133rd Edition – January 14, 2015

Vtesse, Inc., a rare disease company focused on developing drugs for Niemann-Pick Disease Type C (NPC) and other severe diseases with great unmet need, announced today that it has raised $25 million in Series A funding. Vtesse is the first spin-off company for Cydan Development, Inc., an orphan-drug accelerator that shares with Vtesse the same syndicate of leading life sciences investors that are committed to funding additional rare disease companies. New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the Vtesse financing with participation from Pfizer Venture Investments, Lundbeckfond Ventures, Bay City Capital and Alexandria Venture Investments.

R. Mike Gill, chairman of Columbia investment banking firm Evergreen Advisors, will become the next secretary of the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development.

The appointment ends months of speculation about who Gov.-elect Larry Hogan, a Republican, would name to the role after winning the gubernatorial election in November.

AstraZeneca today announced that MedImmune, its global biologics research and development arm, has entered into a licensing agreement with Omnis Pharmaceuticals (Omnis), a privately-held biotechnology company focused on the development of oncolytic viruses. This agreement will allow MedImmune to combine key agents from its investigational immunotherapy portfolio with Omnis’ lead investigational oncolytic virus programme, a genetically engineered strain of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV). The programme is currently being studied in a Phase I clinical trial as a monotherapy for the treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma and other cancers that have metastasised to the liver.

Sample and assay technologies provider Qiagen NV recently announced the launch of its latest diagnostic TB test– QuantiFERON-TB Gold-Plus (QFT-Plus), subsequent to the product’s receipt of CE Mark in Europe.

QFT-Plus is the fourth generation of the most accurate test used in the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB) infection. It involves Qiagen’s proprietary QuantiFERON technology which can uniquely identify presymptomatic infections that standard diagnostic technologies fail to detect.

BD Medical, a part of Becton, Dickinson and Company, announced receiving FDA clearance for its Intelliport Medication Management System. The product monitors manual IV bolus injections, automatically records how much of which medication a patient receives and warns of allergies by interfacing with the hospital’s electronic medical records.

J. Craig Venter was one of the first scientists in 2001 to map the human genome. Now this trailblazer in genome sequencing research has his sights set on creating the world’s largest database of human genomes. And he’s calling in Baltimore startup Personal Genome Diagnostics Inc. to help.

Qiagen announced on Sunday that it has acquired the enzyme solutions unit of Enzymatics, a supplier of enzymes used in next-generation sequencing and other genetic analysis technologies in life sciences research and clinical applications, for an undisclosed amount.

Roche, the world’s largest maker of cancer drugs, is spending $1.03 billion to buy a 56.3% stake in Cambridge, Mass.-based Foundation Medicine, a company that uses genetics to help select drugs for cancer patients. Roche, based in Basel, Switzerland, will also market Foundation’s diagnostic tests outside the U.S., help educate doctors as to the value of the tests in the U.S., and provide another $150 million to support additional research on Foundation’s products.

Balitmore’s PathSensors Inc. has received $500,000 from a Chinese investor to expand the bioscience company’s footprint in China.

The private investor, Michael Song, is president of Shanghai Qi Fa Electronics Co. Ltd. in China. The money will allow PathSensors to grow sales of its surface and airborne detection systems in China. Funding will also go toward market expansion in the U.S.

Rockville-based contract research firm Optimal Research announced it will begin clinical trials this month for the Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) Ebola vaccine, considered one of the frontrunners in the race to address the Ebola crisis.

Optimal Research Chief Operating Officer E.B. McLindon said Friday the company is seeking individuals to participate in a Phase I Clinical trial for the vaccine. The company plans to administer the vaccine to 92 healthy volunteers in January and February to determine its safety.

US-based biotechnology firm Tetragenetics will enter into collaboration with AstraZeneca’s global biologics research and development arm MedImmune, on multi-target ion channel drug discovery program.

The need to improve and increase research into dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases is widely recognised. In 2012, Prime Minister David Cameron launched his “Challenge on Dementia” and since then a number of initiatives have been announced which mean that the UK is a world-leader in this area. MedImmune, the biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, has built a team of neuroscientists focusing on neurodegenerative research and is deeply involved and committed to its work to discover and develop novel treatments for dementia.

The EAGB put together a year-end report on the regional economy for the second year, this time highlighting local universities and the innovation economy. Also in this report, the EAGB lists its most memorable achievements from the previous year. Take a look!

The University of Maryland will be applying for status as a qualified institution to give tax breaks to businesses — particularly startups — located around some of College Park’s higher-profile locales, such as the planned hotel-conference center and research park.

The “next generation of science” is at risk unless major changes are made to increase opportunities for young researchers, Johns Hopkins University President Ronald Daniels wrote in a scientific journal article published Tuesday.

Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York — Maryland has a lot of competition for entrepreneurs’ attention. Experts say a tax credit specifically for angel investors could sweeten the deal for entrepreneurs and investors who decide to do business in Maryland.

Establishing an angel investor tax credit will be a top priority for the Greater Baltimore Committee during the state’s upcoming legislative session. GBC sees the tax credit as a way to boost the state’s economy by supporting growing startups that will create jobs and bring new business to Maryland. Investors and adivsors of Baltimore-area startups say the tax credit would not only help startups grow in Maryland, but keep them — and their investors — from laying roots elsewhere.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the real estate firm that helped transform Mission Bay into a thriving life-science hub, now wants to raise up to $20 million to build digital-health companies from scratch in San Francisco.

Alexandria, the nation’s largest owner and developer of real estate for the life-science industry, said in August that it would start three new accelerators nationwide to support startups in biotech, agriculture and digital health. The biotech space is up and running in New York City with $51 million in financing, and the agriculture space is expected to open within the next six months in North Carolina.

The Beyond the Pill movement took an interesting turn this week when Qualcomm announced plans to open an investment business with Novartis, according to a company statement. Qualcomm will launch the investment company through its Qualcomm Ventures business. The news splash at the start of the JP Morgan Healthcare conference came about a week after the two companies said at the International CES in Las Vegas that they would collaborate on digital health as part of Novartis’ Trials of the Future program.

The Tech Council of Maryland plans to outline its legislative priorities Monday as state lawmakers head to Annapolis next week, but lobbyists will have to contend with a new governor and constrained budget as they push their agenda.

Wednesday January 28, 2015 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM EST

Join the BioBuzz networking group at our next free event. Along with 100’s of the region’s bioscience workers, you too could be making new connections, getting jobs and helping to build a stronger, more connected industry through the BioBuzz community!

Facebook generates about $8 a year in revenue from each of its users. But what if you offered a company not just your photos and updates, but your entire genome?

Then you could be worth as much as $20,000.

Hundreds of research papers are published every day worldwide. But which articles are most discussed and in which circles? To find out, Altmetric in London traced how often papers were noted in 14 digital channels, ranging from the serious (5,000 research blogs and Mendeley, an academic citation network) to the trendy (Twitter, Facebook) and everything in between (including 1,000 news outlets). Altmetric poured data for 2014 into an algorithm that created scores; the top 200 articles are mapped here.

A new $75 million investment fund has been created by Connecticut-based HealthInvest Equity Partners, according to a filing with the SEC.

The investment firm, formed in 2013, focuses on a wide range of areas within healthcare, from woman’s health companies to urgent care providers to medical imaging.

Blend Therapeutics, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company discovering new classes of medicines to treat cancer, announced today that it has secured $21 million in new funding. The new financing includes additional equity investment from a new investor and all of Blend’s existing venture investors in an expansion of the Series B round, as well as debt financing from an institutional investment firm.

According to a recent article in The National Law Review, universities controlling and supporting the commercialization of their own research is not a new trend in the academic world. Recently, for example, the University of California created UC Ventures, “an independent fund to pursue investments in UC research-fueled enterprises” in September 2014, stated the school in a press release.

Bioentrepreneurship is the process of creating customer defined value by creating, developing, deploying and harvesting biomedical and/or sick care or health and wellness innovation. The definition includes three key elements: process, value creation and innovation.

The hollow Cola tree growing in a remote area of southeastern Guinea was once home to thousands of bats routinely hunted and killed by the neighborhood children. It was also a popular spot to play. A year ago, one child in particular lived within fifty meters of the tree: a two-year-old boy who died in December 2013 and later was identified as the first person in west Africa known to have developed Ebola. The tree was one of the few that loomed over his home village of Meliandou, a hamlet of 31 houses. The question that now haunts researchers: were the tree’s occupants behind how that small boy contracted the virus in the first place?