new research facility in South San Francisco, bundling five of its Bay Area sites into a single unit at the heart of California’s biotech cluster.

We're pleased to announce that Richard Bendis, President & CEO BioHealth Innovation, Inc., will be a featured speaker at the 2018 Inova Discovery Series: Early Stage Investing in Health Technology!

We have over 300+ registered for our inaugural event. We hope you'll join us on June 21st at the Inova Center for Personalized Health.

Applications CARB-X welcomes applications from around the world for funding and support for the early development of antibiotics, diagnostics, vaccines, devices and other products to combat the most serious drug-resistant bacteria. Please read the sections below carefully to find out what CARB-X funds and how to apply for funding and support.

While the number of active investors and funded ventures continued to shrink in 2017, an increase in dollars invested and deal sizes shows angel investors are bullish about their prospects, indicates an annual report by the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Venture Research.

The Administration is kicking off a series of public meetings as part of its “Return on Investment” initiative to increase the benefits that American taxpayers receive from funding $150 B annually in government supported R&D.  The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is heading the project and issued a request for information (Request for Information (RFI)) seeking ideas on how to improve the commercialization of resulting technologies.

The Iowa AgriTech Accelerator has announced the five AgTech startups selected for the program’s class of 2018. The Accelerator, based in Des Moines, Iowa, is a mentor-led program focused on ag technology innovations.

Brian Hahn, Chief Financial Officer of GlycoMimetics, Inc., provided testimony today on behalf of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) before the House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Securities, and Investment. Hahn serves as the Co-Chair of BIO’s Finance & Tax Committee.

Understanding the far- and wide-ranging Maryland technology ‘household’ or ecosystem is essential to success, according to Glenna E. Cush, director of marketing with the state’s Small Business Development Center.

The angel investor market in 2017 saw an increase in investment dollars and deal size, according to the latest angel market analysis released by the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire.

Total investments in 2017 were $23.9 billion, an increase of 12.6 percent over 2016, and 61,560 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding in 2017, a decline of 4.4% over 2016 investments. The number of active investors in 2017 was 288,380 individuals, a decrease of 3.2 percent from 2016.

It's not just tech companies that can trace their roots back to a garage. According to co-founder Joel Marcus, Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE:ARE) -- a real estate investment trust specializing in life sciences laboratory and office space -- got its start in a garage, too. Since its founding in 1994, Alexandria Real Estate has grown into an $18 billion commercial real estate Goliath with $1.1 billion in annual revenue. Can this company's success continue? I recently spoke with Marcus to learn more about the company and its opportunities.

The SBIR/STTR program, which dubs itself as “America’s Seed Fund,” is one of the broadest forms of early-stage capital available to small technology companies. During the five-year period from 2013 to 2017, the 11 federal agencies participating in the SBIR/STTR program distributed 25,524 awards. Using charts, maps, and a downloadable spreadsheet, this Digest article looks at trends in SBIR/STTR awards by state over the period, including the companies with the most awards and states where SBIR/STTR awards outnumber VC deals. A future article will look at awards by metropolitan area.

In the City of Clustered Spires, the steeples aren't alone in their impressive trajectories. This month, we recognize eight of Frederick's most successful young entrepreneurs who have also risen above the ordinary, and continue to reach higher. 

Some 40 years after the biotech industry's birth, old-school Big Pharma is planting flags in the Bay Area.

AstraZeneca plc (NYSE: AZN) formally opened its 163,000-square-foot lab and office facility Tuesday in HCP Inc.'s (NYSE: HCP) Britannia Cove in South San Francisco. It joins Merck & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MRK) and Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) as some of the traditional drug maker names expanding operations in the Bay Area while trying to snare some of the region's drug-development mojo.

The United States–India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) was created for the promotion of joint activities that would lead to innovation and entrepreneurship through the application of science and technology. US-India research partners working on tangible innovations are suitable for this funding.

9th Call of the United States-India Science & Technology Endowment Fund (USISTEF) Program is now open with a deadline of 15 June 2018. While the detailed information about the program can be accessed through the websites www.usistef.org and www.iusstf.org

Opioids: Changing the Paradigm on Treating Pain and Addiction

4:15 PM–5:15 PM Jun 5, 2018

Room 256, Level 2

The opioid epidemic knows no age limits. Newborns and young children are the most vulnerable victims of the opioid epidemic. An American Academy of Pediatrics research suggests more than 100 children test positive for opioid addiction or dependency each day in US emergency departments. Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) births in the US occur at the rate of ~6 for every 1,000 and 15 per 1,000 in some rural areas. Studies suggest there will be over 50,000 NAS infant births in 2017.

Researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park and Baltimore campuses are working to shed new light on how, one day, immune tissues could be designed and implanted to create next-generation vaccines or immunotherapies for a range of diseases, or serve as cutting-edge tools for the early diagnosis of cancers or other illnesses.

The Maryland Technology Development Corp. has awarded a $750,000 grant to Longeveron LLC, a Miami-based biopharmaceutical company, to study whether stem cells can make a better flu vaccine for seniors with a researcher from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

VLP Therapeutics, LLC. (“VLP”), a biotechnology company focusing on the research and development of therapeutic and preventative vaccines and new cancer therapies, announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued US Patent #9,969,986 covering a virus like particle comprising modified envelope protein E3. The patent protects key composition of matter of VLP’s proprietary i-αVLP virus-like particle platform technology and the pharmaceutical composition for use in preventing infectious disease and the treatment of cancer. VLP Therapeutics is currently focused on developing preventative infectious disease vaccines and therapeutic cancer vaccines utilizing the platform technology covered by patent #9,969,986 and other issued US patents,

Although the concept of immunotherapy has been around for more than a century, it only gained prominence as a method of targeted cancer therapy in the early 2000s. In 2015, Merck’s Keytruda® (pembrolizumab), a checkpoint inhibitor drug, made headlines as a breakthrough therapy for melanoma after former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was treated with it. Keytruda had just received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as the first anti-PD-1 therapy, and its highly-publicized success created a frenzy in the media; followed by the initiation of scores of immuno-oncology (I-O) clinical trials.

The healthcare services and technology market is growing rapidly, which creates opportunities, risks, and structural questions for companies in the sector and those in the broader healthcare value chain.

The Wall Street Journal just ran an interesting interactive feature looking at where college grads move after graduation. They looked at 445 schools, and tracked destinations by metro area. They discovered that graduates, particularly from stronger schools, are flocking to major metro areas. The Big East, Ivy League, Pac-12, Big-12, ACC, and Big Ten are all over 70% in sending college grads to major metro areas (but see below for caveats).

Research to develop life-saving products, including new vaccines and other products to protect against deadly drug-resistant bacterial infections, got a significant boost today.

The UK Government’s Global Antimicrobial Resistance Innovation Fund (GAMRIF) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) have joined the CARB-X partnership to support scientific research around the world to develop new vaccines, preventatives, and other products against drug-resistant bacterial infections, particularly among vulnerable populations in low- and middle-income countries.

New York State will invest $30 million into the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset as part of the state's $72 million investment to support three transformative, economic developments on Long Island, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.

Results from a multi-year clinical trial testing hyperbaric oxygen as an intervention for US military service members who have experience mild traumatic brain injuries with persistent symptoms were published recently in Undersea and Hyperbaric Medicine Journal.

AI and Big Data allow innovators to leverage neuroscientific knowledge at scale to untapped markets.

We would all like our brains to be more powerful – especially those of us with reason to fear the effects of advancing age or a degenerative illness. For the entrepreneurs behind widely promoted “brain-training” apps like Lumosity, the universal desire for cognitive improvement translates to lucrative opportunities. Some scientists and clinicians, too, have hopped on the bandwagon, seeking avenues to lend their expertise to the business world while theoretically bringing cognitive enhancement to the masses.

BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) is a nonprofit organization focused on supporting BioHealth entrepreneurs and related industry growth in Montgomery County and the BioHealth Capital Region (Maryland, D.C. and Virginia).  BHI is seeking an energetic and motivated Marketing Intern to assist with communications and marketing-related projects. This position is estimated to be 15-25 hours per week, would start immediately, and continue for 12 weeks.  In addition to the responsibilities listed below, the intern may attend meetings and programs to understand the full work of BHI and how the organization accomplishes its mission through constituent outreach and support, commercialization and partnership activity.

StonebridgeCarras and The Donohoe Companies announced plans today for their project at 8280 Wisconsin Avenue which will focus its 175,000 square feet of commercial space on bringing life sciences to the Bethesda Central Business District (CBD).  StonebridgeCarras and Donohoe’s vision for the project is to capitalize on two converging trends:  employers locating their offices in live, work and play environments with access to mass transportation; and life sciences companies co-locating near thought leaders and institutions driving research and advancement.

Protenus has been selected by Modern Healthcare as one of the 2018 Best Places to Work in Healthcare. The complete list of this year’s winners, in alphabetical order, is available here. Modern Healthcare will publish a special supplement featuring ranked lists of all the winners along with the October 1 issue.

Paragon Bioservices, Inc. (Paragon), the leading private equity-backed biologics contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) with proven expertise in gene therapy and next-generation vaccines, was named the 2018 Life Science Company of the Year by the Maryland Tech Council (MTC). The announcement came at MTC’s 30th Annual Industry Awards held last night in the Hotel at the University of Maryland in College Park.

SoBran BioScience, a division of SoBran Inc, and a leading provider of pre-clinical GLP contract research announced the grand prize winner of the Innovation for Impact Prize sponsored in partnership with the Maryland Tech Council (MTC). This Grand Prize was awarded last night at the MTC 30th Anniversary Industry Awards Celebration.

AstraZeneca plc (LSE:AZN; NYSE:AZN) said FDA approved Lokelma sodium zirconium cyclosilicate (ZS-9) to treat hyperkalemia in adults. AZ had received two CRLs for Lokelma following manufacturing concerns (see BioCentury Extra, March 17, 2017).

Enthusiasm for the biopharmaceutical sector in Asia has been flat, due in part to China’s market-access blockade, Japan’s spending controls, and deceleration in India and Southeast Asia. Recent changes have reignited interest in the region, with important implications for pharma executives.