393rd Edition – February 19, 2020

Pete Briskman, an Executive Managing Director with JLL, leads the Tenant Advisory and brokerage business for JLL in Maryland, sits down with BioTalk Host Rich Bendis to talk his role with JLL, his focus on Life Sciences, and vision of the BioHealth Capital Region

Pete Briskman works with many of the regions’ most exciting and fastest growing Life Science Companies assisting them with their real estate and site selection strategies for Headquarter transactions, relocations, build-to-suits, renewals, expansions, and consolidations. Pete and his team bring proprietary tools to help organizations make informed decisions around the size and scale of their operation, assessment of labor, modeling and programming of occupancy, approach to optimizing business and economic incentives, and very unique real estate market intelligence that can be communicated via our proprietary geo-spatial market intelligence platform.  He is the recipient of GWCAR’s Commercial Leasing Broker of the Year and has been recognized with GWCAR Office Leasing Transactions of the Year for multiple clients.

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New Members to Add Experience to Board of Directors

ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, February 12, 2020 – BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) announced that its Board of Directors unanimously has approved the appointments of six new board members:

• Sean Augerson, Vice President, Head of Operations Americas and APAC, QIAGEN
• Peter Briskman, Executive Managing Director, JLL
• Juergen Klenk, Ph.D., Principal, Deloitte
• Dr. Jay Perman, MD, Chancellor, University System of Maryland
• Aaron Ren, Head of Business Development and Operations, Viela Bio
• Tracey Vetterick, Vice President and COO, Oncology R&D, AstraZeneca

“I am privileged to welcome these new members to our board,” said Richard Bendis, BHI President and CEO. “The addition of their leadership experience in the BioHealth Capital Region and beyond ensures in BHI’s ability to have our finger on the pulse of innovation and fresh viewpoints. I also would like to thank Rip Ballou of GSK, Robert Caret of the University System of Maryland, Doug Liu of QIAGEN, Ashish Kulkarni, of Avantor, and Beth Meagher of Deloitte Consulting LLP for their many years of service on our Board of Directors.

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With the coronavirus growing more deadly each day, several companies are racing to produce the first vaccine or antiviral medication to combat the spread of the virus. One company that seems to have made large strides towards finding a vaccine, is Gaithersburg-based Novavax.

The genome of the coronavirus was published last month, which opened the floodgates for potential vaccine attempts. Novavax is most notable for releasing an Ebola vaccine within 90 days of the genome being published in 2015, and they estimate they could have a similar timetable for this vaccine as well.

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New Enterprise Associates Partner Sara Nayeem sat down with Proactive’s Christine Corrado at the BIO CEO & Investor Conference in New York.

The venture capital fund, which has a cumulative committed capital of $20 billion, focuses on investing in across all verticals in healthcare and in technology.

Image: https://www.proactiveinvestors.com

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Gain Visibility for Your BioHealth Company – and $10,000.

Prior winners:  Sonavex, LifeSprout, Galen Robotics, Floreo 

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BALTIMORE, February 18, 2020 (Newswire.com) – Over 40 million patient records were breached in 2019, according to new data released today in the Protenus Breach Barometer®. Published by Protenus, a healthcare compliance analytics platform that protects patient data for the nation’s leading health systems, the Breach Barometer is the industry’s definitive source for health data breach reporting.  

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SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Feb. 10, 2020– Kite, a Gilead Company (Nasdaq: GILD), today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted the Biologics License Application (BLA) and granted Priority Review designation for KTE-X19, an investigational chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory mantle cell lymphoma (MCL).

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The NIA Office of Small Business Research (OSBR) team is intrigued by startups and their unique role in research and development. Of course, we’re a bit biased — after all, we lead NIA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) programs, which are designed to help new companies commercialize products and technology to extend the healthy, active years of life.

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The University System of Maryland Maryland Momentum Fund and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, have invested $350,000 in a medical technology startup, the 11th investment from the fund. University of Maryland BioPark startup ARMR Systems Inc. was awarded $350,000, the first time a BioPark resident has received an investment from the fund. The university investments led ARMR’s …

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Mtech Ventures, a University of Maryland technology company incubator program, won a $50,000 U.S. Small Business Administration Growth Accelerator Fund competition award to support innovation in federal Opportunity Zones in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area.

Through the grant, Mtech Ventures is partnering with the Association of University Research Parks (AURP) and the Center for Accelerating Innovation to organize community-needs roundtables, identify promising innovations, develop entrepreneurs and build awareness of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) or Small Business Tech Transfer (STTR) program in low-income census tracts called federal Opportunity Zones (OZ). Maryland has 149 Opportunity Zones, while the District of Columbia has 25. Federal tax incentives for new investments are available in these zones.

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Citizens across Virginia need health solutions and affordable health care to live full, healthy and productive lives. Lawmakers in the General Assembly are examining a broad range of policies in an attempt to relieve the burden of rising health care costs. But some of the proposals under consideration might have unintended consequences for both patients and Virginia’s innovation economy. As our elected officials consider how to address health care costs, they should ensure that any measure provides meaningful financial relief to patients and preserves the environment for medical innovation in Virginia that delivers groundbreaking treatments and creates thousands of high-paying jobs in the commonwealth.

Image: Kelli Price Photography

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WASHINGTON – The National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation (NCC-PDI) announced today that the application deadline for its annual “Make Your Medical Device Pitch for Kids!” competition is extended one week to Feb. 22 at midnight EST. Innovators and startup companies with devices in the pediatric cardiovascular, orthopedic and spine, or NICU sectors are invited to apply for a share of up to $250,000 in FDA-funded awards and access to a newly created NCC-PDI pediatric device accelerator program led by MedTech Innovator. Applications are being accepted now.

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HHS on Monday launched a new program to spur development and commercialization of technologies that would help the U.S. respond to health security threats and disasters.

The Foundry for American Biotechnology, a public-private partnership, will be jointly managed by the department’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response—or ASPR—and the New Hampshire technology firm Deka Research and Development Corp.

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Two commercial real estate firms with a significant presence in the marketing of life sciences properties have issued reports over the past 12 months that illustrate the growth in industry employment in recent years.

One life sciences segment, “Research and Development in Biotechnology” (NAICS code 541714), has largely driven that growth, with its number of jobs more than doubling over the past decade, to 204,800 as of 2019, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data cited by Cushman & Wakefield in “Life Sciences 2020: The Future Is Here,” a report released February 6. Between 2010 and 2019, biotech R&D employment grew 5.1%, compared with 1.6% for total employment. Most of the increase, more than 70,000 jobs, occurred between 2013 and 2019.

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The University of Maryland announced Wednesday that it has appointed a new president.

The University System of Maryland Board of Regents appointed Darryll J. Pines to succeed Wallace Loh. Pines’ appointment is effective July 1, and he will be the 34th president of the University of Maryland, College Park.

Pines has been the A. James Clark School of Engineering dean for the past 11 years. He has been with the university for 25 years, starting as an assistant professor in 1995.

Image: https://umdrightnow.umd.edu/news/usm-board-regents-appoints-darryll-j-pines-president-university-maryland-college-park

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Representatives of various industries trekked to Annapolis for a marathon hearing on several bills aimed at generating revenue for public education reforms.

Image: Representatives from the Maryland Department of Commerce said getting rid tax credit programs would send a signal that the state is not committed to growing businesses and supporting economic development. BBJ FILE

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ROCKVILLE, Md., Feb. 11, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — The Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) is accepting proposals to lease a bio-manufacturing facility configured to produce biologicals under cGMP conditions in compliance with FDA requirements for phase I/II clinical trials. The facility is also equipped to perform process development research, pre-clinical manufacturing for material necessary to conduct IND-enabling toxicology studies, proof of concept (POC) studies, and process demonstration in advance of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) manufacturing. IBBR is a joint research enterprise between the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Image: https://finance.yahoo.com

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NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., February 11, 2020 – Johnson & Johnson today announced that its Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies will further expedite its investigational coronavirus vaccine program through an expanded collaboration with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) at the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Image: https://www.jnj.com

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Rebecca Stauffer, Parenteral Drug Association Managing Editor posed the following questions to PDA Letter Article readers in fall of 2019. “What if developers of cell and gene therapies treated their products like software releases? What if the human body could be manipulated like a highly complex computer?”

We invite you to join us for a LIVE and interactive presentation from Jeff Galvin, CEO of American Gene Technologies sharing his passion, vision, and conviction of “reprogramming the human computer.”

Image: https://www.eventbrite.com

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FREDERICK, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Maryland Tech Council (MTC) announced today it has expanded its offices to Frederick to broaden its reach throughout the State of Maryland and to meet the growing needs of its members. The satellite office will be located at 12 West Church Street. Additionally, MTC is planning a move of its Montgomery County satellite office to the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) in Rockville. MTC will continue to utilize its satellite offices in Annapolis and other key life science and tech hubs throughout Maryland.

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Feb. 10, 2020 — Linda Larrimore has been getting chemotherapy every other week for 6 years to treat and manage colon cancer.

The chemotherapy is keeping her health stable, so it’s well worth it to the mother and grandmother to regularly get the treatment. Usually, she spends the 4½ hours every other week reading, watching TV, or chatting.

Image: https://www.webmd.com

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Here’s a useful article that looks at the fate of university-licensed startup (ULS) life sciencecompanies over the last few years. There are more and more such companies (a greater than tenfold increase in their number since 1990), but a comprehensive look at success rates (and how such rates vary according to the universities involved) has been harder to come by. A lot of work went into this overview, and I’m glad the authors were able to assemble it. They spent a lot of time digging through tech-transfer records and contacting universities to make sure that they’d covered everything, checking venture capital announcements and state corporate registrations, and searching through press releases, LinkedIn pages, and more. The data that they have produced look like the best we have on the subject.

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The streets of Wuhan, China — the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak — are empty and quiet except for the sound of loudspeakers squawking quarantine instructions to its sheltered-in-place residents. Flights to some Chinese cities have been terminated. A Tokyo, Japan-based travel agency has canceled nearly 20,000 of its Chinese package tours.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the coronavirus, which has already killed more people than SARS, a global health emergency. There are currently 11 people stricken with the novel virus in the U.S. and over 17,000 are infected globally with numbers jumping exponentially by the day.

Image: https://biobuzz.io

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I made illustration of Corona virus today.

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