279th Edition – November 14, 2017

Daniel J. Abdun-Nabi, President and Chief Executive Officer at Emergent BioSolutions Inc., joins BioTalk host Rich Bendis, to discuss his background, where Emergent is headed, the vaccines and BioHealth industries, and his views on BioHealth Capital Region.

This new podcast series features conversations with some of the most accomplished and exciting business, academic, and government leaders in the biohealth industry. Learn from these leaders about issues which can help you grow your business. What are the current trends? Where are industry sectors headed? How do we increase access to capital in our region? Rich and his guests dive deep into these topics and much more.

Listen now on iTunes, Google Play, and TuneIn.

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United Therapeutics is set to take a big step forward in its plans to pursue advances in the field of organ transplantation thanks to a new partnership with the University of Maryland. The company has announced a $24 million research partnership that will help the school establish a center specializing in cardiac xenotransplantation research, the first of its kind in the US.

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The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) announces the University of Maryland’s Discovery District as the host for the AURP annual International Conference, to be held in College Park, Md., October 22- 26, 2018.

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The University of Maryland dedicates the new A. James Clark Hall today, a 184,000-square-foot facility that will catalyze engineering innovation and bioengineering breakthroughs and serve as a hub for new partnerships and collaborations throughout the Baltimore-Washington region. A. James Clark Hall is the only space in the nation dedicated to bioengineering and the translation of health-related products that incorporates FDA-funded Centers of Excellence in both Regulatory Science and Pediatric Device Innovation.

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Johns Hopkins University has unveiled the 2017-2018 cohort of 10 mainly US-based startups to take part in its Social Innovation Lab incubator for non-profit businesses.

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The University of Maryland was honored for its contributions to the economic development of the community at the 2017 Innovation & Economic Prosperity (IEP) University Awards by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). As winner of the Economic Engagement Connections Award, IEP’s top prize, and the Place Award. UMD is the first two-time winner of the Connections Award, and the first institution to garner both a category award and the Connections Award in the same year. The award winners were announced at the the 2017 APLU Annual Meeting on Nov. 12, 2017.

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University of Maryland, Baltimore and Johns Hopkins University could safely be classified as “friendly competitors.” Operating in the same city, the two institutions “compete” for the funding and recognition as major research forces in the state. Both are affiliated with large medical systems, anchored by two of the highest-earning hospitals in the state.

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Tina Arreaza joins Bethesda Green as the Be Green Hub Managing Director. Bethesda Green’s mission is to accelerate the sustainable economy locally with a focus on innovation, impact and community. Be Green Hub is Bethesda Green’s sustainability-focused incubator program: https://bethesdagreen.net/be-green-hub

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It is hard for most us to imagine what life in the shadow of the Berlin Wall was like for citizens of Soviet-controlled East Berlin and NATO-aligned West Berlin. It divided not just a city, but families, communities, and, indeed, a whole nation. Although the wall completely encircled the democratic and free city of West Berlin, for the unlucky citizens of East Berlin it was a prison – complete with guard towers, anti-vehicle trenches and fakir beds lining its notorious “death strip.”

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M-1 Ventures Demo Day is an event for partners, investors, industry leaders and the press to learn about market-changing technologies and solutions from each of the graduating M-1 startups and get a preview of where each company is headed next.

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Wednesday November 15, 2017 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM

TEDCO IPO Conference Room 7021 Columbia Gateway Suite 200 Columbia, MD 21046

Does your Startup need Funding & Mentorship?

Launch your startup with the FounderTrac Startup Accelerator, a partnership between the MTC, LAUNCH! Annapolis, MCVC Partners and TEDCO.

You can raise capital, learn from a proven curriculum and receive hands-on mentoring from successful entrepreneurs and top executives to scale your company.

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Earlier this year the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) heralded the forthcoming launch of its pre-certification pilot program for new digital health software which it hopes will help revolutionise the regulation of digital healthcare solutions in the US and allow innovations to safely reach the global market in a timely way, to the benefit of end users.

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A wave of disappointing third-quarter results and clinical trial failures by the largest biotechs in late October 2017 signaled to some the start of another market swoon, akin to the one that dented share prices starting in late 2015 through 2016.

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Billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is to invest $50 million in the Dementia Discovery Fund, a venture capital fund that brings together industry and government to seek treatments for the brain-wasting disease.

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Partners HealthCare System has raised has raised $171 million for a second innovation fund targeting seed stage investments in life science startups, according to a news release. The Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital each committed $50 million for the fund.

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Every year, nearly 50,000 research proposals are submitted to the only federal agency in the United States that funds discovery research in all fields of science and engineering: the National Science Foundation (NSF). The agency uses merit review to pick proposals that show the greatest potential to fulfill NSF’s mission to promote the progress of science and serve the national interest.

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Recent developments in bioengineering promise the possibility of new diagnostic and treatment strategies, novel industrial processes, and innovative approaches to thorny problems in fields such as nutrition, agriculture, and biomanufacturing. As modern genetics has matured and developed technologies of increasing power, debates over risk assessments and proper applications of the technology, and over who should have decision-making power over such issues, have become more prominent. Recently, some scientists have advocated that ethicists “step out of the way,” whereas others have called for greater ethical scrutiny, or even for moratoria on some lines of research.

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The Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, today announced the TMC Venture Fund, a $25 million initiative designed to support technologies and early-stage companies to flourish in Houston’s health care ecosystem and further the TMC’s mission to advance health, education and research.

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William Osler, often called the father of modern medicine, famously advised his students: “Just listen to your patient; he is telling you the diagnosis.” A century later, clinicians and health system leaders started tuning out the patient’s voice, turning instead to electronic health records and the latest care protocols to manage their most complicated and high-need patients. We believe it’s time for an urgent and strategic reset. The factors that lead people to become our nation’s costliest are complex. But they call for, at the start, the simplest intervention: listening.

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Eli Lilly and Company is an innovation-driven biopharmaceutical company that aspires to make a significant contribution to humanity by improving global health in the 21st century. In this article, part of our Biopharma Frontiers series on how the pharmaceutical industry is evolving and how leaders can adapt, David A. Ricks, the chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly, discusses the opportunities and rewards for innovation and the implications for industry business models. This article is an edited summary of his conversation with McKinsey.

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