News

Investigators discuss new findings in Biomedicine and Biomedical Engineering. According to news reporting out of Baltimore, Maryland, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Case reports document successful use of a high-density polytetrafluorethylene membrane to augment horizontal defects associated with immediately placed implants.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of Maryland, “This membrane, which is designed to withstand exposure (not require primary closure) to the oral cavity because it is impervious to bacteria, reduces the need for advanced flap management to attain primary closure. Thus, the surgical aspect is less complex and the mucogingival architecture of the area can be maintained.”

Biomedical engineers from The Johns Hopkins University have partnered with clinicians to create new therapeutic eye injections for a type of central vision loss caused by blood vessel growth at the back of the eye.

The new drug, with a biodegradable time-release coating is currently being tested to evaluate effectiveness in stopping such growth in mice.

Punit Dhillon built his career arranging Canadian venture capital funding for life sciences research and running companies that performed clinical trials in Canada.

Yet when he co-founded a company to develop cancer treatments two years ago, the president and chief executive officer of San Diego-based OncoSec Medical Inc. found he had no option but to operate solely in the United States.

Renee M. Winsky, a Maryland business executive with broad experience leading organizations, was named Leadership Maryland’s president and CEO.

She will replace Nancy Minieri, who founded the organization in 1992 and announced in March that she will retire at the end of this year.

Hospital executives have never been frivolous when it comes to investing in technology, but as reimbursements shrink, the need to carefully analyze each purchasing decision has never been more urgent.

Given all the worthwhile – and not so worthwhile – options, what choices are hospital administrators currently making?

Since IT spending is largely taken up by meeting meaningful use and ICD-10 requirements, said Chantal Worzala, director of policy at the American Hospital Association, hospitals don’t have much left over for investments in other things.

American healthcare workers’ confidence levels remained fairly consistent in the second quarter of 2013, according to the Q2 Randstad Healthcare Employee Confidence Index. Confidence levels among healthcare workers decreased by one-fifth of a point, to 54.3, in the second quarter of 2013.

Harris Interactive conducted the online survey o behalf of Randstad Healthcare in April, May and June of this year, among 188 healthcare workers, ages 18 and older. It included physicians, healthcare administrators, healthcare IT professionals and other healthcare professionals.

What if we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently?

We’re going to test this hypothesis by teaching a Lean LaunchPad class for Life Sciences and Health Care (therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and digital health) this October at UCSF with a team of veteran venture capitalists.

You sit down to a family dinner with aunts, your grandmother, three second cousins once removed, a floating niece, maybe a family dog. You’ve got great news: You’ve been accepted to Johns Hopkins University, a school that people who don’t live in the mid-Atlantic region know about, a school foreigners desperately want to get into. It’s ranked 13th in the world by the most recent U.S. News and World Report, for God’s sake; it’s definitely time to celebrate.

Your whole family remembers hearing Hopkins’ name in that Prince and Me movie with Julia Stiles, where she wanted to be a doctor instead of just marrying a prince and being rich and stuff. I guess that’s kind of what Hopkins is about, the whole getting educated and doing things instead of marrying a rich dude thing (though, who knows, there are a lot of future engineers/doctors around).

GlaxoSmithKline plc, a research-based pharmaceutical company, recently announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of GSK’s FluLaval Quadrivalent influenza virus vaccine for individuals three years of age and older.

The vaccine is the second GSK intramuscular quadrivalent influenza vaccine approved by the FDA, following the approval in December of GSK’s Fluarix Quadrivalent. FluLaval Quadrivalent protects against two influenza A strains and two influenza B strains. Previous vaccines only included three strains to protect against two A virus strains and one B strain.

Corporate venture capital may be what fills in the large gaps VC has left behind, with CVC deals about 60 percent larger than VC deals on the whole.Healthcare corporate venture capital deals are up nearly 40 percent compared to Q1 and funding is up 34 percent, according to a report from CB Insights.

There were 126 CVC deals in Q2, ringing in at a combined value of $1.7 billion. Of these deals, 40 percent were at Seed or Series A-level, meaning CVCs may be willing to take risks VCs aren’t any more. According to the report, CVCs may help companies escape the Series A crunch: “One of every 4 CVC deals in Q2’13 were Series A deals ’ this represented an 800 basis point increase in Series A deal share vs. Q2’12.”