185th Edition – January 12, 2016

The Financial Analyst plays a key role in supporting the strategic financial goals of BHI Management Inc. (BHIM) and its parent company, BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI). This position reports to the President of BHIM. The Financial Analyst influences BHIM through providing information, intelligence and insights which influence BHIM portfolio investment decisions. Key responsibilities of the position can be summarized as follows:

Germantown startup NextCure Inc. has raised $67 million in Series A financing for a plan to commercialize the work of a scientist credited with discovering a key pathway for how cancer drugs harness the immune system, it was announced Wednesday.

Vtesse, Inc. announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted its drug candidate, VTS-270 for treatment of Niemann-Pick Type C1 Disease (NPC), Breakthrough Therapy designation status. Both the FDA and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) had previously granted Orphan Drug status to VTS-270, which is currently in a pivotal Phase 2b/3 clinical trial.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) announced today that it has received a favorable private letter ruling from the Internal Revenue Service related to the planned spin-off of its biosciences business. Subject to its terms, the ruling confirms that certain aspects of the planned transaction, including those related to the qualification of the business as an active trade or business, will not preclude the spin-off from qualifying as tax-free to Emergent and its stockholders.

Sucampo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Sucampo) (Nasdaq: SCMP) announced an option and collaboration agreement under which Cancer Prevention Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (CPP) has granted Sucampo the sole option to acquire an exclusive license to commercialize CPP-1X/sulindac combination product in North America. This product is currently in a Phase 3 clinical trial for the treatment of familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP).

Deloitte today announced a strategic alliance agreement with AT&T aimed at accelerating the adoption of smart city technology across U.S. cities. The telco and global management consultancy, along with several other hand-picked alliance members, strive to enhance livability and improve the efficiencies of local governments through optimal use of today’s technology.

OriGene Technologies, Inc. (OriGene), a leading manufacturer of high quality antibodies and gene-centric tools, announced today that they have been awarded a Phase II SBIR contract from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to develop high-affinity, anti-peptide antibodies for mass-spectrometry-based serum biomarker detection/ quantification assays.

As usual, we bring you the top five entries from our most recent list. This week, it’s the top venture capital recipients in Maryland, based on funding received between the first and third quarters of 2015.

“BioIT Solutions of Silver Spring, Maryland has been selected as one of the 50 Most Valuable Tech Companies by Insights Success magazine in their December issue. We are the only company in the list focused on the biotechnology industry.”

A cancer startup just raised millions in a funding round led by a pharmaceutical giant.

That could be the sign of bigger things to come.

Baltimore, by a curious mixture of geographic positioning, educated talent, proximity to pork, and determined capital, is poised to become a crucial part of the East Coast technology cluster.

Under Armour’s partnership with IBM Watson is the latest in a series of announcements from the consumer health and fitness business that illustrate how the company is thinking about big data applications not only to provide timely, helpful insights on athletic training to a customer base of 180 million but also how to get them to buy more gear.

What is technology transfer / business development and what are the career opportunities in the field? What are the skills required and how does one acquire them? How can an scientist start a non-traditional career such as this? These are the questions to be answered in this presentation from two former bench scientists from the National Cancer Institute.

Thursday January 21, 2016 from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM EST

Johns Hopkins Montgomery County Campus is also a site for the popular Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Geared toward retirees, these non-credit classes cover topics including opera, literature, history, politics and more.

The campus is home to approximately 35 research companies and entrepreneurs. Scientists on campus are studying cervical cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, cell therapy, proteins and other health issues. Other companies focus on technology, medical devices and consulting services. The Rockville Science Center’s administrative offices are located here. Start-up companies, second-stage businesses and more established companies are welcome.

Ah. Another January, another J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference — where this year’s biggest biopharma deals are just a cocktail and a handshake away. As swaths of C-suite execs descend upon San Francisco, here’s an overview of some of the ideas we expect to see in motion at the conference (cattle yard) this week:

Guy Marcus, a 24-year-old Ph.D. candidate in physics at the Johns Hopkins University, is one of 30 young scientists named to Forbes magazine’s annual “30 Under 30” list.

David Narrow, who graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2013 with a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, has been named one of Forbes magazine’s “30 Under 30” notable entrepreneurs in the health care industry.

Narrow, 25, is the CEO of Sonavex, a company that works to improve outcomes for surgical patients by providing clinicians cutting-edge visualization through the use of imaging technology. Sonavex is presently based in North Baltimore and is part of FastForward at Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, a business accelerator program that supports startup companies.

Billions of dollars have been made from cancer drugs that inhibit the ubiquitin-proteasome system, otherwise known as the cellular garbage dump. By turning off the cell’s garbage disposal system, these drugs enable proteins to build up to a point where malignant cells commit suicide.

At the end of every year, Edge reaches out to the smartest people on the planet and asks them a single question in an attempt to find the ideas and concepts that are changing the world of science. This year’s two-part question was: “What do you consider the most interesting recent [scientific] news? What makes it important?”

Do you work in Greater Washington and love your employer? Then you probably work at a federal agency. We asked Glassdoor, a job-recruiting site that allows employees to anonymously grade their company and their CEO, to crunch the numbers to find out who the most-liked employers are in Greater Washington. We recently compiled a list of most-liked CEOs, too.

The crisis in soaring drug prices has produced not merely a new class of public enemies to skewer — step forward, Martin Shkreli! — but the best evidence yet that the nation’s healthcare regulatory priorities are out of whack.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016 2:00 pm

When developing a new drug or technology, innovators are generally focused on achieving regulatory approval. But often they don’t spend enough time considering how the product will be paid for once it is approved. This NHLBI Small Biz Hangout will focus on basic components of reimbursement that every innovator needs to understand—coverage, coding, and payment. Attendees will hear guidance on how to implement an effective reimbursement strategy while their product is still in development.

Barbara Crews, assistant executive director for community relations at the Johns Hopkins University Montgomery County Campus, has been appointed to an executive committee position with the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce board of directors.

Crews will serve a yearlong term as vice chair for member recruitment and retention. In this role, she will help the chamber recruit new members and retain existing ones. She will help existing members get the most out of their memberships by engaging them in chamber activities.

We’re one step closer to open-source collaboration in the life sciences – and could come a hell of a lot closer to completely revolutionizing cancer treatment – thanks to a promising new alliance formed by the top brass in biopharma.

Meant to accelerate the potential of immunotherapy in treating cancer, The National Immunotherapy Coalition has just been launched by leaders from Amgen, Celgene, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and NantWorks – along with Independence Blue Cross and many others. Here’s why:

Our region’s business community has a self-esteem problem. We nod shamefully when we are told we depend on government dollars for success.

Wrong.

The world’s largest DNA sequencing company says it will form a new company to develop blood tests that cost $1,000 or less and can detect many types of cancer before symptoms arise.

Illumina, based in San Diego, said its blood tests should reach the market by 2019, and would be offered through doctors’ offices or possibly a network of testing centers.

Six startups have been selected for the Emerging Technology Centers’ AccelerateBaltimore program and one will receive an extra investment of $100,000. Now in its fifth year, AccelerateBaltimore is a four month program that aims to help promising startup companies come closer to bringing their products or services to market. The program is backed by $170,000 from the Abell Foundation. The money largely goes toward the $25,000 award given to each participating company.

Accelerator Corporation, a leading life science investment and management firm, today announced the Series A financing of Petra Pharma Corporation to develop small molecule inhibitors for the treatment of cancer and metabolic diseases in alliance with Weill Cornell Medicine. The investors participating in the $48 million Series A investment in Petra Pharma include Accelerator New York’s investment syndicate partners: AbbVie, Alexandria Venture Investments, ARCH Venture Partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Harris & Harris Group, Inc., Innovate NY Fund, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc., The Partnership Fund for New York City, Pfizer Venture Investments, Watson Fund and WuXi PharmaTech.

Many articles these days talk about reasons why companies should consider innovation as a core discipline. A quick Google search on “why innovate” produces 23,600,000 results. There is a plethora of opinions regarding innovation and why it is important. Competition is usually one of the reasons but not the only one, especially when looking how the world will be in the near future. Innovation becomes a critical survival skill when looking at predictions for how we will live, work, and communicate as early as 2020.

AT&T next month will open a center focused on digital health innovations within the Texas Medical Center’s state-of-the-art Innovation Institute, the communications giant announced on Tuesday.