Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, and United Therapeutics Corporation (NASDAQ: UTHR) today announced a collaboration to build and operate a lung restoration center on the Mayo campus. The goal is to significantly increase the volume of lungs for transplantation by preserving and restoring selected marginal donor lungs, making them viable for transplantation. The restored lungs will be made available to patients at Mayo Clinic and other transplant centers throughout the United States.

Sharath Mekala’s two-person tech startup isn’t a textbook government contractor.

Village Defense, spawned through a startup incubator called 1776, develops a free app that lets neighbors send real-time alerts to one another if they notice suspicious activity. A premium version, which costs $125 a month, is designed for homeowners associations.

William (Brit) Kirwan has been a top university administrator over nearly three decades of vast change in higher education.

During that time he's seen the rise of online learning, a change in the funding dynamic of public colleges, an increased emphasis on obtaining a college education and much, much more. The 77-year-old Kirwan retired last month from his 13-year chancellorship of the University System of Maryland.

Conventional wisdom has long blamed age-related hearing loss almost entirely on the death of sensory hair cells in the inner ear, but research from neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins has provided new information about the workings of nerve cells that suggests otherwise.

In a paper published July 1 in The Journal of Neuroscience, the Johns Hopkins team says its studies in mice have verified an increased number of connections between certain sensory cells and nerve cells in the inner ear of aging mice. Because these connections normally tamp down hearing when an animal is exposed to loud sound, the scientists think these new connections could also be contributing to age-related hearing loss in the mice, and possibly in humans.

We are excited to be returning to Growlers in Gaithersburg this month for BioBuzz MoCo with our Sponsor Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII), a TEDCO program, as we host one of their “Meet TEDCO Program Managers Happy Hour“. The networking event will feature a short presentation followed by happy hour allowing you to network with program managers and your peers. MII is designed to foster the transition of promising technologies with significant commercial potential from the Maryland academic research institutions: Johns Hopkins, Morgan State, and University of Maryland College Park, Baltimore and Baltimore County campuses. The program is designed to promote commercialization of research conducted in the partnership universities and to leverage each institution’s strengths.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly today in favor of a bipartisan bill that would speed the development of lifesaving drugs and medical devices and provide additional funding for biomedical research.

The bill, called the 21st Century Cures Act, includes provisions that attempt to make the drug approval process less unwieldy and also calls for an additional $8.75 billion in funding for the National Institutes of Health. The bill passed by a 344-77 vote on Friday morning; it now moves to the Senate.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) has provided critical contributions to critical challenges with systems engineering and integration, technology research and development, and analysis. Our scientists, engineers, and analysts serve as trusted advisors and technical experts to the government, ensuring the reliability of complex technologies that safeguard our nation’s security and advance the frontiers of space. We also maintain independent research and development programs that pioneer and explore emerging technologies and concepts to address future national priorities.

GlaxoSmithKline is bringing on board the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Centre to work on a programme aimed at eradicating cancer stem cells to treat leukaemia and other diseases.  

The bench-to-bedside project is part of GSK’s Discovery Partnerships with Academia programme, where academic partners become core members of drug-discovery teams to expedite promising basic research into drug discovery and development.

This morning as the House considers H.R. 6, the 21st Century Cures Act, more than 100 patient groups and organizations are voicing their support for the bill’s Innovation Fund to help boost research and support scientists. Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) has led this effort for a year and a half, keeping patients at the forefront from the beginning. Speaking in support of the bill last night, Upton said, “There is not a single person in this chamber or watching at home today who has not been touched by disease in some way. And it’s time we did something about it.” H.R. 6 is that something. The patient groups listed below voiced their opposition to any attempts to undermine these investments.

Learn about the Target Product Profile (TPP) – a tool used by many biomedical innovators to define, stage, and allocate resources to different aspects of product development work, to frame discussions with stakeholder groups, and to track regulatory interactions and milestones.

Ask questions via the chat window during the live event!

Dina Link may not be a household name, but she holds one of the most important jobs in the American economy: high school science teacher. At Northwest High School in Germantown, Md., she helps mold the next generation of scientists so that they can compete for jobs in an economy dominated by science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.

Tuesday, July 14th, 12 p.m. ET

In Silicon Valley, Big Data drives decisions. In health care, half the country runs on paper charts. In Silicon Valley, the biggest tech companies collaborate to drive innovation. In health care, applications barely talk to each other.

According to athenahealth EVP and COO, Ed Park, that needs to change. In this special webinar event, he’ll discuss:

BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) and Guidepoint today announced BD & Guidepoint Mentor, a new program providing selected start-up healthcare companies with free access to Guidepoint's expert network services.

BD is currently mentoring several start-ups that are developing cutting-edge technologies to improve healthcare delivery and outcomes and, with the help of a dedicated Guidepoint research manager, each start-up entrepreneur will be able to directly engage with industry experts across the entire healthcare ecosystem, gaining insights that help them shape their strategic plans.

Baltimore gene analysis firm Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc. has raised $4.32 million in a larger financing round underway.

The new funding is a convertible note that is part of a Series A financing round the company expects to complete later this year. Officials declined to give details about investors, the total amount the company seeks to raise or a timeline for closing the round.

Southern Research has been awarded a seven-year contract of up to $22 million to support research that could contribute to the cure of HIV disease. Under this contract, Southern Research will develop and standardize assays that quantitate latent reservoirs of HIV.

“This is a revolutionary area in HIV research that is opening up new avenues for us in infectious diseases,” said Southern Research President and CEO Art Tipton, Ph.D. “It supports our 24-year legacy in HIV drug discovery and development for government and pharmaceutical clients.”

The Government of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea announced an agreement with industry partners, Marathon Oil Corporation, Noble Energy Inc. and AMPCO, to sponsor the clinical development of Sanaria® PfSPZ Vaccine against malaria, including a series of clinical trials from 2015 until 2018.

Malaria is one of the leading causes of infant and childhood mortality in the world, particularly in Africa. The World Health Organization estimated that in 2013 there were 198 million clinical cases and 584,000 deaths caused by malaria, primarily by Plasmodium falciparum malaria. Malaria directly reduces the Gross Domestic Product of African countries by at least 1 percent annually. This economic impact is estimated based on lives lost, healthcare costs, reduced learning capabilities by students, loss of worker productivity, and a range of other factors.

Trophogen, Inc., a U.S.-based emerging biotechnology company founded in 2001, today announced that it was awarded the second year of its Phase 2 Fast Track component of $756,000 for a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop novel VEGF analogs for targeted imaging of undifferentiated thyroid cancer. The two principal investigators, Dr. Mariusz W. Szkudlinski, Vice-President & CSO and Dr. Bruce D. Weintraub, President and CEO, have now brought their total NIH and FDA highly competitive SBIR funded grants to 10 for a total of nearly $10 million.

The Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children's National Health System is now accepting proposals for its "Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!" competition. Two top prizes of $50,000 each will be awarded to the winning presentations at the Third Annual Pediatric Surgical Innovation Symposium in October.

The competition invites proposals from innovators – researchers, entrepreneurs, clinicians, and patient families – who have identified a significant, yet unmet medical device need within the pediatric population. For competition details, click here.

Proteus Digital Health won FDA approval for what the company calls “the only device with an FDA-sanctioned claim for measuring medication adherence.” Proteus technology, the development of which we’ve been covering for a number of years now, uses tiny injestible sensors attached to drug tablets and a patch that can detect when they’ve been swallowed. The patch then uses its built-in Bluetooth antenna to share when every pill was swallowed with the matching smartphone app, which in turn passes the readings to family, caretakers, and the patient’s physician.

Innovator of the Year was created in 2002 to honor Maryland businesses and/or individuals who have had a positive effect and tremendous impact in Maryland.

To nominate someone for this prestigious award, please submit a short description addressing how your nominee meets the criteria.

Nominations are due July 10, 2015.

Has your lab had a successful technology partnership or program experience with its state or local government office? If so, we want to hear about it! The Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer (FLC) is now accepting submissions for its 2015 edition of the Federal Laboratories & State and Local Governments: Partners for Technology Transfer Success publication.

The goal of this publication is to highlight the value that state and local government entities can obtain for their regions by forming strategic partnerships with federal laboratories. Federal labs play a significant role in creating technology-based regional economic development. The State & Local Government (S&LG) publication works to raise awareness about the impact federal labs can have on their surrounding areas.

Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland, College Park, will this month open a shared $30 million high-power data center.

The 3,786-square-foot facility, called Maryland Advanced Research Computing Center (MARCC) will be used by researchers from the two universities for work involving big data and is expected to be fully functional by the end of July. The facility, located near Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, was paid for with $30 million in state funding. Hopkins and University of Maryland will share ongoing costs for maintenance, staffing and power.

The University of Maryland is part of the reason that Maryland, as a state, is producing some really innovative entrepreneurial talent. Their student-run incubator and co-working space Startup Shell (shell, because the UMD mascot is the Terrapin -very clever, guys), which opened in 2012, is home to a lot of really interesting student-led projects. Most of the startups focus on students’ issues or problems related to fields that students are studying.

When Milton Wright III got his third cancer diagnosis, he cried until he laughed. He was 20 and had survived leukemia twice before, first when he was eight and again as a teen. Each time he’d suffered through years of punishing chemotherapy.

But now he had checked himself in to Seattle Children’s Hospital. An aspiring model, he had taken a fall before a photo shoot and found he couldn’t shake off the pain in his ribs. When the doctors started preparing him for a spinal tap, he knew the cancer was back. “I said, Oh, man, they are going to tell me I relapsed again,” he recalls. “They’re going to give me my six months.”

MedCity ENGAGE has quickly become a destination for fresh thinking and the latest solutions for patient engagement and healthcare delivery. That’s due in large part to speakers who are both established and up-and-coming leaders, and includes those in the trenches of healthcare.

Here are just some of the ENGAGE speakers, who will cover an array of topics that will make you better able to implement your own patient engagement solutions.

The State Entrepreneurship Index tracks core trends and reflects states’ entrepreneurship environments, growth in business formation and technological innovation. Each state index is calculated by comparing five key economic components and determining how much their performance deviate above or below the “median state,” which is assigned a value of 1.0.

Chinese investment in the Puget Sound region is about to go beyond real estate.

A Chinese venture capital group wants to open an office in the Seattle area so it can invest in the region’s tech and biotech industries, the director of the city of Seattle’s economic development office Brian Surratt confirmed Wednesday.

Medicare and Medicaid, the two mainstays of government health insurance, turn 50 this month, having made it possible for most Americans in poverty and old age to get medical care. While the Affordable Care Act fills the gap for people who don’t qualify for help from those two programs, there are important improvements still needed in both Medicare and Medicaid.

At the time the two programs were enacted in July 1965, advocates of Medicare, which today covers 46 million Americans over the age of 65 and nine million younger disabled people, expected that it would expand to cover virtually all Americans. Although polls between 1999 and 2009 showed consistent majorities in favor of expanding Medicare to people between the ages of 55 and 64 to cover more of the uninsured, it never happened.

Scientists may apply online until September 22, 2015 at http://www.openinnovationinscience.at for the 'Lab for Open Innovation in Science' continuing studies programme taking place in Vienna. 

Health sciences' two greatest challenges are the lack of incentives for investigating new research questions and the complexity of current research findings, according to a recent survey of international researchers and scientists conducted by the Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft (LBG). These findings provided the impetus for launching the LBG's  Tell us! crowdsourcing project in their Open Innovation in Science initiative. This initiative invites patients, families, and professionals to actively contribute to the development of scientific research questions in the field of mental illness. Findings from this unique research approach will impact the world's first educational programme for the application of Open Innovation in science, known as 'Lab for Open Innovation in Science' (LOIS).

A process that accelerates the separation of bacteria could be the answer to the food industry’s prayers.

Food contamination, which refers to the presence of unwanted chemicals and bacteria in food, has been plastered across the news lately. Dozens of products have been recalled in the past 60 days. For example, Blue Bell Creameries had a massive recall of all ice cream products due to an April listeria outbreak, according to the FDA’s website.

Over the past two weeks, in their respective FY 2016 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Related Agencies appropriations bills (known as Labor-H), House and Senate appropriators have shown support for biomedical research funding by recommending NIH budget levels higher than even the Administration had requested. But controversy still reigns over other parts of the bill, particularly patient-centered outcomes research associated with the Affordable Care Act.

REDI...SET...WATCH...5 Questions with Michael Stiefvater, Business Development Manager at Rockville REDI

While we’ve seen how 3D printing has dramatically revolutionized the medical industry by allowing surgeons to print replicas of organs and their surrounding areas in order to better understand them before an actual surgical procedure, the next evolutionary step is to look into 3D printing the organs themselves to replace a patient’s existing failing organ.

The University of Maryland's Startup Shell incubator is a conspicuous experiment in student-run startup incubation. Founded in 2012, the incubator has grown to include several dozen startups in its portfolio—and recently, Uber became interested enough in what might come out of the incubator to set aside $25,000 for it as part of a larger collaboration with UMd, including investor grants for student-built businesses. Notably, many of the startups focus on the issues that concern students or directly impact the field students are studying. We've picked out eight of the most intriguing and exciting startups to highlight here so that you can check out the types of innovation that UMd is fostering.