MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced the signing of a five-year agreement to jointly support research that will help advance drug discovery and manufacturing. The effort will focus on tools and measurements that will be used in the development and production of biopharmaceuticals, which are drugs and treatments derived from biological, rather than chemical, sources.

Johns Hopkins University launched its Fast Forward business accelerator two years ago as a way to support the growth of its own entrepreneurial community, but also to help stimulate the Baltimore economy. It recently opened a second accelerator space on the East Side of Baltimore by its medical campus. It’s designed to equip life science startups with the kind of wet lab space that tends to come at a premium and is often too costly for early stage companies with an uncertain future.

MedImmune has joined the NIH’s Centers for Accelerated Innovations (NCAI) program as its first biopharma corporate partner.

The global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca said it will team up with NCAI awardees and help shape the program’s strategic direction. MedImmune said it may also review prospective NCAI technologies in collaboration with the awardees, and provide feedback regarding their commercial potential and early-stage development.

Epic Games has created a $5 million fund to provide financial grants to developers who are creating games and other innovative projects.

Above: Tim Sweeney Image Credit: Dean Takahashi In doing so, Epic is joining a number of game-platform owners who are courting developers with actual cash to help them create games that run on that platform. From a business view, it pays to invest in their own platforms. In this case, Epic Games is competing with rivals such as Unity for the hearts and minds of developers. And when it comes to creating a game that shows off a platform, cash is now king.

Many cancer patients and their families are happy to never look back once they’re safely on the other side of treatment, in remission or cured. But for David Austin and his wife, Emily, whose 6-year-old son now has a clean bill of health, winning the cancer battle was just the first step on another journey to help other cancer patients, particularly those whose treatment involves central lines — catheters placed directly into a vein in the chest to administer chemotherapy or take blood for frequent tests.

It was easy to get my head around the biotech buzz and the digital health marketing blitz that happened last month at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference.

But here’s the question I heard most often (and gave me the most food for thought): “Can I meet more angels?”

The venture boom that funneled billions of dollars into life sciences companies last year included a big surge in first-time deals, according to a fresh analysis of the numbers for 2014. And the boom in venture investing looks set to continue well into 2015, according to the analysts at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, working with data provided by Thomson Reuters to put out the MoneyTree report.

Roche and Qualcomm have entered into a new collaboration to improve remote monitoring and management of chronic disease patients. 

The new deal between the Swiss cancer drug firm and the communication technology specialist will see Roche use Qualcomm Life's 2net Platform to capture data from a patient's medical devices, beginning with anticoagulation metres, and transmit it to Roche's cloud-based services.

Pharma Major Lupin Limited (Lupin) and Celon Pharma S.A. (Celon) announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which the companies will jointly develop a fluticasone/salmeterol dry powder inhaler (DPI) product which is a generic version of GlaxoSmithKline's Advair Diskus. Lupin will be responsible for commercialization of the product. Celon will supply the product to Lupin for its commercialization in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and other key markets. GlaxoSmithKline's Advair Diskus® had global sales of over USD 7 billion as of last fiscal.  

Crystal City-based Disruption Corp. is partnering with Maryland-based Greenspring Associates, a $3 billion fund of funds that backs some venture capital firms that actively invest in the region, including New Enterprise Associates, Revolution Growth and True Ventures.

Ashton Newhall, co-founder of Greenspring Associates, told me he believes Disruption and Greenspring are "philosophically aligned" on the possibilities of using data analytics to make sounder investments in startups and the private market broadly.

At The MidAmerica Healthcare Venture Forum hosted at Chicago’s Fairmont Hotel on March 10 and 11, Healthbox’s Maria Siambekos will host a session about the growing role of healthcare accelerators. Do investors invest in them?

Enterprise Therapeutics Ltd, a drug discovery company focused on new therapeutics for respiratory diseases, today announced that it has secured £1.6m ($2.4m) in initial Series-A financing from Epidarex Capital. The proceeds will fund, in parallel, low molecular weight drug discovery and new target identification programs. The company will be based at the University of Sussex.

In today’s world, the average adult between the ages of 65 and 69 takes almost 14 prescriptions per year, and those aged 80-84 take 18 prescriptions. With the safety information for each medication constantly changing, it can be difficult for consumers to be informed about their medications.

This is a Request for Proposal to lease the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) facility located at the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR), on the University System of Maryland's Shady Grove campus at 9600 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, MD 20850.

IBBR is a University System of Maryland joint research enterprise between the University of Maryland College Park, The University of Maryland Baltimore and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. IBBR's Vision and Mission are as follows:

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels has seen plenty of innovation at the world-renowned research institution he leads. In opening a second incubator in East Baltimore, university officials believe they can get another benefit from the innovation.

“It’s happened before at Hopkins and it’ll happen again,” Daniels said of inventions that come out of the university. “But this time, we’re going to make some money on it.”

Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, a global biopharmaceutical company, announced that Sucampo and R-Tech Ueno, Ltd. (RTU), have entered into a stipulation and licence agreement with Par Pharmaceutical, Inc. (Par). The agreement states that in limited circumstances, Sucampo or RTU would grant Par a licence for a generic version of the RESCULA (unoprostone isopropyl ophthalmic solution) 0.15 per cent product approved for the lowering of intraocular pressure in patients with open-angle glaucoma or ocular hypertension prior to the latest expiration date of the patents, which is July 2021. Par had previously submitted an Abbreviated New Drug Application to the US Food and Drug Administration requesting approval to market, sell, and use a generic version of RESCULA.

Maryland could establish a $5 million fund to put toward tax credits for individuals and firms who invest in startup companies.

Startup and investor advocates, including the Greater Baltimore Committee, have said they will push for the state to create a new tax credit specifically for angel investors who give money to companies at their earliest stages, when they often struggle to bring in needed cash. A bill introduced by Baltimore City Democrat Sen. Catherine Pugh earlier this month details how the tax credit would work and who could qualify as an investor and startup recipient.

Four University System of Maryland schools rank among the top 100 public universities in the country, according to a new statistical analysis by The Business Journals.

University of Maryland, College Park, scored highest among Maryland's public universities, coming in at No. 8 out of 484 schools nationwide. St. Mary's College of Maryland; University of Maryland, Baltimore County; and Towson University also ranked in the top 100. Salisbury University ranked 107th.

April 27-29, 2015 - Boston, MA

Partners HealthCare is proud to announce the 2015 World Medical Innovation Forum, an annual gathering in Boston of more than 1,000 top innovation decision makers. The inaugural event will focus on neurosciences and be held on April 27-29, 2015. The goals of this three-day event are to identify today’s leading neuroscience innovations, address unmet needs, and discuss the critical issues affecting technology development and implementation in this new, evolving era of value-based care.

While regulation of diagnostic tests by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may not directly impact the biobanking industry, it does have an impact on the development of new therapies, particularly personalized medicine, and all of us have a stake in the future of personalized medicine.

National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins kicked off a two-day meeting in Bethesda, MD, this morning to discuss how to turn President Obama’s call for a national health research database into reality. The database, which NIH officials are calling the National Research Cohort, is one of two main thrusts of the administration’s precision medicine initiative.

Fourteen years ago, during the darkest moments of the “stem-cell wars” pitting American scientists against the White House of George W. Bush, one group of advocates could be counted on to urge research using cells from human embryos: parents of children with type 1 diabetes. Motivated by scientists who told them these cells would lead to amazing cures, they spent millions on TV ads, lobbying, and countless phone calls to Congress.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has taken control of Swiss company GlycoVaxyn in a $190m deal that bolsters its early vaccines pipeline.

GSK already owned a stake in GlycoVaxyn and had been working with the company since 2012 on the development of conjugate vaccines for bacterial infections. 

How are venture capital dollars are actually disseminated? Into early stage companies? Late? What fields get the most investment – cancer?

Bruce Booth of Atlas Ventures blogged about this today on his Life Sci VC site about this topic, highlighted in a new whitepaper from BIO. Here are the highlights:

District regulators approved the city’s first equity crowdfunding campaign last week. It was also the only application they’ve received to date.

The Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking approved equity crowdfunding rules last October as a way for the city’s entrepreneurs to raise small sums of money from city residents in exchange for a piece of their business.

Swiss cancer drugs giant Roche (ROG: SIX) has acquired Signature Diagnostics, a privately-held company based in Potsdam, Germany. Financial terms of the transaction, which is the fifth deal in the past year aimed at building Roche’s molecular diagnostics business, were not disclosed.

Google is altering the way it displays search results. Over the next few days, Google Search will begin to dish out health bits of facts with search news. This is Google’s new attempt at health news, in fact, this could be a way to reimagine the now defunct Google Health.

This is not a first for Google. Its feet are firmly planted in the health space, having previously launched feature where people can connect to a doctor via video and its .

It takes just one idea to change the world

The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™ Award has become the mark of world-class individuals leading world-class companies. We invite you to be part of this exciting program.

About the Entrepreneur Of The Year Program

EY Entrepreneur Of The Year honors entrepreneurs whose ingenuity, hard work and perseverance have created and sustained successful, growing business ventures. The program is celebrating its 29th year and has expanded to more than 140 cities and 50 countries around the world. EY forms a group of individuals from the business community to participate as the independent panel of judges for the program. This panel is made up of past award winners and C-suite leadership of high-growth entrepreneurial organizations. It also includes influential business leaders from the venture capital and private equity communities.

The recent February issue of Health Affairs, which features a series of articles on innovation, provides us with an opportunity to examine the state of America’s innovation ecosystem for medical technology. This ecosystem has produced a myriad of medical advances, ranging from advanced imaging to molecular diagnostics, minimally invasive surgical tools, and incredibly sophisticated implants. These technologies have shortened hospital stays, reduced the economic burden of disease, and saved and improved millions of lives.

Funding and Research Opportunities

The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
Notices:

• Registration Open for the 2015 NIH Regional Seminar on Program Funding and Grants Administration Baltimore, MD
• (NOT-OD-15-063) National Institutes of Health 
• Request for Information: Sustaining the Biomedical Workforce and a Potential Emeritus Award for Senior Researchers
• (NOT-OD-15-064) National Institutes of Health 
• NIH Interim General Grant Conditions Implementing New HHS Grants Regulations (Uniform Guidance)
• (NOT-OD-15-065) National Institutes of Health 
• Notice of Pre-Application Webinar for PA-14-015 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) (Parent T32) Related to the Creation of New NHGRI Postdoctoral Training Programs in Genomic Medicine Res
• (NOT-HG-15-014) National Human Genome Research Institute

Please note that most links to RFAs, PAs, and Guide Notices will take you to the NIH Web site. RFPs will take you to FedBizOpps. Links to RFPs will not work past their proposal receipt date. Archived versions of RFPs posted on FedBizOpps can be found on the FedBizOpps site using the FedBizOpps search function. Under “Document to Search,” select Archived Documents.

Crowdfunding is a hot idea in small biopharma, but a lot of people don't quite know what to make of it. I've written about some academic examples of it, and I think that's a good use of the idea. People can donate in the expectation that they're helping along a research project, not because they're looking for a big return on their money.

The NFL, GE, and Under Armour officials announced that they have joined with the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to launch Head Health Challenge III, an open innovation competition to advance materials that better absorb or dissipate energy. These new materials could improve the performance of protective equipment for athletes, military personnel and those in dangerous occupations.