193rd Edition – March 9, 2016

When March 30th from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Where: Relevant Health 155 Gibbs St. #529 Rockville, MD 20850

Join us for an evening of networking around innovation and commercialization at the BioBuzz @ Relevant Health. Meet with the organizations fueling commercialization in Maryland – BHI & TEDCO – and mingle with the first cohort of companies in the regions newest BioHealth accelerator – Relevant Health.

BHI, who operates the relevant health accelerator, is an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant bio-health innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding. This is your chance to get to know some of their TEAM and Entrepreneur’s in Residence to help you bring your product to market.

This event will be TEDCO’s bi-monthly “meet the program managers” event. Take this opportunity mingle with the program managers and learn about how you can navigate through TEDCO’s funding programs. TEDCO is State’s go-to resource for funding start-ups that need guidance as they bring innovative concepts to market..

Novavax Inc. is exploring its options in creating a Zika virus vaccine candidate.

So far, the Gaithersburg vaccine maker (NASDAQ: NVAX) has been mum about whether it would join other Greater Washington companies in the race to stop the Zika virus. The disease has caused concern among worldwide health leaders in recent months because of a suspected connection to birth defects in newborns and Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults.

WellDoc, a digital health technology leader, today announced a collaboration with LifeScan, Inc., a business within the Johnson & Johnson Diabetes Care Companies and a world leader in blood glucose monitoring, to deliver a best-in-class digital health solution for patients living with Type 2 diabetes. The agreement was facilitated with LifeScan affiliate Cilag GmbH International. In addition to the collaboration, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. (JJDC) participated in WellDoc’s $29.5 million Series B financing.

Johns Hopkins University and MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, today announced a first-of-its-kind PhD training program between a major university and a biopharmaceutical company in the United States.

The Johns Hopkins-MedImmune Scholars Program, part of an ongoing collaboration between the university and biopharmaceutical company, will prepare JHU graduate students for careers in the biomedical workforce. Program participants will gain research experience in an industry environment, be introduced to the drug discovery and development process, and complete a yearlong internship at MedImmune.

U.S. cities continue to reinvent themselves and demonstrate economic resiliency. While The University of Maryland-College Park (UMCP) has long had a reputation as a high-class research institution, its status has had a limited impact on the community surrounding it. With the evolving partnership between UMCP and the City of College Park, however, College Park is on the verge of becoming a hub for new innovation in the Washington, DC area.

CIITC provides a refundable income tax credit to Qualified Maryland Cybersecurity Companies (QMCCs) that secure investment from investors. The purpose of this new program is to incentivize and attract cybersecurity companies to startup in or move to Maryland; and to attract investment to cybersecurity companies in order to help them grow, create jobs and retain intellectual property in Maryland.

The Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) is interested in proposals to lease a bio-manufacturing facility configured to produce biologicals under cGMP conditions in compliance with FDA requirements for phase I/II clinical trials. The facility is also equipped to perform process development research, preclinical manufacturing for material necessary for IND-enabling toxicology studies, Point of Concept (POC) studies, and process demonstration in advance of GMP manufacturing. The Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) facility is located on the University of Maryland’s Shady Grove campus at 9600 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, MD 20850.

BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX), a leading global medical technology company, today announced it has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for its BD Totalys MultiProcessor and BD Totalys SlidePrep instruments.

Companies founded on technology licensed from Johns Hopkins University have raised $1 billion since 2010. And 90 percent of those companies are no longer in Maryland.

Christy Wyskiel, who leads Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, the university’s commercialization arm, hopes to reverse that trend with a new partnership with Village Capital and the Abell Foundation.

AstraZeneca announced that its global biologics research and development arm, MedImmune, has received Fast Track designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its investigational human monoclonal antibody (mAb), MEDI8852, for the treatment of patients hospitalised with Type A strain influenza. The FDA’s Fast Track programme is designed to expedite the development and review of drugs to treat serious conditions and fill an unmet medical need.

A University of Maryland startup is among the finalists in Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank’s Cupid’s Cup, a competition offering a $100,000 prize of the winner.

No cases of the Zika virus have originated in the U.S., but the possibility of it spreading north exists so doctors hope to get a better handle on the disease and work toward a cure.

“This virus has really exploded, transmitting throughout Central America, South America, and its arrival in the Americas, and the link to the congenital malformations has really caused concern that we’re seeing today,” said Dr. Lisa Maragakis with Johns Hopkins Infection Prevention.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finally is offering Meaningful Use-type incentives to long-term care, behavioral health and substance abuse care providers. It’s part of a wider effort to morph the electronic health records program into what acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt has said would be “something better” than Meaningful Use.

The very reason United Therapeutics Corp. (NASDAQ: UTHR) exists is because there wasn’t an effective treatment for Martine Rothblatt’s daughter when she was diagnosed with pulmonary arterial hypertension more than 20 years ago.

Rothblatt recently told investors the Silver Spring-based pharmaceutical has found the market a bit more crowded these days. In December, the Food and Drug Administration approved Actelion Pharmaceuticals LTD’s Uptravi to treat adults with pulmonary arterial hypertension.

March 29, 2016 2:30pm EST

Are you a small business, entrepreneur or scientist interested in technology-based agriculture innovations? Are you interested in collaborating with world class scientists? Then you should attend this webinar!

USDA ARS and the USDA SBIR program formed a partnership to encourage USDA SBIR applicants to develop research collaborations with ARS scientists and/or to license ARS technologies. The purpose is to increase the likelihood of success by providing both money and technologies to small U.S. businesses. The relevant language in the SBIR’s “Request for Application” states: “Additional factors that will be considered in the review process include whether an application involves a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with a USDA laboratory, or a license to a USDA technology, or is a resubmission.”

University of Maryland, Baltimore President Jay A. Perman, MD, has been awarded the 2016 Giving Back Award from INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine, the largest and oldest diversity and inclusion publication in higher education. The Giving Back Award honors presidents and chancellors of colleges and universities who go above and beyond their everyday leadership duties and “give back” to their campuses and communities. Perman will be featured, along with 26 other recipients, in the April 2016 Leadership Support and Giving Back issue of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe wants General Assembly budget leaders to find more money for economic development initiatives to fuel research into new technologies and allow him to use his executive authority to seal major business deals.

McAuliffe, in a letter Wednesday to budget negotiators for the House of Delegates and Senate, said his “primary area of concern, which I hope we can address together, is the restoration of the economic development proposals contained in my introduced budget.”

The Kansas Senate Ways and Means Committee heard testimony this week on a bill that would essentially sever financial ties between the state and the Kansas Bioscience Authority, according to the committee’s vice chairman Jim Denning, a Republican from Overland Park.

“It’s unwinding it from any state influence and further state funding,” Denning says.

It looks like Healthbox is raising a new fund, according to a Form D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The accelerator is keeping schtum about the Healthbox Opportunity Fund I and declined a request for comment.

Still, its website shows that it is poised to bring its Healthbox Studio accelerators to Orlando, as part of a partnership with Guidewell Innovation Center, and Los Angeles later this year. Healthbox and Guidewell had previous accelerator classes in Miami, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville. Los Angeles is home to a few accelerators, including one between Techstars and Cedars-Sinai.

Innovation takes time – and money, and people and resources. That’s why it’s common for a company to focus on core business activities and not build an innovation lab – a specific building or department dedicated to working on prototypes and fleshing out ideas.

Remarkable progress has been made over the last century in enhancing public health, driven largely by advances in science, medicine and our understanding of how disease manifests in the human body. As a result, the average life expectancy doubled during the 20th century.

It’s a familiar story: a biotechnology company develops a promising product but falls short of sales projections. The company then cuts staff, realigns resources, and turns to startups to fill its depleted pipeline.

While this scenario does play out in pharmaceuticals, it also describes what is happening in agriculture. Big ag companies face pressures to develop agricultural innovations and deliver financial returns. Agbio startups vie to fill big ag product pipelines. But even though motives driving agbio deals are similar to those in pharma, agbio startups can face steeper challenges.

What do breast cancer, lung cancer, and Zika virus have in common? They can all be treated with the same medications, claimed biotech billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong at a genetics conference in San Diego on Thursday. The doctor doesn’t shy away from bold statements based on preliminary data and was met with adoration as a kickoff speaker at the Future of Genomic Medicine conference—a science-heavy gathering at the Scripps Institution of geneticists, oncologists, data scientists, and other experts.

ide Group announced today that it will be awarding $25,000 worth of ide Group product design and development support for the best health innovation product idea pitched at the Building Better Futures for Health: A Product Design Challenge event.

Organised and hosted by ide Group, the event hopes to attract early stage entrepreneurs from across Australia with novel product ideas and technologies that have the potential to make a significant difference to people’s health. In response to alarming rises in health care costs and a rapidly ageing population, ide Group joins Australia’s push to find and invest in fresh, new ideas.

Coming soon to a hospital or clinic near you: dynamic healthcare pricing.

It’s not here yet, but Jay Deady, CEO of Recondo Technology, believes it’s on the way. He expects his revenue-cycle management company to enable the service. Healthcare providers will soon be able to offer different out-of-pocket prices depending on when and where each patient goes for a given service, he said.

The Venture+ Forum at HIMSS offered some insights from investors and entrepreneurs ranging from the predictable — patient engagement is oversaturated — to some surprising political insights on the eve of Super Tuesday. Here’s a look at some of the more interesting observations from the investor panels with a couple of entrepreneur insights as well.

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