News

The founders of District startup hub 1776 have shopped around the idea of raising a $25 million seed fund — modeled partially off of 500 Startups — that would place initial bets as high as $150,000 on early-stage tech companies, according to an investor presentation obtained by the Washington Business Journal.

1776 co-founder Evan Burfield cautioned that the document is a draft, and that 1776 is not actively raising capital yet for the planned seed fund and accelerator. He stressed that officials there haven’t arrived on a target for the size of the fund and that $25 million — and other figures in the document — are just one of several ideas they’ve contemplated.

Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE: EBS) announced today that it has closed on its acquisition of Bracco Diagnostics Inc.’s Healthcare Protective Products Division. This acquisition, which includes the RSDL® (decontamination lotion) product that is cleared for marketing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for removal or neutralization of chemical warfare agents from the skin, diversifies and broadens Emergent’s biodefense franchise into the chemical countermeasure market.

“As a result of this transaction closing, Emergent is focused on the uninterrupted supply of RSDL product to customers and on the seamless integration of the new Healthcare Protective Products Group (HPPG) into our biodefense division,” said Adam Havey, EVP and president of Emergent’s biodefense division. “This news, which comes on the heels of other positive developments in our biodefense division, including receiving BioThrax® (Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed) market authorization in Germany as well as reporting positive data from our pivotal study supporting licensure of a post-exposure prophylaxis indication for BioThrax, reinforces Emergent’s leadership position in the biodefense arena.”

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“Deidentified” data on individual participants in more than 200 GlaxoSmithKline-sponsored clinical trials are now available to independent researchers, company officials said.

And by the end of the year, the database is likely to include patient-level data from some 400 interventional trials, according to Perry Nisen, MD, PhD, and Frank Rockhold, PhD, of GSK’s research division in King of Prussia, Pa.

“All of us in the life sciences, medical device, and consumer industries are trying to get better at collaboration,” observed Robert Urban, PhD, head of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) Innovation Center in Boston. For the Boston Innovation Center, which opened June 27, “getting better” includes enormous flexibility in the details of the early stage collaborative deals it inks with individual entrepreneurs, small companies and research institutions.

“A key focus is real adaptability. We strive to build collaborations that are unique to particular opportunities, based upon their specific needs. We have no preconceived notions regarding collaboration. Everything’s on the table,” Urban emphasized. Consequently, there’s no one typical deal or collaboration model. Instead, J&J’s team of business, scientific and transaction experts looks at each individual opportunity during their early stages to determine feasibility, fit within J&J’s goals and the best way to move forward.

Innovation is a hot topic in organizations today. And no wonder. Customers want new and different. Costs can’t be reduced any further. Business pressures abound. The economic picture is spotty. Competition is fierce.

Innovation to the rescue!

Slices from thousands of brains fill nearly a dozen freezers set to 112 degrees below zero on the top floor of a research building at the Johns Hopkins Science + Technology Park.

Inside those slices might be the secrets to schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. On a recent morning, researchers with the Lieber Institute for Brain Development performed dissections of the amygdala, an almond-shaped mass of neurons thought to play a key role in such diseases.

Rhode Island’s capital city should forget about becoming another Silicon Valley, venture capitalist Josh Kopelman said during a talk Tuesday at Betaspring, the business incubator in the Knowledge District.

It’s an unrealistic goal for Providence and the many other cities that aspire to become the nation’s next technology hub. But, said Kopelman, the founder and managing partner of First Round Capital, that doesn’t mean those communities can’t carve out their own niche in an industry that’s growing at a feverish pace.