326th Edition – October 23, 2018

TaiRx, Inc and BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) announced today the formation of TaiRx US, a new joint venture.  The mission of the new company is to develop therapeutics and precision medicine diagnostics focused on the Nodal protein, a critical mediator of aggressive cancer progression and treatment resistance.

TaiRx, Inc and BHI have formed TaiRx US, which will be based in Rockville (Montgomery County), Maryland, to develop and commercialize a unique monoclonal antibody with the potential to reverse drug resistance in various tumor types. The company is also working to develop a companion diagnostic to accurately identify those patients who can best benefit from the therapy.

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Top 3 by 2023

State of the BioHealth Capital Region’s EcoSystem

Rich Bendis

President & CEO, BioHealth Innovation Inc.

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Correction: This story originally published on 10/16 included a 2nd paragraph referencing a previous guest of BioTalk and not Monica Lopez, PhD.

La Petite Noiseuse Productions Co-Founder and Executive Scientific & Artistic Director Monica Lopez, Ph.D. joins BioTalk Host Rich Bendis to discuss her career path, their consulting services, science-art integration, multidisciplinary thinking and doing in healthcare, and STEM-STEAMM education for workplace challenges of the future.

Dr. Lopez is a multilingual cognitive scientist, educator, entrepreneur, multidisciplinary artist, public speaker, and writer. At her company, Dr. Lopez leads a unique R&D program within creativity and human intelligence with the goal of advancing artificial intelligence. The result has been a novel model that merges the cognitive brain sciences with the arts, and forms the basis of the company’s consulting services in different industries (healthcare, autonomous systems, education, entertainment, and cyber) with clients from Boston, New York, and San Francisco and Europe (France, Belgium, Austria, United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany). To prepare leaders for the challenges of tomorrow, Dr. Lopez has created since 2009, as faculty at Johns Hopkins University and Peabody Institute, a STEAMM education platform. Prior to co-founding her company, she worked in business development, product evaluation, marketing, communications, and strategic partnering in various languages. Dr. Lopez is a frequent keynote and plenary speaker and panelist at international and national venues. She holds BA degrees in Psychology and French, and a MA and PhD in Cognitive Science, all from Johns Hopkins University, a Certificate of Art in Photography from Maryland Institute College of Art, and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Lopez has been recognized as a “particularly imaginative polymath” by the Imagination Institute of the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center. She has been a Salzburg Global Seminar Fellow and distinguished guest with their Board of Directors.

Listen now on iTunes , Google Play , and TuneIn. 

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Are you a start-up in Maryland, DC or Virginia seeking feedback on your biohealth business idea, pitch deck, or commercialization plan? business/commercialization plan, pitch deck, or idea?

Schedule your feedback session with BHI EIRs on one of the following dates: 

• 10/31
• 12/5
• 2/13
• 3/20
• 5/22

(30 minute blocks of time beginning at 9:00 in the morning. If the morning slots are filled, more time will be allotted beginning at 1 p.m.)

Pre-registration is required; sign up here (“EIR resource”at BHI). For questions/more information, contact BHI.

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The Food and Drug Administration approved or tentatively approved a record-setting 971 generic drugs in fiscal year 2018 that ended last month, the agency announced on Thursday.

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Viela Bio heads to the 2018 American College of Rheumatology / Association of Rheumatology for Health Professionals (ACR/ARHP) Annual Meeting in Chicago, 19-24 October 2018, with a late-breaking poster presentation for a novel engineered CD40L antagonist, VIB4920.

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VLP Therapeutics announced the issuance of US Patent 10,098,943 titled, “Flavivirus virus-like particle” on October 16, 2018. This patent supports VLP Therapeutics’ Native Virus Modification virus-like particle platform on which the Company’s dengue vaccine is based and which could form the basis for other flavivirus vaccines. The patent relates to a virus-like particle vaccine comprising flavivirus structural proteins to prevent or treat flavivirus infection. Flavivirus includes dengue virus, West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis, hepatitis C virus, and Zika virus.

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Rexahn Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE American: RNN) today announced it has entered into definitive agreements with institutional investors to purchase approximately 5.77 million shares of its common stock and warrants exercisable for up to approximately 5.77 million shares of its common stock for gross proceeds of approximately $7.5 million. The shares and warrants are being sold in units, each consisting of one share of common stock and a warrant to purchase one share of common stock, at an offering price of $1.30 per unit. The warrants will be exercisable six months following the date of issuance, will expire on the fifth anniversary of the initial exercise date and will have an exercise price of $1.67 per share. The closing of the offering is expected to take place on or about October 19, 2018, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

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American Gene Technologies (AGT), a leading gene and cell therapy company in the discovery and development of lentiviral vector based therapeutics, announces that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received orphan-drug designation #DRU-2018-6572 for the treatment of phenylketonuria (PKU) using its proprietary, lentiviral vector based technology. PKU is a debilitating inherited disease affecting 1 in 13,500 children born in the U.S. Mandatory screening identifies affected children who can be supported with a strict synthetic diet that does not cure disease. If successful, AGT’s lentiviral vector approach will provide a permanent cure, improving quality of life for more than 16,000 people living with PKU in the U.S. alone.

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PathoVax, a Johns Hopkins–born startup developing a vaccine for human papillomavirus virus (HPV), raised $2.75 million in new funding, cofounder Joshua Wang said.

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Based in Rockville, MD

Management Recruiters – Mid Hudson Valley is an executive search firm focused solely in serving the nonprofit sector. We have a national practice and the large majority of our placements are executive leadership and senior fundraising professionals.

Our client is Montgomery College, a community college of more than 60,000 students in Montgomery County, MD. The College is seeking a Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations who also serves as the Executive Director of the Montgomery College Foundation. The position is a College employee.

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Children benefit from little of the $156 billion annual U.S. market for medical devices, but a “Shark Tank”-inspired partnership between the University of Maryland and Children’s National Health System is looking to change that.

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United Therapeutics will license, develop, and commercialize CollPlant Holdings’ recombinant human collagen (rhCollagen) and BioInk technology for 3D bioprinting of solid-organ scaffolds for human transplants, the companies said today, through a collaboration that could generate more than $44 million.

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Investors sentiment decreased to 1.37 in 2018 Q2. Its down 0.26, from 1.63 in 2018Q1. It dived, as 22 investors sold GlycoMimetics, Inc. shares while 16 reduced holdings. 25 funds opened positions while 27 raised stakes. 45.91 million shares or 6.89% more from 42.95 million shares in 2018Q1 were reported.

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Jean Cui led the invention of Pfizer’s Xalkori. Now she has her own company focusing on drug-resistant cancers, and it has raised $147 million.

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is doing everything from sharing more data to cultivating entrepreneurial talent and engaging in partnerships in order to support medical device innovators, the department’s CTO Ed Simcox told than 100 industry insiders in the Twin Cities today.

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Pharma hasn’t traditionally been known as a sector that welcomed innovation from the outside. But now companies are putting “not invented here” bias aside as they seek to widen their aperture for innovation.

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The Cybersecurity Association of Maryland, Inc. (CAMI) and Universities at Shady Grove invite you to attend their November 9 & 10 Maryland Cybersecurity Career & Education Fair.

Maryland is at the forefront of our nation’s rapidly growing cyber market and opportunities abound for professionals in our region—both those who are new to the field, and long-time members of the industry. Join us at the Universities at Shady Grove for two dynamic days that put on display why Maryland is where cyber works. Friday will feature a career and education fair, connecting cybersecurity job seekers with opportunities across the state of Maryland. Those looking to expand their cybersecurity competency can also connect on-site with Maryland education and training resource. On Saturday, cyber warriors of high school through undergraduate skill levels are invited to compete in our “Catch the Phish: An AI Capture the Flag Event” cyber challenge.

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Meet the physicians, scientists, and business and political leaders whose work is transforming health care right now

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Are you an experienced biohealth industry executive seeking full time or part time employment as a consultant or start-up C suite executive? BioHealth Innovation is establishing a database of experienced industry executives who may be able to share their expertise with early stage/growing companies.  To be considered by companies or technology transfer organizations seeking leaders for their spin-out companies and/or advisors to support their business growth, please send your Vita to BHI@BioHealthInnovation.org.  Please include the following in your email.

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