134th Edition – January 20, 2015

Please join us in wishing her well as she embarks on retirement and new adventures.

When:

January 20, 2015 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m. (Remarks at 5:15 p.m.) La Tasca – Baltimore – 201 East Pratt St. (Parking validated at 100 Pratt St.- $5) Cash bar; light horse d’euvres

and/or

January 28, 2015 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Remarks at 4:15 p.m.; BioBuzz networking ’til 7:30 p.m.) Growlers – Gaithersburg – 227 West Diamond St. Cash bar; light horse d’euvres

Novartis India has agreed to transfer its over-the-counter division (OTC Division) to GlaxoSmithKline Consumer (GSK CPL), a consumer healthcare joint venture (JV) between Swiss pharmaceutical firm Novartis and GSK, for about INR1.097bn ($17.6m)

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), in Laurel, Maryland, has received $4 million in funding from the Mann Fund to develop a next-generation retinal prosthesis system. The Mann Fund was created by philanthropist Alfred E. Mann 15 years ago to support the development of biomedical technologies.

A Exciting Opportunity for Investor Meetings and Showcases

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 21, 2015

We invite you to submit your high-growth and innovative companies to individually meet with and showcase to an exclusive Global 1000 Transaction Network of Corporate Investors, Venture Capitalists, and Angel Investors at the Combined University Startups and Global 1000 Meet | Partner | Deal Conference in Washington, DC, on March 11 and 12, 2015.

Swiss drugmaker Roche said on Wednesday it had entered into an agreement with QIAGEN that includes a provision of non-exclusive licenses to recently granted Roche patents, pertaining to the detection of mutations in the EGFR pathway.

It didn’t take R. Michael Gill very long to come up with some priorities after Gov.-elect Larry Hogan named him the next Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development secretary last week.

Gill wants to keep McCormick & Co. Inc. (NYSE: MKC) in state. He wants to bring the FBI headquarters to Maryland. And he wants to emphasize customer service in dealing with businesses.

Lockheed Martin Corp. is normally known for big things – tanks, planes, ships, those kinds of projects.

But a new partnership the defense giant has formed with a San Diego company has Lockheed looking at something very, very small.

The ETC (Emerging Technology Centers) www.etcbaltimore.com, Baltimore City’s award-winning technology innovation centers, announced today that the following six companies have been accepted into the AccelerateBaltimore™ 2015 program:

Show me the money, I’m not seeing it here.

According to NVCA, U.S. VC firms raised $29.8B in 2014, making it the best fundraising year since 2007 (’13 was $17.7B). Overall this is good news, but there has not been local traction. Here is the data from NVCA on the D.C. located funds that raised capital in ’14:

U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) today met with Governor-Elect Larry Hogan at Harry Brown’s Restaurant in Annapolis. Senator Mikulski and Governor-Elect Hogan discussed working together to support jobs and opportunity for Maryland families.

Roche said today it will acquire Trophos for up to €470 million (about $543 million), in a deal that will expand the pharma giant’s portfolio in neuromuscular disease with high medical need, anchored by the Phase II/III-completed spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) compound olesoxime (TRO19622).

AOL founder Steve Case predicted last January that the region east of the Mississippi River would raise more venture capital than Silicon Valley in 2014.

And the winner is … Silicon Valley. By a friggin’ landslide.

All that venture capital money so famously “sitting on the sideline” finally made it into company coffers in 2014.

Mark McCaffrey, a partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, called 2014 an “exciting year” for venture capital investing, where two deals exceeded $1 billion and 40 “megadeals” exceeded $100 million.

Venture capital funding hit its highest annual mark since 2001 as venture investors participated in $47.3 billion across 3,617 deals. Even versus 2013, the past year was huge as venture capital skyrocketed 62% YoY due to multiple $500M+ mega-rounds while deal growth was more modest, climbing 8%. Of note, two quarters each – Q2’14 and Q4’14 – notched over $13B in funding.

All of us here at Startup Maryland are very excited to invite you to Collaborate, an innovation conference we’re participating in January 23rd & 24th in Washington DC.

“Startup Maryland is delighted to be in the Resource Expo showcasing our initiatives around Celebration, Connections, Coaching and Capital.,” stated Michael Binko, founder and president of Startup Maryland. “We’ll be highlighting the results of the third-annual Pitch Across Maryland, our upcoming Raise Your Game bootcamp for entrepreneurs and our plans to engage side-line angel investors across the region,” added Binko.

January 30th, 2015 8:00 AM-10:00 AM

Learn from Eitan Yudilevich, Ph.D. Director of U.S. – Israel Binational R & D Foundation (BIRD) about grants available to collaborate new high tech product development with Israeli companies. Grants up to $1 million are available to engage innovative companies from The Start Up Nation to kick start your company’s product development to a new level.While there is no fee, RSVPs are required.

New Jersey’s first private medical school in 50 years is planned for part of the 110-acre Hoffmann-La Roche property. Roche plans to vacate the land in 2015 after an 80-year history in Clifton and Nutley.

A trio of scientists have started working with researchers at GlaxoSmitKline on a potential cure for cancer. In fact, they believe they’ve found the diseases’ “Achilles heel.”

Last month, GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) selected a Wistar/Penn project for its 2014 Discovery Fast Track Challenge program, which was created to accelerate the development of new medicines.

FierceBiotech on Wednesday delivered the first big verdict on the “mood” of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference – based largely on its executive breakfast held this week in San Francisco. The verdict: Real confidence well above and beyond the typical happy face you’d get, regardless, at JP Morgan.

In the summer of 2013, Pamela Shavaun Scott started having “24/7 severe headaches” — so severe that she couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t before December that she heard for sure that it was a brain tumor.

Harvard University has long played an outsized role in spurring the growth of the Boston area’s life sciences industry, but the school’s contributions have largely unfolded behind the scenes.

Unlike the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge’s Kendall Square — the beating heart of biotech — Harvard has been known less for spinning off startups than for licensing cutting-edge research and grooming the industry’s business leaders.

The cash just keeps flowing in health IT, as does M&A activity.

According to Mercom Capital Group, venture capital in the health IT space reached $4.7 billion in 2014, up from $2.2 billion the year prior. Rock Health recently put the figure at $4 billion, although it’s count does not include deals under $2 million.

The United States shouldn’t worry just yet about losing the number one spot as far as disease-related research in the world goes – that’s pretty solid – but that doesn’t mean the country is steadily moving forward the way it could or should.

‘Tis the season for dieting and purchasing gym memberships you may or may not use.

There are plenty of tactics out there for how to drop excess weight fast, and generally speaking, most of them probably won’t be the quick fix resolutionaries are hoping for (yes, that’s a made up word).

In 2012, we authored a report titled The Evolving Business Case for Social Media in Healthcare – a publication covering the range of social media influences on the industry. These influences were essentially cloud-based approaches to sharing information between consumers, individual care professionals and healthcare organizations.

The Colonial Room of the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco was filled beyond capacity Monday afternoon, and the offices of digital-health seed fund Rock Health were buzzing with hundreds of partygoers just a couple of hours later.

In a laboratory first, Duke researchers have grown human skeletal muscle that contracts and responds just like native tissue to external stimuli such as electrical pulses, biochemical signals and pharmaceuticals.