Dr. Gene Green, a senior executive within Johns Hopkins Medicine’s doctors group, has been appointed president of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda.
He replaces veteran hospital chief Brian Gragnolati, who will now turn his attention full-time to his corporate duties as senior vice president in charge of the system’s Community Division. The division includes Suburban, Howard County General Hospital and Sibley Memorial Hospital in D.C.
Two Baltimore-area startups have received a total of $300,000 from InvestMaryland.
Plasmonix Inc., a life sciences company based at bwtech@UMBC Research & Technology Park, received $100,000 from the startup funding initiative. Bambeco, an eco-friendly home decor and furniture company in South Baltimore, received $200,000. Bambeco previously got $400,000 from InvestMaryland in November.
In total, the program has given out about $1.65 million.
More than three years on from the end of the Great Recession, only six states have regained employment levels enjoyed prior to the recession, and 17 states are still more than 5 percent below their pre-recession employment levels. As many state economies continue to struggle through the lingering effects of the Great Recession, a question commonly asked is, “What is this seemingly invisible force that prevents the economy from returning to prerecession and especially 1990s growth rates?” In other words, why is it that, despite massive monetary and fiscal stimulus, employment seems locked in a persistent malaise? Some argue that the problem is a lack of consumer demand and that more federal government stimulus spending is the answer. Others argue that it is uncertainty over the massive national debt and that fiscal austerity is the answer.
However, one diagnosis that has gone largely unnoticed holds that this invisible force is the decline in the competitiveness of the U.S. economy in the global marketplace. As ITIF points out in Innovation Economics: The Race for Global Advantage, this decline has been a relatively untold story over the past decade, although its symptoms have clearly manifested in the dramatic fall in manufacturing employment and investment since 2000. The failure of the United States to adapt to a global economy that is evermore dependent on knowledge and innovation for growth—the so-called “New Economy”—is causing traded sector firms, and manufacturers in particular, to look to other, more competitive countries when it comes to choosing locations. And this loss of traded sector activity, including jobs and investment, holds back the entire U.S. economy and its component state economies as well.
In a press statement which Yemen Post received a copy of, GlaxoSmithKline GSK welcomed the publication of the third Access to Medicine (ATM) Index, which measures the performance of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies on their efforts to improve access to medicines and healthcare in developing countries. GSK was ranked a top of the Index in 2012 for the third time of publishing, scoring highest in four categories including general access to medicine management, research and development activity, capability advancement and drug donation and philanthropy.
“In Yemen and across the developing world, GSK is committed to finding new and innovative ways to ensure access to medicines,” said Mr Omar Mulhi, Country Manager, GSK Yemen. “We are collaborating with government, NGOs and other private-sector companies to improve people’s health and well-being no matter where they live, while continuing to expand our business and invest in research.”
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and GlaxoSmithKline PLC (GSK) today announced a partnership to develop therapeutics to treat an inherited form of muscular dystrophy.
The goal of the new agreement is to develop a small-molecule-based medicine to potentially reverse facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, or FSHD, by inhibiting the activity of a protein that is incorrectly expressed by the DUX4 gene in people with the disease. The protein activity is what damages muscle cells and leads to progressive muscle weakness and atrophy in FSHD patients.
New Enterprise Associates has co-led an $11 million first round investment in Galera Therapeutics Inc., a biotech company focused on the development of breakthrough drugs targeting oxygen metabolic pathways in cancer, fibrosis and other human diseases, the company announced.
New Enterprise Associates and Novartis Venture Fund (NVF) co-led the round with Correlation Ventures also investing. Proceeds will be used to expand clinical development of Galera’s small molecule therapeutics.
A set of new initiatives put forward in further detail Friday by the National Institutes of Health could have far-reaching implications for faculty members, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers conducting biomedical research.
The plans, first proposed in June by three working groups, are intended to strengthen and shape the biomedical research work force in the coming decades, focusing especially on diversity issues and on training for rising postdoctoral researchers and graduate students.
Many details of how the goals would be pursued are still unclear, although the NIH on Friday approved a rough implementation plan. The plans, likely to be enforced through grant guidelines, will encourage institutions to adopt individual development plans for all research trainees, and require them to track outcomes for all research trainees, from undergraduates through postdoctoral researchers. They would also create a new grant program for innovative approaches to research training, increase stipends for postdoctoral students, and provide more funding for grants to encourage research independence sooner.
Maryland’s TEDCO and a team of entrepreneurs are planning to launch a new $20 million cybersecurity fund early next year, according to Executive Director Robert Rosenbaum.
The state-sponsored investment group plans to formally announce the cyber fund in January. Rosenbaum declined to name the sponsors, whom he described as “a couple of young guys that built a fairly large cybersecurity company and sold it.” The capital — assuming they are successful in raising it — would be used to invest in early-stage cyber startups, both those building products and those selling services, he said.
A Hunt Valley venture capital firm is the first to receive funds from the state’s new $84 million InvestMaryland program.
Grotech Ventures will receive $12 million to invest in early-stage companies. If the recipients are successful, Grotech will return 100 percent of the principal investment and 80 percent of its profits to the state’s general fund.
This week’s announcement marks the next major step for the program, a key economic development initiative of Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) that the General Assembly approved in 2011. The state raised the $84 million this year through an online auction of tax credits to insurance companies that operate in Maryland.
GLAXOSMITHKLINE (GSK) has been ranked top of the Index in 2012 for the third time after scoring high in four categories including general access to medicine management, research and development activity, capability advancement and drug donation and philanthropy.
The Country Manager for Ghana, Manu Otuo, commenting on the development, welcomed the publication of the third Access to Medicine (ATM) Index, which measures the performance of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies on their efforts to improve access to medicine and healthcare in developing countries.
