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United Therapeutics, which has has greatly expanded their downtown Silver Spring presence as of late, is reportedly set to purchase from the county the parcel located at the corner of Colesville Rd. and Spring Street. The parking garage that current occupies this space abuts an existing UT building, and has been closed for some time due to safety issues. (Surprisingly, it has its own Yelp page. Who uses their limited time on Earth to rate a public parking garage?)

I’m a big fan of the existing United Therapeutics buildings, what with their skybridge and giant external TV’s and all. I also like the touch of the ground lights representing individual elements from the periodic table. The planning and construction of the new building could take five years (or more, because construction delays tend to happen around here), so we won’t be seeing it anytime soon. Hopefully they will choose to incorporate some street-level retail into their design.

Human Genome Sciences Inc, which has rejected a hostile $13-per-share offer from GlaxoSmithKline, has adopted a short-term stockholder rights plan to fend off such unwanted attention.

Rockville-based Human Genome (NASDAQ: HGSI) said in a statement announcing the plan that it had declared a dividend of one share purchase right for each share of the company’s common stock held of record at the close of business on May 29.

It was exciting to see the creation this week of the New York Digital Health Accelerator in New York. The New York State Department of Health, the New York City Investment Fund and the New York eHealth Collaborative all have partnered to provide funding, mentoring support, development expertise and more to health app startups in the state. 

The group is awarding $300,000 each to 12 startups that are producing apps for care coordination, patient engagement, analytics and messaging. The deadline to apply is June 1. What we’ll really be watching for, though, is to see if other states follow suit, and fund health startups in, say, Nebraska or Mississippi. Such localized startup/development support really could be a boon for hospitals trying to develop their own clinical apps. Most incubator programs thus far have been in New York or California, leaving hospitals in the rest of the country out of the running.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine    and Advanced Particle Therapy LLC of San Diego plan to start construction Tuesday on a new $200 million-plus proton treatment center on Baltimore’s west side.

The Maryland Proton Treatment Center will be located inside a new 110,000-square-foot building that is part of the University of Maryland BioPark.

By providing a platform for idea-sharing, Open Innovation Drug Discovery lowers the barrier for collaborations between investigators working inside and outside an organization. Free exchange of ideas between investigators across traditionally impregnable organizational walls contributes to the advancement of Science.

Through prior experience with the Phenotypic Drug Discovery program (PD2), Lilly has established a network with academic and biotech investigators outside our walls to provide them access to proprietary, disease-relevant phenotypic assays. Today, we expand this partnership with top global research talent by adding sophisticated in vitro target-based assays (TargetD2) through our Open Innovation Drug Discovery program.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) DA has published draft guidance describing plans on how to handle serious drug safety issues with marketed drugs, which is now open for comment.

The guidance is intended to lay out a framework for the agency’s response to post-marketing safety issues including serious adverse events, product quality issues and medication errors, with a ranking system to help prioritise each issue according to its level of risk.

The FDA has been criticised in a string medical journal articles in the last 18 months for not monitoring its own adverse event reporting (AER) database effectively enough and failing to communicate safety issues in a timely and effective way to healthcare professionals and the public.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved MedImmune’s, the global biologics arm for AstraZeneca PLC, FluMist Quadrivalent (Influenza Vaccine Live, Intranasal), a vaccine to prevent seasonal influenza in people ages 2 years through 49 years. The company submitted the sBLA early in the second quarter of last year.

FluMist Quadrivalent is the first influenza vaccine to contain four strains of the influenza virus, two influenza A strains and two influenza B strains. All other currently available licensed seasonal influenza vaccines are trivalent, containing three strains [two strains of type A influenza (A/H1N1 and A/H3N2) and one B lineage strain].

A proposal accepted Thursday by the University System of Maryland’s board of regents creates an alliance between its flagship institution in College Park and the professional school in Baltimore centered around combining research initiatives, blending public health programs and expanding course offerings in Montgomery County.

Chancellor William E. “Brit” Kirwan introduced the $45 million proposal, the result of an eight-month study ordered last year by the General Assembly, in Annapolis, calling it “a strategic alliance, a very significant set of initiatives and activities.”

Jim Hughes and Phil Robilotto see more than 100 ideas each year from scientists at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, potential innovations with a promise to better diagnose disease, alleviate pain, make medical care delivery more efficient, even save lives.

The biggest challenge is selling investors on the merits of research still in its infancy.