496th Edition, February 22, 2022

In a bid to keep and grow its flagship biohealth sector, Montgomery County is dramatically streamlining its regulatory review process for industry players who want to build or expand big lab facilities.

A new zoning text amendment, which the County Council unanimously approved Tuesday, will slash the lab entitlement process time from nearly two years to six months in an effort to “roll out the red carpet” for biotech industry leaders, said Councilman Andrew Friedson, D-District 1, who spearheaded the legislation.

Image: Montgomery County Councilman Andrew Friedson, D-District 1, speaks at a county event to unveil a new zoning process change. The Wednesday gathering was held outside of biotech United Therapeutics' Silver Spring campus. DAN BRENDEL

In this issue of Cell Host and Microbe, Haslwanter et al., 2022 present a comprehensive investigation into the molecular and functional basis of 17D vaccine responses and into differences between antibody neutralization of the 17D and related African lineage strains to contemporary Central/South American strains, including the emergent YFV ES-504 strain.

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WILMINGTON, Del.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Amalgam Rx, Inc., a leader in connecting healthcare providers, payers, and life sciences companies through a SaaS-enabled digital marketplace and product platform, and Privia Health Group, Inc., a national physician enablement company, announced a collaboration for multiple EHR-integrated services.

Leveraging Amalgam’s real-time, point-of-care decision support engine, the companies are working together to simplify and enhance the way providers practice value-based care, recruit for clinical trials, and ensure medication safety. Privia Health selected several offerings from Amalgam’s marketplace including:

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The University of Maryland named Dr. Dean Chang as its new interim chief innovation officer and associate vice president for innovation and economic development of the research division, according to an email Monday from the interim and incoming vice presidents for research.

Chang served as founding associate vice president for innovation and entrepreneurship for this university’s Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship over the last nine years. In the position, he worked with more than 41,000 students in all 12 of the university’s colleges and schools in innovation, the email said.

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported the development of 99 drugs from 1996-2020 — a total that includes 16 percent of all such treatments that made a “significant” advance over available medicines. This finding is just one of the impacts that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) attributes to the program in a new report.