April 2019

Carrie Roth is president and CEO of the Virginia Bio+Tech Park and of Activation Capital. The park’s board is seeking a new president and CEO and Roth would stay as its chief operating officer.

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– Winning company focused on learning solutions for those with Autism.

Other finalists presented innovative technologies related to Multiple Sclerosis, Spine Alignment, TBI and Oncolytic Immunotherapeutics 

Competition sponsored by Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati held during 2019 BioHealth Capital Region Forum –

Judges of the 2019 Crab Trap competition present Floreo Inc. CEO and Co-Founder, Vijay Ravindran their award 

ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, April 9, 2018 – Floreo Inc., an early stage startup founded in 2016 which is leveraging the power of virtual reality to deliver immersive, fun, and affordable lessons for children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), was chosen from five finalists as the firm with the most commercial potential at the 4^th Annual Crab Trap Competition. This year’s judges included industry leaders John Rubin of JP Morgan Private Bank, Charles J. Andres of Wilson Sonsino Goodrich & Rosati’s, Raghav Bhargava of New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Ethel Rubin of NIH/BHI, John Trainer of AstraZeneca, and Norm Marcus, MD. Of Sanderling Ventures.

The Judges were impressed with Floreo’s CEO and Co-Founder, Vijay Ravindran, presentation of his company’s technology which was inspired by his autistic son’s reaction to virtual reality. Floreo’s library of lessions are currently used in schools, therapy, and homes while providing a supervising adult the opportunity to monitor and track the learner’s progress. Floreo joins previous Crab Trap winners Galen Robotics (2018), LifeSprout (2017) and Sonavex (2016).

In addition to Floreo, the judges and 2019 BioHealth Capital Forum audience viewed presentations by  four other finalists – BeCareLink, BRAINBox Solutions, Spine Align, and Unleash Immuno Oncolytics. “Every year the Crab Trap competition has brought some of the most exciting science and technology to the BioHealth Capital Region Forum. Most people know somebody who has been impacted by challenges of Autism. The technology that Floreo has developed and is continuing to improve makes them a very worthy award winner.” said Richard Bendis, BHI President & CEO.  “The congratulate all the companies and presenters on their progress to date and wish them great success in the future.  The judges made clear this was a particularly competitive group of finalists.”

Founded by BioHealth Innovation, Inc. (BHI) and MedImmune (now AstraZeneca) in 2016, the Crab Trap Competition focuses on companies in therapeutics, diagnostics, medical devices, healthcare services, e-health, mobile health, electronic medical records, health informatics, and biohealth cyber security. The grand prize this year is $10,000 plus $10,000 worth of legal consultive services provided by Crab Trap Sponsor Wilson Sonsini.

About the BioHealth Capital Region

The BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) consisting of Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC is the prominent BioHealth cluster in the Mid-Atlantic. The BHCR encompasses more than 800 life sciences companies, over 70 federal labs and world-class academic and research institutions. According to Genetic Engineering News in 2018, the BHCR is ranked 4^th in Top Biopharma Clusters in the country. The BHCR brand represents collaboration among leading stakeholders with a collective goal to make the BHCR a top 3 biohealth cluster by 2023. http://www.biohealthcapital.com/

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Media contacts:
Richard Bendis
Phone: 301-637-6439, e-mail: rbendis@biohealthinnovation.org

WASHINGTON, April 9, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Johnson & Johnson Innovation LLC and Children’s National Health System (Children’s National) today announced a collaboration to launch JLABS @ Washington, DC, a 32,000-square foot facility to be located at the new Children’s National Research and Innovation Campus in Washington, DC. This Children’s National expansion is set on a nearly 12-acre portion of the former Walter Reed Army Medical Center campus in the nation’s capital. The co-location of the Research and Innovation Campus with key partners in the areas of public health research, innovation and incubator space is critical to accelerating the translation of potential breakthrough discoveries into new treatments and technologies. The JLABS @ Washington, DC site will be open to pharmaceutical, medical device, consumer and health technology companies that are aiming to advance the development of new drugs, medical devices, precision diagnostics and health technologies, including applications in pediatrics.

This collaboration marks the second time Johnson & Johnson and Children’s National have teamed up to emphasize the importance of investing in the health and well-being of babies and children around the world. Through either sponsorship or membership, both entities founded Safe Kids Worldwide, a nonprofit organization aiming to help families and communities keep kids safe from injuries.

“The vision we pursued for this campus required a global innovation partner with a strong commitment to pediatric health and a clear understanding of the next big areas of opportunity for improving human health. We believe the JLABS model is exactly what is needed to help us drive discoveries that are then rapidly translated into new treatments and technologies,” said Kurt Newman, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, Children’s National.

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Gaithersburg, Maryland – April 8, 2019: MaxCyte, the global clinical-stage cell-based medicines and life sciences company, announced today the launch of the new ExPERT™ technology platform. This family of instruments – the ATx, STx and GTx – represents the next generation of the industry’s leading, clinically validated Flow Electroporation® technology for complex cellular engineering. With these additions to the product portfolio, MaxCyte continues its uncompromising focus on high performance cellular editing, while delivering feature enhancements that will enable customers to use a single unifying technology, from concept to commercialization.

“The ExPERT instrument family is the result of extensive customer research into feature design, functionality and performance that are considered critical to enabling the next generation of cellular therapies,” said Brad Calvin, Executive Vice President of Global Commercial Operations for MaxCyte. “Creating cellular editing platforms standardized on a single, scalable, high performance technology can assist the industry in accelerating timelines, reducing costs and achieving milestones critical to the translation of this promising new generation of cellular therapies.”

The ExPERT ATx, STx and GTx build on the solid technology foundation that has been the core of MaxCyte’s historical instrument platforms, which are broadly used by leading companies across the biopharmaceutical industry who are developing increasingly sophisticated biological and cellular-based therapeutics.

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ROCKVILLE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr 2, 2019–Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. will present late-breaking preclinical data which shows that its’ investigational nucleic acid platform, UNITE, may enhance antitumor immunity when used in connection with its investigational DNA vaccine, ITI-7000. In preclinical studies, ITI-7000, an investigational DNA vaccine targeting ErbB2/HER2, demonstrated robust activation of known anti-tumor CD4 and CD8 cells in vivo and promoted tumor infiltration with activated CD8 T cells. These data will be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 2019 meeting in Atlanta, Georgia.

“There’s no doubt that DNA vaccines are attractive immunotherapies to treat cancer and infectious diseases. However, research in this field has been met with many challenges, one of the most complex being low levels of immunogenicity and the inability to provoke an immune response and demonstrate favorable clinical outcomes,” said Teri Heiland, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Immunomic Therapeutics. “These late-breaking data at AACR suggest that our proprietary UNITE platform has the potential to enhance the immunogenicity of DNA vaccines by activating T cell responses and increasing tumor infiltration. We are highly encouraged by this data and look forward to continuing to advance ITI-7000 toward the clinic.”

In addition to observing activation of known anti-tumor CD4 and CD8 cells in vivo, Immunomic scientists observed the overexpression of PDL1 in the tumor microenvironment. This pathway has shown clinical relevance as a cancer immunotherapy target of the tumor microenvironment. PDL1 overexpression upregulated by ITI-7000 suggests that a combination of ITI-7000 with an anti-PD1/PDL1 therapy may increase the therapeutic potential of either agent on its own. This data also supports the prevailing belief in the immunotherapy community that cancer vaccination could synergize with anti PD1 and PDL1 and other immunotherapies, as well as support the viability of the UNITE platform as a means to do so. In summary, these findings support the potential of ITI-7000 as a cancer vaccine and highlight that UNITE, Immunomic’s nucleic acid platform, may have the potential to enhance immunity of investigational cancer therapies.

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