Legal 500, considered one of the most comprehensive worldwide qualitative guides available on legal services providers, recently announced its 2014 rankings. Venable’s national Corporate Group continued to earn high marks in the latest edition leading the way with a Tier 1 ranking in the M&A: Middle-Market (Sub-$500m) category. The group also received high marks in the Technology: Outsourcing, Technology: Transactions and Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) categories.
Corporate Practice Co-Chair Charles J. Morton, Jr. and partner William T. Russell received special recognition as Leading Lawyers for M&A: Middle Market (Sub $500m) Technology: Transactions respectively. Leading Lawyers are selected from all the nationally recommended attorneys in a particular category and represent those few individuals, who, in the view of their peers, represent the highest standards of their practice. This is Mr. Morton’s third year as a Leading Lawyer and Mr. Russell’s fourth. Mr. Morton was one of 23 attorneys nationwide named a Leading Lawyer in M&A: Middle Market (Sub $500m). Mr. Russell was one of only 12 attorneys nationwide named a Leading Lawyer in Technology: Transactions.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is one of the world’s leading research-based pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, has announced that it will freeze the prices of its vaccines for five years for developing countries that graduate from GAVI Alliance support.
By committing to offer GAVI Alliance prices for vaccines against pneumonia, diarrhoea and cervical cancer, GSK will support developing country governments as they transition to financing the full cost of their local vaccination programmes.
The crossover round is alive and well. Just a few days after Dermira put out the word that a consortium of backers had come up with a $51 million C round, the company rolled out a $75 million IPO. And the news, along with a fresh, $86 million filing from Rhythm Pharmaceuticals, helps set the stage for a new round of fall biotech IPOs that will once again test investors’ appetite for risk.
First, let’s look at Redwood City, CA-based Dermira. Focused on skin ailments, the biotech is partnered with UCB on the development of Cimzia–already on the market–for psoriasis, a field that will soon be packed with a host of contenders from the likes of Novartis ($NVS) and Eli Lilly ($LLY). The biotech has laid plans for a Phase III psoriasis trial in 2015 as it pursues further work on a new therapy for “hyperhidrosis,” or excessive sweating, in the armpits. It’s in a Phase IIb study and a successful outcome would set the stage for a late-stage program. There’s also an acne treatment in early mid-stage studies.
The Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development says its Maryland Venture Fund has made follow-on investments in two Maryland startups totaling $700,000.
Bethesda-based KoolSpan, a mobile security encryption company, received $400,000. BrainScope, also in Bethesda, got $300,000. BrainScope is developing neurotechnology for quickly assessing traumatic brain injury.
Emergent BioSolutions is looking to fill a position for a senior scientist position.
If hired, the senior scientist will be responsible for vaccine potency and assay development at Emergent BioSolutions.
Key responsibilities of the position include the design and execution of experimental protocols for developing and qualifying animal-based potency assays, conducting in vitro potency assay development and leading vaccine product stability studies with the company’s Potency Assay Group.
Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur, author and professor at Stanford University, developed the curriculum for the National Science foundation’s business boot camp for scientists before the NIH adopted it for scientists in the SBIR grant program. At a fireside chat at New York University Langone Medical Center hosted by NYC Bio this week, Blank talked about a new investment group called M34 Capital that will invest in technologies seeded by federally funded research, particularly graduates of I-Corps boot camps.
Led by CEO Errol Arkilic, founding and lead program director for the NSF I-Corps program, the Berkeley-based company was co-founded by Arkilic, Blank, Jim Hornthal, and Tom Baruch, according to its website. Its seed investment spans from $50,000 to $250,000. “We want to be the first external capital invested, and work closely with the founding team to help refine their business model and create the framework to systematically demonstrate its full potential,” according to the website. “We believe that the best entrepreneurs have the ability to blend technical insight with market-based feedback, allowing their innovations to mature into a successful company.”
Howard University Hospital will receive $11 million in federal grants toward developing new therapeutics for the Ebola virus, Howard officials said.
At least $2 million from the National Institutes of Health will go toward developing a new drug to target a particular protein of the Ebola virus. As well, $2 million will go toward work at the hospital researching HIV resistance in people with sickle cell disease, officials said.
BHC Center of Financial & Investment Business (“BHC”), an Atlanta based affiliate of Bao Hao Investment Management Co., Ltd. of Shanghai, has announced the first of what it expects to be several equity investments in 20/20 GeneSystems, Inc. (“20/20”). In making the investment BHC is seeking to help advance the introduction in China of 20/20’s blood test for the early detection of lung cancer (see www.BloodTestforLungCancer.com).
20/20 currently produces and markets this innovative blood test for the early detection of lung cancer in the United States. Primary care physicians employ the blood test to help detect lung cancer in patients who are smokers and former smokers. It is known as “PAULAs test.”
With a massive influx of new funding, Frederick pharmaceutical company Vaccinogen Inc. is preparing to make big moves that leaders hope will put it on the map.
Vaccinogen announced Aug. 25 it had secured $80 million in funding from Stockholm investors and closed the first $10 million tranche of the funding. The funding will support late-stage clinical studies needed to make Vaccinogen’s OncoVAX commercially available. The drug is designed to reduce recurrence of colon cancer.
ATCC, the premier global biological materials resource and standards organization, and bioMérieux, a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics, announced today their collaboration to expand and solidify the bioMérieux VITEK® MS microbial identification database for the industrial market. Recently, ATCC acquired the bioMérieux VITEK® MS system to make this innovative MALDI TOF technology a fundamental component of their authentication and quality control processes.
Strengthening the database with additional strains continues to increase the robustness of the VITEK® MS micro-organisms library while increasing the size and enhancing the utility for customers as a solid quality assurance tool.
Venture capital (VC) funding for the Life Sciences sector, which includes Biotechnology and Medical Devices, reached $2.5 billion in 195 deals for the second quarter of 2014, according to a new report, “Biotech soars to record high,” which includes data from the MoneyTree™ Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) LLP and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), based on data provided by Thomson Reuters. While this quarter was the highest Life Sciences investment since the second quarter 2007, it was also the strongest second quarter since 1995, which is the earliest data recorded by the MoneyTree.
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.
A lot has been written lately about innovation, or the lack thereof, in the world of biopharma. One question that often gets asked: which countries lead the way in creating new medicines? Many people think that drugs originate in the nation where the companies that produce them are headquartered. The truth, however, is much more complicated. Given that multi-national firms market the majority of medicines, figuring out where each one of their drugs originated requires digging through some extensive data vaults. A proper analysis requires the examination of company histories, free market deal making, and in some cases government interventions. Consider the following examples:
Student consultants at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business often find their target audience staring at them in the mirror when they do market research for nonprofit organizations.
ChangeTheWorld.org, a pro bono consulting program launched at the school’s Center for Social Value Creation in 2006, reports an increased interest among nonprofit organizations in the Millennial Generation as the population segment grows up and goes to college. “Nonprofit organizations want to unleash the potential of this generation, and they are coming straight to the source for insights at the Smith School and other partner universities,” said Pammi Bhullar, program manager at the Center for Social Value Creation and ChangeTheWorld.org. “Essentially, they are asking college students to gather market intelligence on themselves.”
A candidate Ebola vaccine could be given to healthy volunteers in the United Kingdom, The Gambia, and Mali as early as September, as part of a series of safety trials of potential vaccines aimed at preventing the disease that has killed more than 1,400 people in the current outbreak in West Africa.
Human trials of this candidate vaccine, being co-developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), are to be accelerated with funding from an international consortium in response to the Ebola epidemic, which the World Health Organization (WHO) recently declared a public health emergency of international concern.
GlaxoSmithKline’s experimental Ebola vaccine could be tested on humans in the UK, US, the Gambia and Mali in the next few weeks, in a race to contain the deadly virus that has claimed more than 1,500 lives in west Africa.
The news came as the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned that the Ebola epidemic could eventually exceed 20,000 cases. Bruce Aylward, WHO’s assistant director-general for emergency operations, said: “This far outstrips any historic Ebola outbreak in numbers. The largest outbreak in the past was about 400 cases.”
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Thursday appointed six new members to the Baltimore Development Corp. board, an announcement that comes as Councilman Bill Cole takes over as president of the agency.
The six new members are mostly long-standing vacancies on the 19-member board. One of the appointments fills a seat opened after city Finance Director Harry Black announced last month that he was leaving his job to become city manager in Cincinnati.
Scientists who use government money to conduct genomic research will now be required to quickly share the data they gather under a policy announced on Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health.
The data-sharing policy, which will take effect with grants awarded in January, will give agency-financed researchers six months to load any genomic data they collect—from human or nonhuman subjects—into a government-established database or a recognized alternative.
Baltimore is going to be OK, as long as it has its big name medical centers.
That’s the big takeaway from a new report by Moody’s Investors Service that looked at the economic impact large medical and education systems have on the cities where they are based.
Venture capital continued its love affair with biotechnology in the second quarter, with investment in biotech reaching record levels.
Venture capitalists invested $1.84 billion in 122 biotech deals in the period, according to a MoneyTree report released Monday by PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association, using Thomson Reuters data.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest:
NIH Guide Notices:
Notice to Extend the Expiration Date of PAR-11-315 “Systems Science and Health in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (R21)”
(NOT-OD-14-121) Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research
Notice to Extend the Expiration Date of PAR-11-314 “Systems Science and Health in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (R01)”
(NOT-OD-14-122) Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research
Notice to Extend the Response Date for NOT-HL-14-028 “Request for Information (RFI): Collaborative Translational Research Consortium to Develop T4 Translation of Evidence-based Interventions”
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.
On September 14, 2007, Lorenz Diesbergen, age 44, stepped off a commuter train in downtown Chicago and began his daily walk to work in the Chicago Loop. As he crossed the bridge over the Chicago River, his heart’s normal rhythm suddenly deteriorated into an uncoordinated frenzy of useless fibrillations. He may have managed a few more steps—we don’t know—before he pitched forward and fell face-first onto the sidewalk. Paramedics were on the scene within minutes, but efforts at resuscitation proved futile. He left behind a wife and four children.
Bayer HealthCare appears to be the first pharmaceutical company that started its own accelerator. The company that made €18.924 million in turnover in 2013 “understands that innovation and healthcare cannot only be driven by the industry but also needs creativity.” This was announced by Christian Ullrich, Head of Marketing & Sales IT at Bayer HealthCare yesterday.
Bayer has partnered with universities and smaller companies before and started Grants4Apps, a crowdsourcing initiative last year. This year, it was turned into an accelerator.
In this Hangout, we will discuss the basic concepts of medical device regulation in the U.S., what is considered significant risk versus non-significant risk, and how the level of risk factors into the regulation of new product development.
Are you an entrepreneur ready to pitch your company? Register for your chance to film a 3-minute video pitch that will be seen online by VC, angel investors and voted on by fans around Maryland!
The Montgomery County Department of Economic Development and the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce are hosting two Pitch Across Maryland stops in Montgomery County on Wednesday, October 1. Learn More Want to get on the bus and film your pitch? Apply Here.
The Montgomery County application deadline is Monday, September 15.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014 from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM (EST)
The 7th Annual Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium, hosted by the Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission and Montgomery County will be held on Tuesday, December 2, 2014 at the Silver Spring Civic Center, Silver Spring MD. The Symposium is the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund premier event that delivers comprehensive scientific talks, poster presentations, and networking time, enabling cell therapy basic research and technologies from the lab to pre-clinical and to commercialization. With a powerful line-up of speakers and many opportunities for you to present your work in concurrent or poster presentations, the Symposium will follow the format and style of previous meetings with additional networking time and an intimate environment.
Abstract Submission:
The Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (MSCRF) is now accepting abstract submissions for poster and oral presentations for the 7th Annual Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium. We encourage you to take full advantage of this opportunity to share your research results with our community. Multiple abstract submissions are welcomed.
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Wednesday, September 10, 2014
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced today that it will provide a multi-million dollar grant to create a hub of innovation that unites public and private institutions throughout Southern California, headquartered at and administered by the University of Southern California, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and the University of California Los Angeles.
The new center is part of the NSF Innovation Corps, or “I-Corps,” initiative, which is aimed at fostering innovation throughout the U.S. by encouraging the translation of ideas and research beyond the laboratory to create social and economic impact. The announcement cements the position of Southern California as a crucial focal point of technology entrepreneurship in the country.
Too much fat weighs down not just your body, but also your brain.
harms most organs in the body, and new research suggests the brain is no exception. What’s more, the researchers found that getting rid of excess fat actually improves brain function, reversing the ill effects of the extra weight. The new study, which focused on people who underwent bariatric surgery, found that the procedure had positive effects on the brain, but other research has shown that less invasive weight loss strategies, like exercise, can also reverse brain damage thought to be related to body fat.
Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi are using IBM Watson’s computer brain/big data cruncher to support research and development. It will be used to identify new applications for drugs that have already been developed and to leaf through scientific papers that detail clinical trial outcomes, according to a statement from IBM. The partnerships follow a new development in Watson’s evolution that help it visually uncover patterns and pinpoint connections in related data to accelerate the discovery process and advance science research.
“Watson now has the ability to understand the language of chemistry, biology, legal and intellectual property, giving scientists the ability to make connections with data that others don’t see, which can lead to rapid breakthrough in discoveries,” the statement said.
Every day our DNA breaks a little. Special enzymes keep our genome intact while we’re alive, but after death, once the oxygen runs out, there is no more repair. Chemical damage accumulates, and decomposition brings its own kind of collapse: membranes dissolve, enzymes leak, and bacteria multiply. How long until DNA disappears altogether? Since the delicate molecule was discovered, most scientists had assumed that the DNA of the dead was rapidly and irretrievably lost. When Svante Pääbo, now the director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, first considered the question more than three decades ago, he dared to wonder if it might last beyond a few days or weeks. But Pääbo and other scientists have now shown that if only a few of the trillions of cells in a body escape destruction, a genome may survive for tens of thousands of years.
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
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