A defining moment in modern biology occurred on July 24, 1978, when biotechnology pioneer Robert Swanson, who had recently co-founded Genentech, brought two young scientists to dinner with Thomas Perkins, the legendary venture capitalist. As they stood outside Perkins’s magnificent mansion in Marin County, with its swimming pool and garden and a view of the Golden Gate Bridge, Swanson turned to his two young colleagues and said, “This is what we’re all working for.”

Inova announced today that Milton L. Brown, MD, PhD, has joined Inova where he will serve as director of the new Inova Center for Drug Discovery and Development and as deputy director for Drug Discovery for the Inova Schar Cancer Institute (ISCI). Dr. Brown is a physician scientist who has expertise in the design, synthesis, and evaluation of new drugs and is one of only a handful of physician scientists in the United States who hold a PhD in synthetic chemistry and an MD. He comes to Inova from Georgetown University Medical Center where he was founding director of the Drug Discovery Program (DDP).

Lingering for more than two years, the revamped 21st Century Cures bill, unveiled in late November, has now been approved by the House and Senate and President Barack Obama has said he will sign it.

The 996-page bill includes major tweaks to the way in which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates drugs, devices and biologics, while providing the agency with $500 million over 10 years to implement provisions that seek to move such products to patients more quickly, while maintaining the same standard for safety and effectiveness that the agency has adhered to in the past.

Entrepreneurs can’t sit still for long.

Four months after announcing his departure from Google Ventures (now GV), which he cofounded and led, Bill Maris is reportedly raising a fresh $230 million VC fund that will focus on healthcare investments.

AbbVie (ABBV), a global biopharmaceutical company, and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine today announced that they signed a five-year collaboration agreement with the goal of advancing medical oncology research and discovery at both organizations.

Designed to build strong collaboration between AbbVie and Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers, the agreement will focus on several areas of oncology research, which could include lung, colorectal, breast, prostate and hematological cancer.

President-elect Trump didn't talk a lot about the Food and Drug Administration while he was on the campaign trail, but judging from what he did say, he will want the FDA to approve new drugs and products much faster.

BioBuzz Workforce Foundation, Inc., a social community organization whose mission is to build a more connected bioscience industry in the region, today announced a partnership with The City of Frederick Department of Economic Development and the Frederick County Chapter of BioBeers Meetup group. This new collaboration will give Frederick companies access to BioBuzz’s BioHive Platform and showcase them as important components within the ecosystem.

WorkSource Montgomery, Inc., the workforce development resource for Montgomery County businesses and career seekers, is collaborating with Montgomery College, which will serve as the lead on a $5.6 million America’s Promise grant. The grant will provide IT and cybersecurity training for students to ensure Montgomery County is better equipped to meet local business needs.

Sean Parker decided to take on cancer by throwing so many deep-rooted basics of research tradition out the window that he very nearly drove away the academics he wanted to attract.

As part of its longstanding commitment to Africa, Johnson & Johnson today announced the launch of the Africa Innovation Challenge, an initiative to support Africa’s vibrant and growing innovation ecosystem and to help develop important and locally sustainable consumer health solutions. The challenge is the latest initiative in the company’s comprehensive approach to advancing health and innovation worldwide. The Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies’ presence in Africa dates back more than 80 years and includes business operations, public health programs and corporate citizenship.

MedImmune, a global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, and Abpro, an integrated life sciences company at the forefront of synthetic biology, announced they have entered into a collaborative agreement to advance the development of a preclinical, novel bispecific antibody targeting angiopoietin-2 and vascular endothelial growth factor (Ang2-VEGF). The agreement is structured as a spin out, benefiting from both companies’ scientific expertise and AbPro’s day-to-day leadership as it oversees the new company, AbMed.

Investigators at the Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies (ICRHPS) at Tufts Medical Center (Tufts MC) and Tufts Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) - a shared resource between Tufts Medical Center and Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM), together with the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) School of Medicine's Brain Injury Outcomes (BIOS) Division and the Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR), won a seven-year, $25 million award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) to form one of only three new national Trial Innovation Centers (TICs) that will provide high-quality design and operational support to investigators conducting multi-center clinical trials.

Joint replacements. Cardiac care. Chemotherapy.

What do those things have to do with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act?

Economists and policymakers think the U.S. may be overpaying for such services, which helps drive up healthcare expenses for everyone. And the health law has a program that includes testing new ways to pay for care — including in those three areas — that might result in better quality and lower costs.

A five-year extension of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs took a big step forward at the end of November.

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, announced that language she wrote seeking the extension was included in a compromise National Defense Authorization Act, with votes expected soon.

Marriott Hotels in Europe has launched an accelerator program for tech companies to enhance the travel and hospitality experience. Each startup will be given expert guidance and the opportunity to pilot their product. Following a successful test period, Marriott Hotels could potentially offer them an ongoing partnership.

Thermo Fisher has bolstered its stem cell technology and reagent business through the acquisition of MTI-GlobalStem.

AstraZeneca will partner with Bicycle Therapeutics to develop respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic disease treatments based on Bicycle’s proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle®) product platform through a collaboration that the Cambridge, U.K., startup said today could generate for it more than $1 billion.

Under the collaboration, Bicycle has agreed to identify Bicycle bicyclic peptides for an undisclosed number of targets specified by AstraZeneca. The pharma giant has agreed to oversee further development and product commercialization.

Buyout firms have taken an increasingly large role in healthcare, investing in the full range of companies: insurers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical-technology firms, and many kinds of service provider. Historically, success has come from making “smart bets” on companies well positioned to capitalize on an industry trend or shift. TPG’s buyout of Par Pharmaceutical and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice’s acquisition of Envision Healthcare are examples of investments that benefited from secular industry tailwinds. Those same factors have propelled the healthcare sector to a leading performance in public markets over the past five years (Exhibit 1).

This request for information (RFI) seeks comments regarding early translational research activities supported by NHLBI.

Background

NHLBI seeks to facilitate and accelerate the development of new clinical interventions by bridging the gaps between mechanistic, discovery, and early translational research. This includes providing appropriate mechanisms to support investigator-initiated research, addressing resource and knowledge gaps, and creating initiatives to support career development of translational scientists and biomedical entrepreneurs.

Alexandria Real Estate CEO Joel Marcus on the company's deal to develop Merck's new research facility in California.

America’s entrepreneurial economy is the envy of the world.  Young companies account for almost 30 percent of new jobs, and as we have fought back from the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, startups have helped the U.S. private sector create 15.5 million jobs since early 2010—the longest streak of private-sector job creation on record. 

Today, in celebration of National Entrepreneurship Month, the Administration is releasing a Top 10 list of President Obama’s most significant specific actions to promote American entrepreneurship, as well as announcing new efforts to build on these successes. The President’s unprecedented focus on the role of startups in the United States’ innovation economy is exemplified by his launch of Startup America in 2011, a White House initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the Nation.

MedImmune and Abpro said today they will partner to develop a preclinical, novel, bispecific antibody targeting angiopoietin-2 and vascular endothelial growth factor (Ang2-VEGF).

Through the collaboration—whose value was not disclosed—several potential therapeutic areas will be explored where inhibition of the Ang2 and VEGF pathways with the bispecific antibody may provide clinical benefit, MedImmune and Abpro said.

The emergence of big data, as well as advancements in data science approaches and technology, is providing pharmaceutical companies with an opportunity to gain novel insights that can enhance and accelerate drug development. It will increasingly help government health agencies, payers, and providers to make decisions about such issues as drug discovery, patient access, and marketing. From our unique vantage points at Genentech, a leading biotechnology company with a major data science practice, and The Data Incubator, a data-science education company that places and trains data scientists, we have seen how the pharmaceuticals industry has leveraged big data for some potentially revolutionary advances and the challenges it has faced along the way.

University of Maryland (UM) Ventures and CoapTech, LLC, announced today that the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has granted CoapTech exclusive licensing rights for the commercial development of a platform technology called Coaptive Ultrasound.  CoapTech will use the technology, initially, to bring to market a medical device allowing non-surgical providers to safely perform feeding tube placement at the bedside through a novel procedure termed PUG (Percutaneous Ultrasound Gastrostomy).  PUG is a minimally invasive and more cost-effective method for the placement of permanent gastrostomy (feeding) tubes into stomachs of patients who need long-term nutritional supplementation.

Stephen Moret, the head of LSU's major fundraising arm and a former key adviser to then-Gov. Bobby Jindal, is leaving Louisiana for Virginia.

Moret has been tapped to lead the embattled Virginia Economic Development Partnership after less than two years leading the private LSU Foundation.

In its third year of mentoring and investing in cybersecurity start-ups in Northern Virginia, state-funded start-up accelerator Mach37 is starting to show it can churn out self-sustaining businesses.

Venture capital has been on a good run over the past few years across a range of sectors; even with recent slowdown relative to 2014-2015, venture-backed investments remain above historic averages. In fact, the first three quarters of 2016 alone are already higher than the annual rate of venture investing in all but two years since 2002.

Quasi-public venture capital firm MassVentures reports that its SBIR Targeted Technologies (START) program has invested $12 million into 50 companies that need more time to commercialize high-risk, high-reward technologies — and those companies have leveraged that state investment to raise an additional $278 million in outside capital.

Becton, Dickinson and Co. (NYSE:BDX) presented their roadmap for the future on their recent analyst day briefing. The presentation laid out ambitious plans that management has set out for the company through to 2019, including targeting top line expansion and double-digit bottom line expansion to be driven by margin improvements. The management has also set out to increase dividends through to 2019, through roughly $11 billion in operating cash flow (OCF) generation.

QIAGEN and CosmosID, a leading genomic big data company, today announced the launch of a metagenomics analysis plugin for the QIAGEN Microbial Genomics Pro Suite and CLC Genomics Workbench. The launch of the Cosmos ID plugin expands QIAGEN’s industry leading platform for NGS bioinformatics and strengthens its role as a provider of Sample to Insight metagenomics solutions.

Seeking to deliver the “final nail in the coffin for HIV,” NIH scientists have kicked off a large clinical trial of a vaccine regimen this week in South Africa.

Under a collaboration that includes GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi Pasteur, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases started a phase 2b/3 trial of a new vaccine regimen in 5,400 sexually active men and women aged 18 to 35 who don’t have the infection. They’ll receive five injections over a year.

Scientific efforts to find cures for cancer will be severely hampered if the scientific community does not change the ways in which patient data is collected, shared, and analyzed. The development of targeted therapies and immunotherapies — the two biggest hopes for cancer cures — depend on the existence of large data sets comprising patients’ genetic and clinical information. Today, that data is fragmented and guarded in silos. Indeed, the well-kept secret in the cancer space is that progress in finding cures is being impeded as much by the lack of sharing by the players in the precision medicine ecosystem as it is by the stubbornness of the underlying science.

A $65 million building was dedicated Monday afternoon at the East Baltimore Development Inc. project that will include a business incubator, research space and a Starbucks job training site.

The University of Virginia Health System has named its first-ever Chief Innovation Officer, a position that's expected to bridge the gap between research and treatment.

UVA is home to revolutionizing research and technology but newly-hired CIO Jeff Keller will facilitate in putting the research to use.

House and Senate leaders announced late Friday night that they had finally hammered out a deal on landmark legislation designed to speed federal approval of new drugs and devices and boost funding of medical research.

But what Republican lawmakers call the “final” version of the 21st Century Cures Act is actually still in negotiation with Senate Democrats, a senior Democratic aide told STAT on Sunday.