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Advances in science and technology can drive the next generation of skincare innovations.  Today, cutting edge dermatological research and technologies hold the potential to revolutionize pore minimizing and anti-aging solutions. 

To that end, Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc., and Alibaba’s TMALL announce the Skincare of the Future QuickFire Challenge, calling on innovators to submit products, services and technologies aiming to help consumers tackle the world’s toughest skincare challenges, with a specific focus on pore minimizing and anti-aging solution. 

ROCKVILLE, Md. — Recognizing the benefits of proximity to leading U.S. researchers, regulators and advocacy groups, Nobelpharma America, LLC has chosen Montgomery County, Maryland as the location for its first overseas subsidiary of Nobelpharma Co. Ltd., a company headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Nobelpharma’s company mission is to contribute to society by providing critical but neglected pharmaceuticals and medical devices. 

Nobelpharma meets an essential patient need: it develops curative drugs and medical devices for diseases that often go overlooked because of the small number of patients. Examples include patients suffering from tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) and adductor spasmodic dysphonia.    

TruGenomix recently announced $1.8 million in financing in a seed round led by Sanford Health. The startup, a graduate of the Illumina Accelerator program and a Veteran Founder Initiative company, also announced matching funding from Viking Global, a partner of the Illumina Accelerator.

As a veteran-owned business, TruGenomix’s founding mission of improving the lives of U.S. military service members and veterans remains at its roots. With a vision of bringing behavioral health into the 21st century, TruGenomix is advancing the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) through leveraging genomic and machine learning technologies.

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MANASSAS, Va. — September 2, 2020 — Ceres Nanosciences, a privately held company that makes innovative products to improve diagnostic testing, announced it has been awarded a contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADxSM) initiative. The contract, for  $6.5 million, will support an expansion to increase the manufacturing capacity of Ceres’ Nanotrap® Virus Particles for COVID-19 tests.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Sept. 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — MicroGEM today announced it has been awarded up to $40.9 million by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADxSM) initiative to expedite the launch of the company’s molecular diagnostic test that provides rapid, sensitive and specific identification of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza types A and B at the point-of-need.

MicroGEM’s COVID-19 saliva test provides laboratory-quality results in 15 minutes, allowing non-medical personnel to obtain rapid, on-site detection of COVID-19 without a laboratory. The system detects SARS-CoV-2 in saliva, simultaneously with influenza types A and B, using real-time reverse transcriptase RT-PCR. Based on patented enzymatic RNA extraction technology, the system is a simple approach to quickly detecting and managing infectious disease.

AstraZeneca said today it has launched a 30,000-patient Phase III trial in the U.S. of AZD1222, the COVID-19 vaccine it is co-developing with the University of Oxford and a spinout—a study that will account for most of the 50,000 participants on which the company intends to assess the vaccine.

The Phase III D8110C00001 trial (NCT04516746) is intended to evaluate the safety, efficacy, and immunogenicity of AZD1222 (formerly ChadOx1 nCoV-19) for the prevention of COVID-19. Participants will be randomized to receive two doses of either AZD1222 or a saline control, four weeks apart, with twice as many participants receiving the potential vaccine than the saline control.

The 170,000-square-foot building would be located near Rye Street Tavern.

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 27, 2020 – Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC today announced the first companies to be part of its medical countermeasure innovation collaboration called Blue Knight, a joint initiative dedicated to anticipating potential health security threats, activating the global innovation community, and amplifying scientific and technological advancements with the aim to prepare for and respond to our rapidly evolving global health environment. Blue Knight has been developed in collaboration with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a component of the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JLABS (JLABS), a global network of life science incubators empowering and enabling innovators to deliver potential life-enhancing health and wellness solutions to people around the globe.

HIV therapies, typically cocktails of antiviral drugs, have proven to be very successful in controlling HIV/AIDS. However, they are not a “cure,” which is a very lofty goal. American Gene Technologies (AGT), based in Rockville, Maryland, received the go-ahead from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin a Phase I clinical trial of AGT103-T, a gene therapy, to eliminate HIV from infected individuals.