The Maryland Technology Development Corp. (Tedco) is restructuring some of its grant programs and taking on oversight responsibilities for others. The changes are in line with the organization’s effort to focus more on supporting entrepreneurship and innovation. Here are some of the changes:
New Enterprise Associates raised the most money of any venture capital firm in 2012.
New Enterprise, headquartered in Chevy Chase and has a Timonium office, raised $2.6 billion last year. That topped the 182 venture capital firms that raised a total of $20.6 billion in 2012, according to Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. That dollar figure was up 10 percent from 2011.
Rockville-based MacroGenics Inc. has struck a drug development deal with Gilead Sciences Inc. that could ultimately be worth $1 billion.
The licensing agreement is for the development and potential commercialization for drugs directed at up to four undisclosed targets.
HHS’ Health Resources and Services Administration has announced plans to distribute $1.9 million for the creation of six telehealth resource centers, mHIMSS reports (Wicklund, mHIMSS, 1/3).
About the Grants HRSA is administering the grants through the Telehealth Resource Center Grant Program, which provides funding to projects that use telehealth networks to improve health care services (Roney, Becker’s Hospital Review, 1/4).
The grants will help launch five regional centers and one national center.
HRSA will administer grants of up to:
IBBR (www.ibbr.umd.edu) is a joint research institute, which brings together partner institutions including the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP); University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB); and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The next Director will have the opportunity to recruit faculty and staff, acquire needed instrumentation for transformational research, develop new and innovative technological solutions, and create partnerships with commercial entities to facilitate translation to clinical practice.
The University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology are seeking an outstanding individual to serve as Director of the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR) with the vision of making IBBR a premier biotechnology research institute. A primary role of the new Director will be to lead and significantly expand a joint NIST/UM research effort that combines basic, measurement and translational research for the development, manufacturing and standardization of advanced therapeutics and supporting diagnostics.
For more information: Position Description
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has been ranked first among global pharmaceuticals companies assessed for their efforts to improve access to medicine in developing countries, in the 2012 Access to Medicine (ATM) Index released recently by the Access to Medicine Foundation.
An independent initiative, the Access to Medicine Index ranks the world’s 20 largest companies according to their efforts to make their products more available, affordable and accessible in developing countries, highlighting policy and practice that either facilitate or hinder access to medicine.
On December 27, 2012, the US Small Business Administration (SBA) published a final rule to amend regulations governing eligibility for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Programs and to implement provisions of the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act of 2011. The Reauthorization was included in the FY12 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which reauthorized the SBIR Program for six years and now allows small firms that are majority-owned by venture capital operating companies (VCOCs), hedge funds, or private equity firms to compete for SBIR grants.
This advisory briefly summarizes the most important changes to the SBIR eligibility rules and discusses how investments in or acquisitions of SBIR-funded companies may be affected.
Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has joined the board of T. Rowe Price Group as an independent director, the Baltimore-based investment firm announced Thursday.
Hrabowski has led the university since 1992, and was recognized last year by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. According to Price, Hrabowski sits on a number of civic boards, including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Urban Institute, the Marguerite Casey Foundation and the France-Merrick Foundation. He also serves as a director for McCormick & Co. Inc. and the Baltimore Equitable Society.
“Disease is too complex to just think your way through it,” says Raimond Winslow, director of The Institute for Computational Medicine at Johns Hopkins. “We can no longer work with what I call purely mental models of how biological systems function in either health or disease.”
Thankfully, we have technology to lend a hand.
The burgeoning and highly complex field of computational medicine is showing promise for the treatment of illnesses such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease, cancer and more, as technology and troves of data are harnessed to investigate the underpinnings and map the progression of diseases.
Emergent Biosolutions Inc. said it has secured exclusive right to manufacture and sell VaxInnate Corp.’s pandemic influenza vaccine candidate in the United States.
Under a license agreement with VaxInnate, Emergent Biosolutions acquired exclusive U.S. commercial rights to next generation pandemic influenza vaccine candidate.
This license enables Emergent to fulfill the requirement to secure a pandemic influenza vaccine candidate under its contract with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), the company noted.
