Biohealth Innovation
Swiss drugmaker Roche said Friday that the Food and Drug Administration approved its drug Avastin as a treatment for ovarian cancer.
Roche said the FDA approved Avastin in combination with chemotherapy as a treatment for recurrent cases of cancer that are resistant to platinum-based chemotherapy.
Join us Nov. 20 for the 15th annual Bioscience Day at the University of Maryland, where we will explore "Scientific Advances in Treating Trauma and Disease."
Registration is free and lunch is provided.
LabCentral and Roche announced an agreement in which Roche would provide technology and financial support to LabCentral, a first-of-its-kind shared laboratory space designed as a launchpad for high-potential life-sciences and biotech startups.
If you’re a foreign entrepreneur looking to break into the U.S. market, the State of Maryland wants to help.
On the third floor of a nondescript office building perched on a busy commercial strip in College Park, Maryland, foreign-owned startups can get a boost at the Maryland International Incubator, a first-of-its-kind incubator focused exclusively on foreign companies settling in the United States.
The 1776 incubator, which is interested in helping startups break down geographic barriers and collaborating with other incubators and accelerators has announced a partnership with a major physician association — the American College of Cardiology, according to a company statement. The cardiology association will play a role not only in the incubator’s Challenge Cup, but also longer term.
Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett is hoping to broaden Montgomery County’s reach in biotech and other high-tech areas as he leads a delegation of two dozen County businessmen and businesswomen to India this month.
Among those joining Leggett are Maryland State Delegate Aruna Miller, Montgomery County Councilmember Nancy Floreen, Montgomery College President Dr. DeRionne P. Pollard, Global LifeSci Development Corporation executive vice president Jonathan Genn, President & CEO of the India-US World Affairs Institute Vinod Jain, and former White House communications director Ann Lewis.
WellDoc®, a leading digital health care behavioral science and technology company has launched a multi-stage collaboration effort with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, to improve the lives of those living with type 2 diabetes and explore next generation diabetes devices and product offerings.
View gallery . The parties share a vision for leveraging technology to empower patient self-management and provider clinical decision-making. They each have commercialized unique and powerful health care platforms that when combined, can deliver unparalleled support to patients with diabetes.
In a breakthrough in the design of batteries, a research funded by the US Department of Energy has produced a remarkable new prototype battery that just needs 12 minutes to get fully recharged compared to the hours the conventional cells take up to get replenished.
Researchers at the University of Maryland who were involved in this research stated that their new invention can work towards the long sought-for miniaturization of energy storage components. This breakthrough can certainly help towards allowing electric cars to give petrol-powered vehicles a run for their money.
The United States has over 5,700 hospitals, and most of them are central to their communities for an obvious reason: They help people get healthier. When I look at these hospitals, I see an untapped resource, a way they could provide greater value to their communities and the country.
Intellectual assets — the ideas and know-how in the heads of clinicians — are vital, intangible resources for most hospitals. They’re equivalent to the research assets at universities. In addition to knowledge and know-how, clinicians working in hospitals are creating ideas for new health care technologies (apps, processes, devices, therapies, drugs) and cost-effective care models, often as part of their response to the value-based care principles of health care reform.
QIAGEN N.V. (Nasdaq: QGEN) today announced it has entered into a master collaboration agreement with the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG (NYSE: NVS) to enable the development and commercialization of companion diagnostics to be paired with existing Novartis pharmaceutical products as well as compounds in its development pipeline.
The non-exclusive agreement with Novartis creates a framework for collaborations that would include developing QIAGEN companion diagnostics to guide treatment decisions for Novartis pharmaceutical products. The scope of the collaboration can cover all QIAGEN platforms, indications or biomarkers. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
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:
Requests for Applications:
Program Announcements:
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.
A Johns Hopkins astrophysicist will share in a $3 million prize for his discovery that the universe is expanding rapidly, contrary to earlier belief.
Adam Riess, who previously won a Nobel Prize for his work, has been awarded the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Riess shares the award with research partner Brian P. Schmidt of the Australian National University and University of California, Berkeley astrophysicist Saul Perlmutter.
The MdBio Foundation, Inc. (MdBio), a nonprofit organization, today announced that it has received a grant of $50,000 from AstraZeneca and its Gaithersburg, Md.-based global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune. The grant will enable the foundation to expand its focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education and prepare today’s students to become the workforce of tomorrow.
“Our goal is to show students the many possibilities their future can hold with a strong foundation in STEM,” said Brian Gaines, CEO of MdBio. “AstraZeneca’s and MedImmune’s generosity will enable us to expand our programs to ensure that we reach students who can benefit from enhanced educational opportunities. Our state is well-known for its strength in the bioscience market, and we hope to foster the next generation of employees for the companies that call Maryland home.”
Let's face it: pre-Election Night, this year's race for Maryland governor was pretty underwhelming, the kind where your mother might reveal she's thinking of voting for Republican businessman Larry Hogan because she remembered his dad to be a nice guy back when he was Prince George's County executive in the 1970s.
(Hi, Mom! For the record, I don't know who she ended up voting for.)
iHealth is one of the leading developers of connected health devices, with devices on the market ranging from the BP5 connected blood pressure cuff to the Align wireless glucometer. As we recently highlighted, they have also been at the forefront of integrating the data captured by these devices with the electronic health records used by clinicians.
We had the opportunity to talk with Jim Taschetta, Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Retail Sales at iHealth, about their current work at Duke & Stanford exploring EHR integration, views on integration of Android devices, and more.
The University of Maryland earned a gold medal in the International Genetically Engineered Machine competition (iGEM) held in Boston from Oct. 30 to Nov. 3, 2014.
The competition engages student-led teams from universities across the globe to present novel synthetic biology projects that address real-world problems.
University of Maryland University College recently swept two divisions of the Maryland Cyber Challenge for the second consecutive year, capturing first place in the College and Professional divisions of the premier Maryland cyber competition held at the annual Cyber Maryland conference in Baltimore.
“This is a tough competition and to beat many great teams just to get to the finals in the college and professional divisions is an amazing accomplishment. We fielded four teams for this competition (two in each division) and all four made it to the final round. That speaks to the quality of our teams, ” said Jeff Tjiputra, chairman of UMUC’s undergraduate cybersecurity program and academic advisor to the cyber competition teams.
The Pentagon's technology arm is prepared to invest up to $700,000 in a promising idea in the field of biological sciences and technology. The goal is to turn theoretical concepts into actual products, such as better sensors for prosthetic limbs and techniques to cope with infectious disease outbreaks.
Under a new initiative by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, inventors will be able to send in proposals without having to trudge through miles of red tape as they would have to in traditional government contracts.
Photo Credit: DARPA
Dr. William Kirwan, chancellor for the University System of Maryland, announced over the summer that he will be stepping down, but not until his replacement is hired.
He's lost count of the number of college graduations he's been a part of since taking the job as Maryland's education chancellor more than a decade ago.
The Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index enables business leaders, government policymakers, and taxpayers to gauge how their states’ tax systems compare. While there are many ways to show how much is collected in taxes by state governments, the Index is designed to show how well states structure their tax systems, and provides a road-map to improving these structures.
Johns Hopkins University, Biomedical Engineering, CBIDMonday, December 8, 2014 from 3:00 PM to 7:30 PM (EST)Baltimore, MD
Join us December 8th for a review of 16 exciting healthcare design projects at the Johns Hopkins Center for Bioengineering Innovation & Design (CBID). CBID MSE and Undergraduate projects will be presented. This year we're honored to have as our Keynote Speaker Dr. John Kostuik. Dr. Kostuik is Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer of K2M Inc, a world leading spine surgery company. The event will also have a Shark Tank competition with a panel of tough judges and real cash prizes. Refreshments will be provided.
Considering that Emergent BioSolutions (NYSE: EBS ) has regular government contracts and other manufacturing contracts -- so regular that it's willing to give quarterly guidance, which many companies wouldn't dream of -- it was a little surprising to see by how much the biotech beat the guidance it gave three months earlier. Third-quarter revenue came in at $138 million, substantially higher than the guidance of $110 million to $125 million it gave three months ago.
But, as it turns out, this is just an accounting issue. In the third quarter, Emergent BioSolutions set up a collaboration with MorphoSys to develop its prostate cancer drug candidate ES414. Under the terms of the agreement, Emergent BioSolutions got a $20 million upfront payment -- the biotech recognized $15.3 million of this in the third quarter. Back out the payment, and Emergent BioSolutions' revenue falls within its previous guidance, fortunately at the upper-end.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland have collaborated to build a new center that will preform studies on how to store, process and transmit data using quantum architecture.
The Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science is designed to complement basic quantum research being done at an institute run by NIST, UMD and the National Security Agency, NIST said Oct. 31.
Inspired by a series of new strategic initiatives, BioNJ announced a rebranding today -- BioNJ, The Gateway to Health – that reflects an expanded vision and mission directed to fostering a vibrant life sciences ecosystem in New Jersey where science is supported, companies are created, drugs are developed and patients are paramount.
The rebranding is supported by the launch of a revitalized website at www.BioNJ.org that is contemporary in its look and represents the determination of BioNJ to help move the life sciences industry forward.
The National Institutes of Health is challenging science innovators to compete for prizes totaling up to $500,000, by developing new ways to track the health status of a single cell in complex tissue over time. The NIH Follow that Cell Challenge seeks tools that would, for example, monitor a cell in the process of becoming cancerous, detect changes due to a disease-causing virus, or track how a cell responds to treatment.
The challenge aims to generate creative ideas and methods for following and predicting a single cell’s behavior and function over time in a complex multicellular environment – preferably using multiple integrated measures to detect its changing state.
Cartagenia announced today that it and Qiagen's bioinformatics business are part of a consortium that has received €1.4 million ($1.7 million) in funding from a European funding initiative to support the development of software tools for personalized genetic analysis of cancer variants.
The Lungcadia program will combine the technologies and expertise of Cartagenia, Qiagen, and the Institute of Pathology at Hannover Medical School and will focus on lung cancer as a disease model, but the partners aim to make the results applicable to other types of cancer. The project has received the funding from the EuroTransBio initiative, which supports biotech collaborations in Europe.
Osiris has a history of developing treatments — like Prochymal, the first government-approved stem cell drug — and then selling them to other companies. Its product portfolio is thus diverse, and that is wise when it comes to Grafix, which competes with a number of other advanced wound care products.
Ryan Sysko needed someone to push WellDoc's diabetes management app, BlueStar, into the market. It was time to turn to an outsider to make sure BlueStar successfully sold in Maryland and, eventually, nationwide. The FDA-approved smartphone app helps diabetes patients track blood glucose levels, medications, diet and exercise on a cellphone. It requires a prescription from a doctor.
To take on the task, Sysko, the Baltimore health care technology company's CEO, called on Kevin P. McRaith. Former vice president of ...
Chevy Chase-based Wedding Wire, the largest and most trusted online marketplace connecting merchants with engaged couples and party planners, ranked highest of any other Maryland company this year, coming in at number seven with 2013 revenue of nearly $34 million. Also making the Top 10 is Rockville-based CoesterVMS, a leader in the mortgage banking and appraisal industry, coming in at number nine with $14.47 million in revenue in 2013.
Brain science is taking a hit, according to a recent series of papers published in a special issue of the Cell Press journal Neuron.
“While the disease burden and economic impacts are on the rise, progress in the development of new therapeutics and treatment approaches has appeared to have stalled,” reads an editorial introducing the issue. “Approval for new therapeutics (whether drugs, devices, or other treatment approaches) for nervous system disorders have been declining and most of the treatments we currently have are not disease modifying.”
Monday, November 10, 2014 8:30AM-12:00PM
Embassy of Italy 3000 Whitehaven St NW Washington DC
There is growing interest for enabling Transatlantic Collaborations via STEM-Driven Research & Innovation. This half-day summit’s purpose is to enable technology development and deployment between the U.S. and Europe for research and small businesses that have benefited from the government’s innovation and funding pipeline. Through dynamic conversations with thought leaders, policy makers and doers from the private and public sectors, attendees will leave with a better understanding of how entrepreneurs can take their ideas from the lab and expand to a borderless market.
This event is organized on occasion of the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Italy will be hosting the next Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Milan in March 2015 .
Wednesday, November 19, 20146:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Get out of the office and enjoy yourself! Join Maryland’s business community for an evening of networking and fun at the Tech Council of Maryland's Fall Cocktail Reception. This reception will be held at the prestigious Congressional Country Club in Bethesda. If you haven't attended our FEF Fall Reception, come and find out what you've been missing.
The reception features an open bar, great food and two hours with no agenda other than networking, seeing old friends and meeting new people. This is the perfect atmosphere for executives and decision makers from the region’s leading companies to come together and share ideas. Everyone is welcome and you don’t need to be a financial executive to attend this event, so register today.
The NBIA (National Business Incubation Association) seeks a dynamic new President and Chief Executive Officer. Our ideal candidate will be an exceptional leader with business expertise and a passion for entrepreneurship, as well as the drive, intellect, and professional presence to support and promote business incubation and acceleration.
The incoming President and CEO will report directly to the Board of Directors, and it is critical that this individual be well-versed in the broader national and international entrepreneur support ecosystem (including but not limited to business incubation, acceleration, coworking/emerging startup models, and economic environments – i.e. programs serving rural, urban, and developing economies).
DAASN is proud to be an Enthusiast sponsor for Tedco's 4th Annual Entrepreneur Expo and a Major sponser of Startup Maryland.
Startup Maryland Announces Great Eight Finalists and Fan Favorites for 2014 Pitch Across Maryland Tour
Diversity of Industries and Opportunities Defines the Third Annual State-Wide Tour and Celebration of Maryland Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
As CMS goes, so goes private insurance. That’s perhaps a simplification of how reimbursement rates are developed for healthcare payers, but big payers definitely watch what CMS is doing.
So it’s no small deal that CMS late last week issued new rules that include “significant additional coverage for telemedicine services,” the American Telemedicine Association said in a release.