257th Edition – June 13, 2017

Johns Hopkins University is among the top ten institutions worldwide to receive U.S. utility patents in 2016, according to a rankings report published by the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association. The report ranks JHU at No. 7, with the university listed as the first assignee on 167 patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last year.

UMBC officials are planning to add new space at the research and technology park adjacent to the Catonsville campus over the next two to five years.

Up to 100,000 additional square feet for tech companies could be added at the south campus of bwtech@UMBC, said Gregory Simmons, UMBC’s VP of Institutional Advancement.

TEDCO named George Davis as its new CEO on Wednesday. He will start in the leadership role of the quasi-public agency that backs early stage companies on June 26.

The organization provides investment funding as well support for entrepreneurs. Davis has experience both in leading and funding companies in Maryland.

Bruce Booth, D.Phil., a partner at Atlas Venture, astutely observed earlier this year that two key resources fueling the growth of biopharma were until recently somewhat geographically spread among the 10 or so regions of the nation where the industry began to arise a generation ago.

“In recent years, this has changed—Boston and San Francisco are now the preeminent biotech clusters. And their gravity in the ecosystem is only getting stronger,” Dr. Booth concluded in a March 21 post on his Life Sci VC blog. “Beyond having great science and the right ‘pixie dust’ in the local environment, two fundamentally important ingredients to the success of any cluster are capital and talent—and both are aggregating into the two key clusters.”

The Maryland Tech Council (MTC), Maryland’s largest technology trade association, announced the winners of its 29th Annual Industry Awards during a celebration and ceremony at the Bethesda North Marriott Hotel and Conference Center attended by more than 550 business leaders from around the state.

“MTC was honored to recognize the Industry Award winners this year whose innovations are improving and saving lives,” said Tami Howie, CEO, Maryland Tech Council. “This year’s winners gave inspiring and heart-felt messages on their advancements and how they are changing the world.”

Qiagen this past weekend said that it signed separate agreements with Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johns Hopkins University related to next-generation sequencing assay development.

Under one agreement, Qiagen and BMS will initially explore the use of NGS to develop gene expression profiles as predictive or prognostic tools for use with several BMS immuno-oncology therapies. The companies also plan to enter into a further agreement to develop diagnostic products using the jointly developed profiles to expand the use of NGS technology with other BMS immuno-oncology therapies.

QIAGEN (NASDAQ: QGEN; Frankfurt Prime Standard: QIA) today announced it has received premarket approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its automated artus® CMV QS-RGQ MDx kit for use on QIAGEN’s QIAsymphony platform, providing fast, reproducible, high-quality test results for use as an aid in the management of solid organ transplant patients who are undergoing anti-CMV therapy.

Patients who have undergone organ transplantation have an elevated risk of infection from CMV, which is a common virus that infects people of all ages. Over half of all adults by age 40 have been infected with CMV, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Once CMV is in a person’s body, it stays there for life in latent form and can reactivate.

Johns Hopkins University has been ranked among the top 2 percent of universities in the world by the 2018 QS World University Rankings released today.

Out of 950 universities from more than 80 countries, Johns Hopkins came in at No. 17—the same ranking as last year—and was the ninth-highest ranked U.S. school. QS has ranked JHU among the world’s top 20 universities for the past ten years, and among the top 30 since the rankings list debuted in 2004.

Join MCCC in congratulating David Nguyen as he receives the MCCC 2017 Chairman’s Award.

David’s contributions to the MCCC Board of Directors are strategic and impactful. An exemplary thought leader, he has advanced the Chamber’s Metro Maryland concept, grown our membership and provided innovative solutions to advance the MCCC mission.

The angel investor market in 2016 experienced a decrease in investment dollars and in the deal size. Total investments in 2016 were $21.3 billion, a decrease of 13.5% over 2015, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. A total of 64,380 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding in 2016, a decline of 9.5% over 2015 investments. The number of active investors in 2016 was 297,880 individuals, a decrease of 2.3% from 2015. The change in both total dollars and the number of investments resulted in a deal size for 2016 that was smaller than in 2015. While these data indicate a cautious retreat in terms of dollars invested and deals, angels increased their appetite for seed and start-up investing, and the associated risk, but with a higher perceived value as demonstrated by the increase in valuations and decrease in deal (investment round) size.

The University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors on Friday approved an academic affiliation with the Inova Health System Foundation that includes a research institute and a UVA School of Medicine regional campus.

Global Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Institute UVA and Inova, along with partner George Mason University, will recruit investigators to work in collaborative teams on genetics and genomics, bioengineering, systems biology of disease, developmental biology and computational biology. The goal: make scientific discoveries that can be turned into new treatments, drugs and devices that improve the health of patients across Virginia and beyond.

Some startup concepts are easy to understand.

OrderUp wants to deliver food right to your door. Lyft will make sure you can call a ride to anywhere you need to go.

President Trump has named Norman “Ned” Sharpless, the director of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, to lead the National Cancer Institute.

The oncologist and geneticist will succeed Doug Lowy, who has been acting director of NCI since early 2015. Lowy is expected to remain at the institute as deputy director and a researcher.

A program at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise aimed to bolster economic development in the region has received millions to help more students and the community get involved.

The Wise County school announced Friday that their parent school in Charlottesville has allocated $3.5 million from its Strategic Fund for the Wise Innovation Ecosystem.

There’s no shame in getting a little bit of help, particularly when it comes to running a business. Sure, you can bootstrap a one-man company with no advice from seasoned entrepreneurs and a notable lack of experience yourself, but you know what’s going to happen? You’re probably going to fail. And all you had to do was ask for a little bit of guidance for your friendly neighborhood startup accelerator.

Can they do whatever a spider can? Definitely not. But what they can do is provide you with capital, mentorship, and perhaps most importantly, a little structure to your budding business. A startup accelerator is designed to make life as an entrepreneur easier. Well, the good ones are anyway.

Ty Alston is helping microfunding website Kiva.org find its place in Baltimore’s startup scene.

Accenture (NYSE:ACN) today announced it will continue to serve as a catalyst for identifying and engaging with emerging innovators and disruptors with the second annual Accenture HealthTech Innovation Challenge. Building on the success of the inaugural program in which 500 startups participated, the Accenture HealthTech Innovation Challenge brings together leading-edge startups with prominent health and life sciences companies to tackle some of the world’s greatest health challenges including access, affordability and transparency.

Honoring those who see past the present to create the future. The future is not granted. It is born from the initiative of entrepreneurs. Now in its 31st year, the Entrepreneur Of The Year® program celebrates these future-makers whose drive propels growth in our economies and our world.

We invite you to join us in celebrating the remarkable achievements of this year’s Maryland finalists at the Entrepreneur Of The Year 2017 Maryland Awards gala.

On May 15, MdBio Foundation hosted the first STEM Leadership Experience, an afterschool workshop for high school girls, onboard the Mobile eXploration Lab. Designed in collaboration with MdBio’s longtime partner, MedImmune/AstraZeneca, the program is an immersive, hands-on activity designed to teach laboratory practices while building relationships between high school students and STEM professionals.

President Trump announced Tuesday that he will keep Francis S. Collins as director of the National Institutes of Health.

Collins was first nominated for the position in 2009 by President Obama. Shortly after he took office, Trump announced that Collins would stay on in an interim role, and many scientists have wondered if Collins would be offered the position or would accept it on a permanent basis in the new administration. Trump surprised many this year by proposing cuts of nearly 20 percent in the budget of the NIH, which normally has support from Democrats and Republicans alike.

The 2017 Omnibus Grant Solicitations of the NIH, CDC, and FDA are now available for the SBIR and STTR (NIH only) programs.

The 2017 SBIR/STTR Omnibus solicitations and accompanying resources can be found below:

• SBIR: PA-17-302
• STTR: PA-17-303
• 2017 Program Descriptions and Research Topics and Appendix A (SBA approved topics for budget waivers)
• SF 424 (R&R) Online HTML Application Guide
• SF 424 (R&R) PDF Guide Application Guide for SBIR/STTR Grant Applications
• Annotated SF424 SBIR/STTR Form Set

Standard Application Due Dates: September 5, 2017 and January 5, 2018.

The Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) has been awarded two $115,000 grants to commercialize technologies based on improving protein-based therapeutics utilizing a novel biopolymer and an alternate way to treat Niemann-Pick disease patients. The grants are funded by the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) as part of the Technology Council of Maryland’s (TEDCO) effort to support commercialization of academic-based scientific research and the state’s efforts to foster economic development in Maryland. The MII program is a collaboration between the State of Maryland and five Maryland institutions: University of Maryland, Baltimore; University of Maryland, College Park; Morgan State University; UMBC; and Johns Hopkins University.

Several technology research and commercialization research projects are getting money thanks to the Commonwealth Research Commercialization Fund Awards.

Governor Terry McAuliffe announced $2.7 million in funding for 40 projects across the Commonwealth, including several in Albemarle County.

The FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health is ramping up medical app and device offerings with a recently announced digital health unit.

The aim of this development is to centralize and coordinate digital health information so that there is consistency in applying policies. According to the associate director of digital health for the FDA, Bakul Patel, the primary responsibilities of those on the project will be to develop software and digital health tech to assist with premarket submissions or devices, utilize experts, and incorporate metrics that will aid review times and submissions.

A vaccine that could provide a major breakthrough in the fight against Type 1 diabetes is to be tested in human trials.

Developed by Belgian biotech Imcyse, in collaboration with the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) in Paris – and 18 clinical sites across Europe, the company’s Imotopes™ technology can destroy immune cells that kill insulin-producing cells.

Crowdfunding platforms such as GoFundMe and YouCaring have turned sympathy for Americans drowning in medical expenses into a cottage industry. Now Republican efforts in Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare could swell the ranks of the uninsured and spur the business of helping people raise donations online to pay for health care.

But medical crowdfunding doesn’t have to wait for Congress to act. Business is already booming, and its leaders expect the rapid growth to continue no matter what happens on the Hill.