130th Edition – December 31, 2014

Friday, January 9, 2015

Learn How to Get Seed Funding Investment for Your Business from the Government! Improve your Federal Contractor procurement postion from the same program–Small Business Innovation Research Funds (SBIR). Featuring SBIR program managers from leading Federal agencies including DOD, NIH, NCI, NASA, DOE and NSF! Network with the SBIR program managers during an Expo and meet other business owners. Get tips on how to win awards and hear about changes in the agencies’ funding and procurement programs. If you are considering applying for an SBIR grant in 2015, or have already won and need to learn updates directly from SBIR program managers, this event is for you!

BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI), a Montgomery County innovation intermediary which translates market-relevant research into commercial success by bringing together among other things management, funding, and markets, is seeking an experienced life science professional with entrepreneurial experience to serve as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR).

The EIR will lead in the evaluation of early-stage technologies and corporations with a priority focus on those associated with Funding Partners and those that best fit with the strategic direction as set by BHI’s CEO and Director of EIR Programs. The EIR will perform any reasonable task which will forward the goals of BHI. 

A new business incubator in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor will cater to startup companies launched through universities.

The Institute of Marine & Environmental Technology in January is opening a 4,300-square-foot incubator in its offices at the Christopher Columbus Center in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.

Tao Yu, a graduate student in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, talks about his internship with Biohealth Innovation, through the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s Biomedical Careers Initiative (BCI).

Biotechnology will have a strong year in 2015, but it can’t get any better than 2014, biotech investor G. Steven Burrill says in his annual year-end report.

“The unprecedented IPO (initial public offering) and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) activity this year will make 2014 one for the record books and unlikely to ever be surpassed,” Burrill said.

Marriott International Inc. is launching a restaurant incubator competition, hoping to tap the world’s growing cadre of food and beverage entrepreneurs to bring a new level of cool to its hotels.

The Bethesda hotel giant bills the competition, called Canvas, as a “global concept lab for food and beverage ideas.” The winners will get up to $50,000 each and six months to operate and prove their concepts.

In a world’s first, a double-amputee, with arms missing at shoulder level, received two prostheses, each of which he is able to control intuitively with his mind and manipulate different joints to control a total of 30 degrees of motion.

The system installed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory relies on surgically connecting electrodes to existing nerves that used to lead to the different part of the arm and hand.

In 2014, wearable health tracking devices continued to get more creative, going far beyond simple fitness tracking. The K-Goal, a “Fitbit for your vagina,” promised to help women do kegel exercises correctly, while the Emotiv EEG headset offered the prospect of mental acuity, measured by a device that tracks the brain’s concentration.

The year in biotechnology began with a landmark event. A decade after the first human genome was decoded at a cost of about $3 billion, the sequencing-machine company Illumina, of San Diego, introduced a new model, the Hyseq X-10, that can do it for around $1,000 per genome.

Here are my 10 crucial pieces of advice for students who aspire to a career in pharmaceutical labs:

1. You need a solid foundation in science. Master the basics, and learn how to apply that knowledge.

Faced with diminishing returns on R&D investments, large pharmaceutical companies are searching for innovative ways to successfully identify, develop, and market products with financial viability. Yet small discovery companies and biotechs continue to outpace large pharma in the approval of NMEs (new molecular entities).

Rampaging animal spirits have given birth to a biotechnology unicorn. It’s apt that a stellar year for initial public offerings in the sector will be capped by its biggest float ever. Juno Therapeutics is a year old and revenue free, but its cancer fighting technology is hot. At nearly a $2 billion valuation, the company shows capitalism’s ability to catalyze investors’ hopes and resources.

Whether a startup makes or breaks depends on if you have the right people on the team. How can you know? During my start-up journey as an early employee of an online education startup, co-founder of a social enterprise, and sole founder of my health technology company, ClickMedix, I’ve been through and witnessed the birth, growth, decline, and eventual end of startups.

Medical technology developer Medtronic, Inc. recently completed an application submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regarding the pre-market approval of their SynchroMed II implantable drug infusion system, which includes a new catheter design. The system is intended to be used by pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) patients for the intravenous delivery of the drug Remodulin (treprostinil), which is being developed by the United Therapeutics Corporation.

Amgen Inc. announced an agreement Monday to become a sponsor of LabCentral, a biotech incubator in Cambridge, Mass.

The Thousand Oaks pharmaceutical company can nominate up to two biotech startups a year for residence in LabCentral’s facilities. The lab has 28,000 square feet and can house 28 early stage companies. Other sponsors of the project include Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, MIT and Johnson & Johnson Innovation.