Wondering what the future of health IT in Marylands holds? Judging by the startups that presented their successes during Maryland’s first health IT accelerator demo day we are only now beginning to scratch the surface of the exciting new technologies that will be making their appearance over the next few years. BHI is proud to have been a founding sponsor of this initiative. With the added support of major players from Maryland’s biohealth community, DreamIt Health Baltimore has proven to be a success – one that shows that for Maryland to truly become the next big biohealth hub, all key players need to work together in making that a reality.
DreamIt Ventures, the Johns Hopkins University and John Hopkins Medicine, Northrop Grumman Corporation, BioHealth Innovation and Kaiser Permanente, are hosting Demo Day for the cohort of healthtech startups that spent the last 16 weeks in the DreamIt Health Baltimore accelerator program. The event will be held tomorrow, April 30, 2014 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Sheikh Zayed Auditorium (2119A) at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 1800 Orleans St., Baltimore, MD. The presenting companies will have the opportunity to briefly share their progress and future plans before an audience of several hundred investors, industry leaders, potential customers, members of the press and other colleagues. A webcast of the event will be broadcast through the Johns Hopkins UStream channel here.
“Demo Day is our capstone event, literally giving our portfolio companies a platform from which to share their stories, accomplishments to date and their roadmap for the future before a select audience of potential investors, partners and customers,” said Elliot Menschik, Managing Partner of DreamIt Health.
A better material for the 3D printing of vascular implants, a new technology that makes cloud storage more secure and efficient, and a low-cost, high-energy solid state lithium-ion battery are the University of Maryland 2013 Invention of the Year winners.
The winning inventions were announced at the university’s Celebration of Innovation and Partnerships event on April 29, 2014. Also announced was the recipient of the Corporate Connector of the Year Award, Michael Pecht, director and founder of the UMD Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering. This award recognizes a University of Maryland researcher, staff or unit that has achieved significant engagement with the private sector in corporate research, philanthropy, or student support.
The NIH Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hub (REACH) program will support proof-of-concept centers (Hubs) that facilitate and accelerate the translation of biomedical innovations into commercial products that improve patient care and enhance health. The REACH Hubs will provide qualified institutions with the initial investment and resources to nurture innovators to develop high priority early-stage technologies within the NIH’s mission by providing: (1) infrastructure for identifying the most promising technologies, (2) funding for product definition studies (e.g. feasibility studies, prototype development, or proof-of-concept studies), (3) coordinated access to expertise in areas required for early stage technology development (including scientific, regulatory, reimbursement, business, legal, and project management), and (4) skills development and hands-on experience in entrepreneurism. Establishing public-private partnerships and providing additional non-federal funds will be critical for success.
PathSensors, Inc. is a growing biotechnology company headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. The company is developing products for the rapidly evolving field of pathogen detection. We are currently seeking qualified candidates for the position of Director of Biosensor Development. The successful candidate will be responsible for design, development and continuous improvement of our portfolio of biosensor products.
MedImmune, the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, and the University System of Maryland announced today that the initial research collaboration between MedImmune and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) has been expanded to include the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The collaborators have also announced that they have identified the first five research projects to be undertaken under the expanded agreement. This follows the September 2013 announcement in which MedImmune and UMB announced a five-year, $6 million collaboration to drive novel bioscience research in the state of Maryland
Pfizer Inc. increased its offer for AstraZeneca to $106 billion — but the sweetened bid was immediately rejected.
London-based AstraZeneca, which has its U.S. headquarters in Wilmington, Del., and whose MedImmune unit has operations in Hayward, said in a statement “the financial and other terms described in the proposal are inadequate, substantially undervalue AstraZeneca and are not a basis on which to engage with Pfizer. The large proportion of the consideration payable in Pfizer shares and the tax-driven inversion structure remain unchanged. accordingly, the board has rejected the proposal.”
Small Business Innovation Research Funds / Small Business Technology Transfer Research Funds (SBIR/STTR) are the number one technology venture funding for American inventors, start up enterprises, and early stage small businesses. Phase One grants can provide up to $100,000 on average and Phase Two grants can provide up to $750,000 on average depending on the awarding agency. Montgomery County’s Business Innovation Network is pleased to announce the kick off of a new SBIR center in Germantown, MD to help Maryland businesses apply for, win, and manage these types of grants.
Please join us on May 13 for an event featuring an overview of SBIR/STTR. We’ll have panelists explain the what, why, and how of the application process. (Economic development professionals, please also attend the afternoon training session. You can register for that event here.)
The MOVE Program is a recently-announced initiative from the Montgomery County Department of Economic Development created to get you to take a serious look at Montgomery County, Maryland and the variety of great commercial office space available to YOUR business right NOW!
We are offering a $4/SF rent subsidy to life sciences, IT, cybersecurity and green technology businesses currently NOT in Montgomery County. The program provides the rent subsidy for year one of the lease when qualified companies sign their FIRST County lease of at least three years for office space between 2,000 and 10,000 rentable square feet. With a one page application, cash up front to the tenant and assistance with any required permits, it’s a truly unique program to benefit YOU.
MdBio Foundation, Inc. and Montgomery College Germantown are currently accepting applications for FUNdamentals of Biotechnology (formerly the Young Science Explorer’s Program), a week long science camp for students entering the 7th and the 8th grades.
Over the course of one week students will explore the world of science and experience biotechnology first hand. Campers will visit local Maryland STEM companies and use the latest laboratory techniques and equipment to learn about a wide variety of science based careers.
Each program will run Monday through Friday from 9 AM – 3 PM. The sessions will be held the weeks of July 14th and July 21st at the Montgomery College Germantown Campus. The camper fee is $400 with limited scholarships available. Registration and additional details may be found on Montgomery College’s website.
The future of health technology is in the palm of your hand. Mobile communication, wearable devices, data sharing, analytics and even gaming concepts will soon seamlessly meld with medical treatment.
DreamIt Health Baltimore explored these possibilities in a four-month accelerator program that fostered nine early-stage companies. Company representatives demonstrated their products, presented plans for growth and pitched to investors during the program’s culminating Demo Day on Wednesday.
What started as a Johns Hopkins Hospital program to train healthcare workers to treat HIV in Uganda has evolved into a multimedia platform for adherence, clinical trials and chronic diseases rolled into a healthcare startup, Emocha, In a presentation at DreamIt Health Baltimore’s demo day, CEO Sebastian Seiguer talked about the company’s origins at Johns Hopkins University Hospital and its relevance for both developing and industrialized countries.
Circulomics Inc has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop its new Nanobind DNA/RNA extraction technology.
Nanobind is an inexpensive thermoplastic nanomaterial developed for high integrity DNA and RNA extraction. Its hierarchical structure of microscale folds topped by nanoscale wrinkles creates a high binding area silica surface capable of capturing large amounts of high molecular weight (MW) DNA and RNA.
With the decline of great industrial laboratories, such as Bell Labs—home of such major technological advances as the transistor and research that won seven Nobel Prizes, all in physics—many universities are putting increased focus on technological innovation, translational research, and commercialization. Work leading to successful innovations, however, “does not necessarily result in outcomes that are traditionally counted [by universities] in career advancement, such as publication,” write Paul Sanberg, senior vice president for research and innovation at the University of South Florida in Tampa, and his co-authors in an article published 28 April in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, it “often requires faculty members with a different working mindset and modus operandi than those conducting purely basic research.”
A team of physicists, psychologists and developers have produced a mobile health platform to make virtual reality and augmented reality more accessible as a self-help tool for treating phobias. Phobius, part of DreamIt Health Baltimore’s inaugural class, has developed a smartphone-enabled tool and is planning a September launch for its consumer product, which includes goggles and an iPhone or Android app.
Phobius comes to Baltimore by way of Barcelona. In addition to the consumer-facing tool, a clinician-facing track is under development. The consumer-facing platform will concentrate on phobias from insects and public speaking to needles. The company plans to market it without any guarantees of its effectiveness in curing these phobias. But it also plans to seek FDA clearance and a CE Mark from European regulators to use the device for treating post traumatic stress disorder and anxiety disorders.
The angel investor market in 2013 continued the upward trend started in 2010 in investment dollars and in the number of investments. Total investments in 2013 were $24.8 billion, an increase of 8.3% over 2012, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. A total of 70,730 entrepreneurial ventures received angel funding in 2013, an increase of 5.5% over 2012 investments. The number of active investors in 2013 was 298,800 individuals, an increase of 11.4% from 2012. The increase in both total dollars and the number of investments resulted in a deal size for 2013 that was slightly higher than in 2012 (an increase in deal size of 2.6% from 2012). These data indicate that angels were active investors in 2013 but those that did invest decreased their individual investments from $85,435 in 2012 to $83,050 in 2013, a decrease of 2.8%. The $24.8 billion in total investments is close to the market high of $26.0 billion that occurred in 2007.
When I recently sat down with Andrew Skibo, regional VP of supply biologics, global engineering, and real estate at AstraZeneca (AZ), I was the guy with no experience. Sure, I have 20+ years of pharmaceutical industry experience, but after a few minutes of conversation, I learned that this exchange could only be described as one between a veteran and a rookie — and I was the latter.
Skibo has an impressive list of industry accomplishments, including overseeing large-scale capital projects that garnered two International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) facility of the year awards (FOYA) and two Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) Gold awards. But what you can’t conclude from someone’s CV is the skill with which they are able to communicate their wisdom. For instance, I found Skibo to be a patient and skilled communicator, putting me at ease by stating, “If I answer any of these questions in too much detail, stop and fine-tune me as to the level you need.” What follows are his insights on applying a risk-based approach to modeling and planning for biologics manufacturing capacity. Of course, he knows a thing or two about this topic, considering nearly half of AstraZeneca’s 2014 development pipeline falls into the large molecule (biologic) category.
A day before a U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in which heads of the nation’s major research agencies will jointly testify on the need for federal research investments to drive innovation and economic growth, a group of 50 leading business, higher education, scientific, and patient organizations urged members of that panel to make strong, sustained investments in research in order to close what they call an “innovation deficit.”
In written testimony submitted to the Senate committee, the coalition—which includes Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels and Ralph Semmel, director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory—described the links between basic research and economic growth, improved medical treatments, and national security. They noted that lagging U.S. investment in research and higher education combined with the significant increase in such investment by other nations has created an innovation deficit, threatening the nation’s international competitiveness.
Poke around and you will find plenty of scary statistics about new businesses—so many that starting a company at all can seem like sheer lunacy.
While research varies widely, we’ve seen reports that as many as 90 percent of tech startups “fail,” and that anywhere from 25 to 75 percent of venture-backed firms do not return capital to their investors. Just last week, Fab.com chief executive officer Jason Goldberg wrote a blog post about the difficulties of turning around his once fast-growing e-commerce startup, which had to cut half its staff as it pivoted away from flash sales toward a broader e-commerce approach.
University of Maryland, Baltimore County is moving forward with a new $123 million science building.
UMBC will begin designing the Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building with $4.1 million from Maryland’s fiscal 2015 budget. The entire construction project is estimated at $123 million, which the state is expected to pay. Construction of the 123,000-square-foot building is scheduled to begin in March 2017 and the project should be completed by March 2019.
Smartphones and tablet computers are a new way to deliver diabetes therapy. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) calls this new type of therapy MPT: “mobile prescription therapy.” MPT products tell you what to do to take care of your disease. The advice shows up on your smartphone or other device.
You need a prescription for MPT products, which are regulated by the FDA. MPT products must show in clinical trials that they are safe and help people improve their health. MPT products must keep your health information private. These products are not like the simple health apps you can get for your phone or tablet. They can provide medical advice that regular apps aren’t allowed to provide.
Mene Pangalos is the man tasked with nothing less than firing up the discovery engine of Britain’s second-biggest drug maker after its catastrophic fall off the “patent cliff”.
He joined AstraZeneca as head of innovative medicines in 2010, as the company was bracing for patents to expire on a string of its best-selling drugs.
The Cyber Incubator@bwtech of Baltimore, Md., has been named a finalist for the National Business Incubation Association’s 2014 Dinah Adkins Incubator of the Year award in the technology focus category. The winner of the prestigious award will be announced May 20 at NBIA’s 28th International Conference on Business Incubation in New Orleans.
The Cyber Incubator is located at bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park, adjacent to and affiliated with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). The Cyber Incubator’s mission is to provide a unique, innovative approach to business incubation for early-stage cyber security and IT-focused businesses, including women-owned, minority-owned, and small disadvantaged businesses, and to foster economic development for the state of Maryland. When built in 2011, 5 companies occupied the incubator’s 10,000 square foot Class-A office space. Today the incubator houses over 30 companies and consists of an additional 3,000 square foot co-working space called the CyberHive.
Thousands of school-age children who visited the Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Biotechnology Education booth at the USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo got to try their hands at extracting DNA from strawberries, treating yellow fever and comparing DNA sequences to determine which animals are related to one another.
The Center for Biotechnology Education participated in the third biennial USA Science and Engineering Festival Expo, held this year in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. The three-day event, considered the largest science festival in the country, featured more than 3,000 hands-on activities presented by hundreds of universities and public and private organizations.
Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N) is considering selling a big portfolio of mature drugs that could fetch more than $15 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, as the U.S. drugmaker continues to streamline businesses to focus on high-growth areas.
Merck, which is also in the process of selling its $14 billion consumer healthcare unit, is working with an investment bank on the potential sale of the off-patent drugs, which could draw interest from generic drugmakers, the people said.
In the face of rising drug research and development costs and continued pressures against increasing prices for medicines and health care services, the biopharmaceutical industry must find ways to increase innovation and efficiencies. The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) today announced that leaders from industry and academia will come together at the Janssen Research & Development West Coast Research Center in San Diego on June 23, 2014, for AURP’s BioParks 2014 Meeting . Participants will address recent shifts in pharmaceutical R&D models and the role bioparks play in this evolution.
“Research parks play a vital role in fostering collaboration between universities and the private sector. While this is important across all research-based industries, the need for such collaboration is absolutely critical in the biopharmaceutical space,” said Kevin T. Byrne, MBA, AURP President, and President, The University Financing Foundation.
MedStar Health will become the final founding partner of the 1776 tech incubator in Washington, with clinicians and administrators with the Columbia-based health system having a “significant presence” in the incubator to work alongside startups working in the health care arena.
MedStar also plans to offer educational workshops about the evolving health care delivery landscape for entrepreneurs, officials said.
Last year investments in big data dominated health IT deals as 112 deals attracted $712 million in investments, according to a new report by StartUp Health assessing digital health investment trends in 2013 and the start of this year. But in a trend that’s likely to continue this year, sectors that saw the most growth tended to fall into one of two areas. Patient engagement had a 410 percent boost in deal flow, followed by sensors and vital-sign monitoring which showed a 243 percent rise.
Although the number of deals in the first quarter has declined to 133 compared with the same period in 2013, deal size has more than doubled to $1.35 billion compared with $599 million last year.
The following funding opportunity announcements from the NHLBI or other components of the National Institutes of Health, might be of interest: NIH Guide Notices:
BioHealth Innovation (BHI) is a regionally-oriented, private-public partnership functioning as an innovation intermediary focused on commercializing market-relevant biohealth innovations and increasing access to early-stage funding in Maryland.
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Thursday, May 08, 2014, 09:00am – 05:00pm
PathSensors, Inc. is a growing biotechnology company headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland. The company is developing products for the rapidly evolving field of pathogen detection. We are currently seeking qualified candidates for the position of Director of Biosensor Development. The successful candidate will be responsible for design, development and continuous improvement of our portfolio of biosensor products.
