The Clark Charitable Foundation gifted Johns Hopkins University $15 million to provide financial aid and create a new academic program for undergraduate engineering students.

The gift honors the late A. James Clark, a former trustee of the university and of Johns Hopkins Medicine and former CEO of Clark Enterprises and Clark Construction Group LLC, one of the country’s largest privately held general building contractors. It is the largest endowed scholarship gift ever given to the university’s Whiting School of Engineering.

Today CosmosID announced participation in Vice President Biden's National Cancer Moonshot, which aims to accelerate progress in preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer. CosmosID will provide access to its automated bioinformatics platform, MetaGenID, for five cancer microbiome research studies (valued at $150,000) to understand how the microbiome (i.e. oral, gut, and skin) contributes to development of specific cancers.

As part of the White House's Cancer Moonshot Initiative, today, SHARE For Cures (www.SHAREForCures.org) launched a technology platform and study aimed to gather a better understanding of the real-world use of novel cancer immunotherapy drugs.   

SHARE For Cures' new SHARE platform will easily and securely gather clinical, wellness, lifestyle, and patient-reported data about cancer immunotherapy use, side effects and benefits.  Once gathered, the data will enable researchers to better understand how these new therapies are being used outside of clinical trials, as well as the health impact of specific drugs on real-world patients. 

Vertex says it has updated an R&D collaboration with Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics (CFFT) stretching back more than a decade.

Under the updated Research, Development and Commercialization Agreement, disclosed in a regulatory filing yesterday, CFFT—the Foundation’s nonprofit drug discovery and development affiliate—agreed to pay Vertex $75 million upfront, as well as up to $6 million annually toward development funding.

Facing federal and state pressure to raise retention and graduation rates, dozens of colleges and universities are developing analytics tools to help students make better decisions about everything from courses to social activities.

Purdue University has notified its 7,300 incoming freshman about a new web application that could help them better acclimate to life on campus. Administrators at the West Lafayette, Ind., school view the software as a critical tool for an institution whose graduation rate hovers at around 50 percent.

PricewaterhouseCoopers published its quarterly MoneyTree Report Friday showing that startups of all stripes garnered a total of $10.6 billion through 891 deals nationwide. However, the deal value and the number of deals fell 36 percent and 25 percent respectively from the same quarter last year.

Venture capitalists invested $19.6 million in Maryland companies in the third quarter, the lowest total in any quarter since 1997.

The total investment represents a 76 percent decrease from the second quarter and is down 86 percent from the third quarter last year, according to a MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and the National Venture Capital Association, based on data provided by Thomson Reuters.

MD Start, a European medical technology accelerator, announced Thursday that it has raised $11.5 million to create and fund four new French companies that can fulfill unmet needs in the medical device market.

The round was led by French Tech Acceleration Fund managed by Bpifrance, a French public investment bank. Other returning investors were French venture capital firm Sofinnova Partners, Dublin-based Medtronic, and LivaNova, a London-based medical device company.

An affiliate of Alexandria Real Estate Equities Inc. (NYSE: ARE), an urban office REIT based in Pasadena, Calif., has purchased Torrey Ridge Science Center in San Diego’s Torrey Pines submarket. Walton Street Capital and SteelWave sold the campus to Alexandria for $182.5 million.

Torrey Ridge Science Center is a Class A life science campus leased to companies such as Regulus Therapeutics, Pacira Pharmaceuticals, Nitto BioPharma, Interpreta and BP Technology Ventures. The three-building, 291,799-square-foot campus was 87 percent leased at the time of sale.

The Johns Hopkins University earned $58 million in licensing revenue in its 2016 fiscal year, three times more than in the prior year.

Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, the university's commercialization office, attributed the spike in part to a major sublicensing deal between one of its portfolio companies, Immunomic Therapeutics, and Japanese pharmaceutical company Astellas Pharma.

The Washington DC/Baltimore Chapter of Women In Bio is presenting a program to learn about board service in the public and private sectors. If you are a budding entrepreneur looking to develop a board, this is the event for you. If you were recently named to a board and want to know more about your responsibilities, this is the event for you. If you want to start a business/nonprofit and need to know how to set up a board, this is the event for you.

Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 6:00 PM 

Five Top Intellectual Property Legal Experts and a Room Filled with Life Science and Healthcare Entrepreneurs…what could possibly happen?

Strategies for Start-ups (and Non-Start-ups) to Maintain, Protect and Unlock their Intellectual Property

The workshop is intended for non-lawyers to understand IP issues and answer questions on just about every aspect of IP including; Copyrights, Trade Secrets, Trademarks, Patents, licensing, IP Due Diligence, IP Strategy, etc.

NATURE OF WORK

The Senior Grants and Contracts Manager will be tasked with the preparation, drafting, review and negotiation of contractual agreements with a special emphasis on agreements that support biomedical research initiatives and partnerships. S/he should have a strong customer service orientation and be able to identify process improvements so that transactions are completed with the right balance of efficiency and risk mitigation. S/he will report to the Director of Operations but will serve the contracting needs of colleagues across the Foundation. Strong writing, analytical and organizational skills must be matched with a sense of flexibility, entrepreneurial spirit and good cheer.

Technologists and entrepreneurs are reshaping cities like Baltimore with companies that bring new residents and products that change how we interact with the landscape. With a new mayor set to take office in Baltimore following the November 8 general election, it’s worth considering what the tech community wants to see at City Hall.

Ike Leggett says he will not seek a fourth term as Montgomery County executive.

Leggett, a former Howard University law professor who became the county’s first African American councilman and county executive, first announced publicly Sunday he would not run again at a fundraiser for an anti-term-limits group.

The Rockville biotech says two versions of its ADHD drug could serve a potential $7 billion market.

Redwood City, California-based medical device company Relievant Medsystems Inc has raised $36 million in funding. New Enterprise Associates led the round with participation from Canaan Partners, Emergent Medical Partners and Morgenthaler Ventures.

Higher education has a business model problem. The business model for U.S. colleges and universities — how they create, deliver, and capture value — hasn’t changed since Harvard, our country’s first college, was founded in 1636. Our higher education system is a national treasure that creates enormous societal value, but its 380-year-old business model fails to deliver affordable access and post-secondary credentials to an increasing percentage of our population. The American social contract was clear throughout the Industrial Era. While many jobs moved out of reach for those without a college degree, there were still ample opportunities for everyone to earn a good living in order to support a family. The U.S. became an economic powerhouse with a robust and thriving middle class.

Historically prizes have been surprisingly effective at kickstarting innovation, will Deloitte's XPRIZE do the same?

Curing cancer is the holy grail of the medical and scientific communities, but a simple prize could make a whole lot of difference.

A partnership between the University System of Maryland and Prince George's County schools led to increased student interest in STEM fields, higher scores on the science portion of Maryland State Assessments and more students entering STEM fields in college, according to the project's final report.

The USM's Math Science Partnership Minority Student Pipeline aimed "to expand the minority student pipeline in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields in higher education, by employing strategies engaging STEM faculty, teachers, undergraduates and high school students," the report read. The USM's Education Policy and Student Life Committee reviewed the report on Sept. 20.

Supported by a $9 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, a multidisciplinary team led by Johns Hopkins researchers has begun looking for new ways to attack one of the scariest traits of this disease: its frequent refusal to stay in one place.

The new funding, to be allocated over a five-year period, will enable scholars in physical sciences, engineering, applied mathematics, cancer biology, and other disciplines to pool their expertise to solve stubborn cancer-related mysteries.

I have just downloaded the app Uberstand to my phone — the "revolutionary" app that seamlessly converts academics into a standing reserve of mobile, on-demand, adjunct knowledge providers. The app is designed to meet the real-time needs of institutes of higher learning and their customers, who often find themselves operating with a knowledge deficit, or what the industry terms a "need-to-know."

We're pleased to announce the release of the Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures fiscal year 2016 annual report - for the first time in digital format!

Last year, we took tremendous strides in realizing our mission to benefit people around the world through innovation and to invigorate the local Baltimore economy. We saw a record number of disclosures, significant growth in our corporate partnerships, the creation of more startups than ever before, and substantial progress on the buildout of new state-of-the-art facilities.

While we're proud of our accomplishments, there's more to do. We are using the facts and figures in this report to identify the paths that led to success and to develop strategies that build upon our progress.

The National Science Foundation has awarded $3.45 million over the next five years to renew its Innovation Corps program D.C.-area node  to support entrepreneurship. George Washington University works alongside three additional collaborating institutions to train entrepreneurial student and faculty researchers and help them bring their discoveries to market.

The innovation hubs, known as I-Corps nodes, provide research infrastructure and training that help researchers transition fundamental science and engineering discoveries to the marketplace, according to NSF. The nodes also support I-Corps sites nationwide and offer seven-week I-Corps curriculum to their teams.

Suburban Maryland's tech cluster is among the top 10 biotech regions in the U.S, ranking at No. 6 based on talent, funding availability and its real estate, according to a new report from real estate brokerage JLL.

"The region is the healthiest it has been in about a decade because of tenant growth, number of life sciences companies, mergers and acquisitions, a lowering vacancy rate and rising rental rates," said Pete Briskman, a managing director in JLL's Bethesda office. "However, that could also mean fewer opportunities in the future."

The National Science Foundation awarded a $3.45 million grant to the University of Maryland to expand research as part of the NSF's innovation program, said university Associate Vice President for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Dean Chang.

The grant, part of the NSF's I-Corps Nodes program, is intended to promote the growth of research and entrepreneurship so that it may be applied on a larger scale, said Chang, the grant's recipient. The grant is slated to go into effect in the beginning of 2017, Chang said.

Chief technologist at the United States Small Business Administration doesn't immediately sound like the most exciting title, which is part of why after three years, G. Nagesh Rao prefers to be known as the Geek In Residence. He's responsible for coordinating and leading programs to boost entrepreneurship via the SBA and in partnership across nearly a dozen federal agencies as with the Small Business Innovation Research program. But Rao ranges far beyond just his job. He's an advisor for half a dozen entrepreneurship related groups including local organizations like Village Capital and LAUNCH, a group jointly run by Nike and a handful of federal agencies.

As a not-for-profit corporation that manages federally funded research and development centers for the government, MITRE is an ideal organization to host challenges. We do not market or manufacture goods and have no financial investment in the results. Our goal is to work with industry, academia, and government to find solutions that benefit all stakeholders and provide our federal sponsors with the capabilities they need to be successful in their missions.

Working across a wide range of government agencies gives MITRE a broad view into the challenges these agencies face, including the challenges that agencies share. We select our Challenge topics on the basis of this knowledge, looking for gaps that need to be filled.

As midterm season reigns on, Howard University’s administration still has one question left to answer: when exactly is its upcoming tech incubator opening?

At the beginning of the school year, those close to the project said they would be opening the incubator in fall 2016. Now, as of Wednesday, that date has been revised; the incubator won’t open until at least early 2017.

Although progress has been made, there is no denying the biotech industry continues to have a large gender gap. Women hold only 16 percent of the senior management posts at the top pharma companies, and of senior executive positions at emerging companies — the 10 companies that raised most in venture capital A rounds in 2014 — only 12 (17 percent) were filled by women.*

A reception for friends and alumni in the Baltimore corporate community to connect with the University of Maryland, College Park

PlantVax, Inc. has been contracted by a tier one US defense contractor as the primary supplier of Recombinant Human Acetylcholinesterase (AChE) in support of a Program of Record chemical warfare disclosure spray. The disclosure spray is a first-of-its-kind plant derived enzyme-based sensor that users apply to wide surfaces, enabling rapid visual indication of chemical warfare agents. The spray requires the high expression and stability levels in the AChE that PlantVax specializes in providing. The end product is the first product of its kind that is able to utilize a recombinant, plant-expressed AChE.

This month, we talk with David Narrow, chief operating officer of Baltimore startup Sonavex, which is developing a patent-pending, ultrasound-based system that pinpoints potential postsurgical blood clots.

Narrow started developing EchoSure, Sonavex’s ultrasound system, with Devin O’Brien Coon in 2012, when they were both in their first semester of Johns Hopkins’ biomedical engineering graduate program at the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design.

Marriott Hotels is jumping on the accelerator bandwagon with the launch of TestBED for early-stage startups.

The group is looking for startups with products or services that further the traveller experience and are ready to go to market.