Holding place for old articles.
The biotech IPO window is officially open.
Eleven second-quarter biotech initial public offerings totaling $1 billion — the strongest quarterly biotech market for venture-backed IPOs since third-quarter 2000 — fueled an overall surge in IPOs, according to the National Venture Capital Association and news and data company Thomson Reuters.
Even as the White House has backed off on a few of its deadlines for administering the Affordable Care Act, the Obama Administration is staying the course on its efforts to transition paper files to electronic health records in doctor’s offices.
President Barack Obama met with several chief executives of health-care technology companies, government leaders and nonprofit public-service organizations on Monday for a conversation on how technology, big data and innovation can be used to bring down the costs and improve the quality of health care in the U.S., according to a statement from the White House.
The head of the nation’s medical research agency and leaders of Johns Hopkins hospital and medical school warned Monday that progress in fighting diseases could be slowed, jobs lost and scientists driven overseas unless across-the-board federal funding cuts are reversed.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, joined Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, Hopkins executives and a stroke survivor at Hopkins’ Children’s Center to appeal for restoration of $1.5 billion in NIH funding cuts as part of the budget “sequester” approved last winter by Congress.
A total of 150 investors are vying for Maryland’s biotechnology tax credit this year, compared with 125 applicants last year.
Maryland’s Biotechnology Investment Incentive Tax Credit program gives tax credits to individuals and companies that invest in Maryland-based biotechnology startups. The program will give out $10 million in tax credits for fiscal 2014.
Montgomery County’s top biotechnology firms will open their doors and their state-of-the-art laboratories next week to local middle school students interested in the life sciences. In a partnership with MdBio Foundation, Inc., and Montgomery College, preeminent local scientists and executives from MedImmune, Qiagen and Emergent BioSolutions will share their expertise and career stories with students from the Young Science Explorers Program (YSEP), a weeklong science workshop for rising seventh and eighth grade students.
Dressed in lab coats and safety glasses, students will get once in a lifetime exposure to local companies and scientists on the leading edge of medical breakthroughs. Topics will range from microbiology and vaccine research to lab safety and potential career paths for science students.
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) SAI +0.46% , Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED), and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) announced the third annual 2013 statewide cyber competition, the Maryland Cyber Challenge(TM), will be held October 8 through October 9 at the Baltimore Convention Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Registration is now open for aspiring cyber warriors from around the nation to compete at the Maryland event, located in the growing epicenter for the cybersecurity industry.
The Maryland Cyber Challenge(TM) is designed to attract more students and young professionals to pursue careers in cybersecurity and is held in conjunction with the CyberMaryland2013 Conference and Cyber Hall of Fame. It is the premier statewide cyber competition showcasing today’s students and tomorrow’s technologists with three levels of competition: high school, college and professional. Teams will have the opportunity to develop and improve their cybersecurity skills in a real-world environment. Founders of the event include SAIC, UMBC, DBED, the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), and the Tech Council of Maryland (TCM).
Creating a new medical device is not an inexpensive exercise. There are development costs, clinical trial expenses, and the lengthy process of getting a piece of new equipment approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Those hurdles are a leading reason why most medical innovations come out of universities or established research firms.
As investments in life science companies have dipped over the past few years, some investors have scaled back investments or walked away from the sector all together. But based on a tally by investment research firm PitchBook in its 2013 Venture Capital Healthcare Report, several firms have made 10 or more investments in pharmaceutical, medical device or health IT companies in the last year and a half.
Due to the many changes that will result from the SBIR/STTR Reauthorization Act, NIH has set up a new website to keep the small business research community informed.
Applicants and grantees interested in the SBIR program can visit the website as well as the SBIR listserv and Twitter feed for news as the implementation plan rolls out.
1776, the D.C. startup hub that launched earlier this year with District funding, plans to pull together a seed fund that will allow it to make equity investments in early-stage tech companies.
The creation of a fund would turn 1776 into a bona fide “accelerator.” The 1133 15th St. NW space, run by Startup DC’s Evan Burfield and Donna Harris, is now primarily a co-working operation (some say incubator), with additional programs layered on top of it, like the recently announced Challenge Cup international startup tournament.
