374st Edition – October 8, 2019

Gaithersburg’s Viela Bio Inc. began publicly trading Thursday on the Nasdaq.

The clinical-stage biotech is offering 7.9 million shares of common stock priced at $19 per share, positioning the company to raise roughly $150 million. Viela (NASDAQ: VIE) is also giving underwriters the option to buy up to an additional 1.19 million shares at the initial public offering price for 30 days.

Image: Viela Bio CEO Bing Yao and colleagues rang the opening Nasdaq bell Thursday. LIBBY GREENE

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GAITHERSBURG, Md., Oct. 03, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Arcellx, a privately-held biopharmaceutical company, today announced that it has raised $85 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing. Proceeds will be used to advance the Company’s ARC-T + sparX programs, including clinical development of a bivalent BCMA-targeted cell therapy in multiple myeloma, and a CD123-targeted therapy in acute myeloid leukemia. The Series B will also fund earlier stage ARC-T + sparX programs for patients with solid tumors and diseases outside oncology.

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The ribbon was cut today at GSK’s recently expanded manufacturing facility in Rockville, marking the completion of a $139M project that was first announced in May 2017 to support growing demand for BENLYSTA® (belimumab), a treatment for adult patients with Lupus.

Image: https://biobuzz-io.cdn.ampproject.org

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Gregg L. Semenza, whose discoveries on how cells respond to low oxygen levels have the potential to result in treatments for a variety of illnesses, today was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

The academy recognized Semenza, the C. Michael Armstrong Professor of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for his groundbreaking discovery of hypoxia-inducible factor 1, or HIF-1, the protein that switches genes on and off in cells in response to low oxygen levels.

Image: https://hub.jhu.edu

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GAITHERSBURG, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Adaptive Phage Therapeutics (APT), a clinical-stage biotechnology company founded to provide an effective therapeutic response to the global rise of multi-drug resistant (MDR) pathogenic bacteria, today announced that it has closed an oversubscribed, non-brokered financing, raising approximately $7 million in proceeds. Investors include Alexandria Venture Investments as well as a large integrated healthcare delivery network currently exploring the option to implement PhageBank™ therapy within its network of more than 17 hospitals and a NYSE-listed specialty life sciences company. Proceeds will be deployed to support multi-center phase 2 clinical studies for its PhageBank® therapy for antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.

Image: https://biobuzz.io

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New Enterprise Associates Partner, Sara Nayeem, M.D., Joins Host Rich Bendis to Discuss Her Career, Venture Capital, and BioPharma

Sara Nayeem, M.D., is a Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA). Sara joined NEA’s healthcare team in 2009 and focuses on investments in biopharmaceutical companies. She serves on the boards of Centrexion, Complexa, Cydan, Imara, and Tiburio. She previously served on the boards of Vtesse (acquired by Sucampo), Mersana (MRSN) and Therachon and as a board observer for Loxo Oncology (LOXO, acquired by Lilly), Tesaro (TSRO, acquired by GlaxoSmithKline), Clementia (CMTA, acquired by Ipsen), Nightstar (NITE, acquired by Biogen), Ziarco (acquired by Novartis), Omthera (OMTH, acquired by AstraZeneca), Epizyme (EPZM), Millendo (MLND) and Zyngenia. She has also been involved in other NEA investments such as Prosensa (RNA, acquired by BioMarin), Metacrine, and 3-V Biosciences. She also serves on the board of BioHealth Innovation Management. Prior to joining NEA, Sara was an Associate with Merrill Lynch’s Global Healthcare Group, where she advised biotechnology, pharmaceutical and medical device companies on numerous mergers, acquisitions and financing transactions. Previously, she worked as an Investment Banking Analyst at Morgan Stanley. She has conducted basic science research in mammalian cardiac development and clinical research in age-related macular degeneration. Sara concurrently earned her MD (cum laude) and MBA from Yale University, where she was a Yale MBA Scholar. She received her AB (magna cum laude) in Biology from Harvard University.

Listen now on iTunes (https://apple.co/2o1V6Il), Google Podcasts (http://bit.ly/2oGqQ6h), and TuneIn (http://bit.ly/2ndZGmO).

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The second annual BHCR Investment Conference, which is an invitation-only event, will be held at AstraZeneca in Gaithersburg on October 15 and 16, 2019.

BioHealth Innovation (BHI), J.P. Morgan, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR), Deloitte, AstraZeneca and The Maryland Department of Commerce have worked closely to ensure the 2019 investment conference builds on the success of last year’s event.

Image: https://biobuzz.io

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and GAITHERSBURG, Md., Oct. 07, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Editas Medicine, Inc. (Nasdaq: EDIT), a leading genome editing company, and MaxCyte, Inc., the global cell-based therapies and life sciences company, today announced a new clinical and commercial license agreement. Editas Medicine will use MaxCyte’s Flow Electroporation® technology and ExPERT™ instruments for the advancement of engineered cell medicines, including EDIT-301, an experimental CRISPR medicine designed to durably treat sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia.

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Leiden, Utrecht October 2019 MIMETAS and Hubrecht Organoid Technology (HUB) announce that they entered into a strategic collaboration to market organoid models on a Chip. The agreement includes a license to MIMETAS to market HUB Organoids in an assay ready format, as well as a collaborative effort to develop disease-specific models.

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Happening now at the #BioInnovationConference, Henry Ahn of National Science Foundation (NSF), Joseph Naft of #MIPS, Judy Costello of BioHealth Innovation, Inc. , Paul Silber of Blu Ventures #Investors, & Jeff Galvin of American Gene Technologies International Inc. discuss “Alternative Funding Options for Launching Your Company.”

AGT will do our best to share resources mentioned during this talk after the conference for startups and early-stage companies.

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The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) awarded Emergent BioSolutions a $6.3 million research grant for further development of the company’s treatment for opioid addiction.

Specifically, the funding is for the continued development of AP007, Emergent’s sustained-release nalmefene formulation for the treatment of addiction in opioid use disorder (OUD). AP007 is designed to continually release an effective dose of nalmefene for up to three months and to be administered through intramuscular injection.

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Attracting talent is one of the most commonly cited challenges voiced by company executives in the Biohealth Capital Region (BHCR). Rapid growth, particularly in the cell and gene therapy industry and advanced biomanufacturing, is applying strong pressure on companies that are up against a finite market with a skills gap, talent shortages and other regional recruiting challenges.

Image: https://biobuzz.io

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The Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) for Technology Transfer Mid-Atlantic Region is pleased to announce the following winners of its 2019 awards:

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We are pleased to announce that Dr. Monica Lopez will receive from the President of Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association the prestigious Outstanding Recent Graduate Award for bringing credit to Johns Hopkins University through outstanding professional achievements, leadership, and vision.

Image: http://www.lpnproductions.com

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Johns Hopkins University will host the DevLab XR Accelerator 2019 from Oct. 16 to Dec. 5 in an effort to support augmented reality projects created by those in underserved communities.

This year, virtual reality (VR) network Kaleidoscope, which organized the event, is partnering with Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund at JHU and immersive media company RYOT in order to expand the outreach of the program.

Image: VR at MICA Game Lab’s Fall Arcade. (Photo by Stephen Babcock) – https://technical.ly

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The National Institutes of Health has awarded $20 million to fund five additional hubs designed to speed up the translation of biomedical discoveries into commercially viable diagnostics, devices, therapeutics, and tools to improve patient care and enhance health. The newly selected Research Evaluation and Commercialization Hubs (REACH) expand a national network of proof-of-concept centers that links 34 academic institutions developing best practices to translate biomedical innovations into public benefit.

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Research and startups are each important ingredients as the University of Maryland, Baltimore works to build a biotech community. In the case of recent news from KaloCyte, a mix involving both came with one move. As announced last week, the team that is commercializing a synthetic blood product relocated from St. Louis to downtown Baltimore, with the company taking up residence at UMB and joining the University of Maryland BioPark as an affiliate.

Image: The University of Maryland BioPark. (Courtesy photo)

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The prize was awarded to William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their work in discovering how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was jointly awarded to three scientists — William G. Kaelin Jr., Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza — for their work on how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability.

Image: Gina Kolata and Megan Specia – https://www.nytimes.com

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Partnerships with consumer-tech firms could help medtech companies innovate and stay relevant as healthcare turns increasingly to prevention and wellness, according to a new report from Deloitte.

Executives at medtech companies may be leery of Apple and other consumer-technology companies, especially as the latter tout ever-more-sophisticated healthcare applications. But as healthcare evolves, those potential competitors may turn out to be good partners, according to a new report by accounting and consulting firm Deloitte.

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Kylene Kehn-Hall, Ph.D. carefully puts on her personal protective equipment (PPE) – a Tyvek suit, gloves, overshoes and a specialized helmet with a built-in respirator designed to protect the wearer from exposure to airborne pathogens. With an almost meditative vigilance, she periodically checks herself for any potential gaps or ruptures in the material—a necessary precaution when working with the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV).

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