227th Edition – November 8, 2016

Eric Hoffman, PhD, writes a lot of grants, proposals and papers. A lot. As Professor and Associate Dean of Research at Binghamton University following stints at George Washington University, Harvard Medical School, and University of Pittsburgh, Dr Hoffman is used to writing a lot.

He also writes grants and proposals for his other job as CEO of Reveragen BioPharma – a small biotech company that has slowly developed a drug to treat boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

The cofounders of healthcare cybersecurity startup Protenus are providing insight to a think tank that focuses on protecting critical infrastructure from attacks.

Robert Lord and Nick Culbertson, who launched the company through Dreamit Health Baltimore after meeting in medical school at Johns Hopkins, were named fellows with the D.C.-based Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology.

Come to the “Before Party” of the Biopark’s monthly Science in the City Happy Hour! Join us for a tour then you are welcome to join us at SitC Happy Hour. Alternatively, if you are visiting us from outside of Baltimore, come during low traffic hours in the middle of the day and have lunch on us.

This Open House is designed for biotech professionals that are considering backup storage where a power outage or equipment failure could prove devastating to your initiatives. We are a boutique biorepository that work with some of the biggest names in Biotech to protect their biomaterials from equipment failure hazards.

New study finds that modification of the gut microbiome with a high concentration probiotic may reduce neurological inflammation found in many HIV-positive patients on antiretroviral treatment (ART)

MasterPeace Solutions Ltd., a cybersecurity contractor in Columbia, opened a new accelerator Thursday to support and grow startups founded internally by company employees.

The most interesting aspect of Foundation Medicine (NASDAQ:FMI) is that, last year, cancer giant Roche (OTCQX:RHHBY) paid $50 per share to buy a 56% stake in the company. Bill Gates and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Ventures are also owners in this genomic testing company. However, right now, the stock is trading at $22.50, about half that Roche number.

Were all these smart people wrong? Did the M&A decision makers at Roche and the analysts working for Bill Gates and Google Ventures not do their homework? Or are we missing something here?

CSSi LifeSciences™, a trusted partner from discovery to commercialization for drugs and medical devices, is excited to announce the establishment and launch of its fully integrated Medical Device CRO. CSSi LifeSciences™ Medical Device CRO aims to positively impact the timeline of regulatory clearance and increase profitability for medical device companies, in order to successfully launch its innovative research discoveries and product concepts into the market.

Inova Health System and the University of Virginia plan to announce a $112 million partnership Wednesday that will bring a regional campus of UVa’s School of Medicine to Northern Virginia.

Back in February, Inova Health System announced it would create a $100 million venture fund. It offered few details at the time.

But as Inova officials celebrated another milestone Wednesday with an new University of Virginia partnership on multiple medical, research and business fronts, CEO Knox Singleton finally offered some details on Inova’s investment plans.

TEDCO is happy to announce its new Seed Investment Fund. After careful consideration of feedback received from our recent market stakeholder survey, we’ve decided to transform our Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF), Cyber Security Investment Fund (CIF) and Life Science Invest,ment Fund (LSIF) into a single Seed Investment Fund.

The new program will make it easier than ever for startup technology companies to seek Seed Funding from TEDCO.

GE Healthcare and Johns Hopkins Hospital partnered to construct a NASA-style command center to better manage patient safety, experience and volume. The Judy Reitz Capacity Command Center leverages systems engineering principles that are commonly used in the aerospace, aviation and power industries.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Roche’s PD-L1 assay as a diagnostic to identify PD-L1 expression levels in patients considering treatment with Tecentriq (atezolizumab) for previously treated metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

The Maryland Department of Commerce has an opportunity for you to soft land in the Hague Security Delta (HSD) — the largest security cluster of Europe — providing you with access to the full EU market.

Fri, December 9, 2016 – 8:30 AM – 1:00 PM EST

Montgomery Community Media in partnership with the Maryland/DC District Export Council, the US Commercial Service, the Maryland Department of Commerce, and the Small Business Administration present a three-hour program on the challenges and opportunities facing companies going global. The program will feature 3 panels covering key aspects of international trade, including trade finance and local resources that facilitate trade. Speakers include government executives as well as CEOs who have successfully taken their companies international.

Will big data cure cancer?

While there’s a lot of breathless talk about the potential of big data to do just that, Greg Simon, the Executive Director of the White House’s Cancer Moonshot Taskforce, is a skeptic–at least for now.

Israeli equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has launched a new fund specifically focused on the digital health field, called OurCrowd Qure. They will work with Johns Hopkins University to provide validation of value, market access, and on-going feedback on the startups.

“I think that crowdfunding for digital health makes a huge amount of sense,” John Medved, CEO of OurCrowd, told MobiHealthNews. “We’re not just raising money in a different way. We’re helping to build the company in a different way. A crowdfunding platform is uniquely positioned to help digital health leaders.”

Wednesday, December 14, 7 – 11 amFalls Church Marriott Fairview Park

Super Early Bird expires November 3rd for our CONNECTpreneur Winter Forum, headlined by Revolution Chairman & CEO, STEVE CASE, former AOL Time Warner Chair and New York Times bestselling author of The Third Wave.

The Big Idea CONNECTpreneur FORUM has been called “The Best Networking Event in DC.” DCInno calls CONNECTpreneur a “NETWORKING JACKPOT” of the DC Region’s TOP Entrepreneurs, Business Leaders, CXOs, Angels, and VCs.

Join us for an evening of food, drink, and revelry as we celebrate moving into our new prototyping and manufacturing facility! Tour the new offices and check out the workshop. See what all the buzz is about.

We’ll also have some entertainment for your inner geek. Get an introduction to some of the tools or test your robot driving skills with the “House Bots” from the Baltimore Robotics Center.

Bringing entrepreneurs from all around together at one place! This is the premier event in Maryland showcasing all the resources to help entrepreneurs to learn, connect and be inspired.

NIH is committed to improving the participation of all people in our small business research SBIR & STTR programs. One of the goals of the SBIR and STTR programs is to encourage participation in innovation and entrepreneurship by socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses (SDB) and women-owned small businesses (WOSB), groups who historically have been underrepresented in both the SBIR/STTR applicant and awardee pools, and have slightly lower success rates than applicants across the board.

A new algorithm developed by a Johns Hopkins computer scientist could revolutionize the way scientists look at genes.

A team of 17 scientists led by Michael Schatz told the JHU Hub that the open-source software creates a clearer picture of an organism’s DNA. The results were published in the journal Nature Methods.

Last week at the Cleveland Clinic’s annual Medical Innovations Summit, Daniel Kraft, chair of medicine and neuroscience at Singularity University, and an oncologist, painted a dazzling picture of a healthcare future where digital tools empower everyone and can solve several of healthcare’s bigger problems.

But he also posed a question whose answer will be borne out over the next few years: The tech and data tsunami is coming, but do we have the right platforms in place to catch the wave?

There are a lot of scientific papers out there. One estimate puts the count at 1.8 million articles published each year, in about 28,000 journals. Who actually reads those papers? According to one 2007 study, not many people: half of academic papers are read only by their authors and journal editors, the study’s authors write.

But not all academics accept that they have an audience of three. There’s a heated dispute around academic readership and citation—enough that there have been studies about reading studies going back for more than two decades.

Stephen Quake’s laboratory at Stanford University looks like biology’s version of Thomas Edison’s famous New Jersey workshop. Roll-down curtains cast shadows across odd devices buzzing and clicking in the aisles. You half expect to find Quake, author of 135 patents and rarely seen wearing anything other than a faded polo shirt, sleeping on one of the benches, just as the Wizard of Menlo Park was known to.