RICHMOND, Va.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Virginia Bio, the statewide non-profit trade association for the life science industry, today announces that John L. Newby II is named CEO, effective August 5, 2019.

Newby will be leaving his current role as the Commissioner of the Virginia Department of Veterans Services (VDVS), where he leads an 850-member Agency located across 50 Virginia locations, delivering employment, education, benefits, behavioral health and long term health care services to Virginia’s Reservists, Guardsmen, transitioning service members and 725,000 veterans.

Andrew Krouse, Chairman of the Board Virginia Bio and CEO of the clinical stage pharmaceutical company Cavion, Inc., Charlottesville, VA, said: “We are fortunate to have someone of John Newby’s caliber and leadership experience at the helm of Virginia Bio. We face great opportunity for our members, the industry and the state, in rapidly changing times. Newby is an extraordinarily experienced leader with statewide responsibilities and national vision. He has a heart for service and an extraordinary dedication to Virginia. He has a proven track record of execution. He is passionate about the opportunities in our industry and knows what it takes to turn ideas into reality.”

Prior to leading VDVS Newby practiced corporate, intellectual property and Hatch-Waxman biopharmaceutical law at international law firms in Richmond and Washington DC, and at a multinational company. Newby previously commanded an Air Force special operations unit supporting the U.S. Army’s 3rd and 7th Special Forces Groups (Airborne), and served in Iraq as an aviator aboard the Boeing B-1B Lancer strategic bomber. Newby received his commission and Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Air Force Academy and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law.

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BALTIMORE, July 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — The University of Maryland (UM) BioPark and Wexford Science & Technology, LLC, today announced Illumina, Inc., a leading developer, manufacturer, and marketer of life science tools and integrated systems, as the newest tenant in the UM BioPark’s 801 W. Baltimore St. building. The building is owned by Ventas, Inc., a life sciences real estate investment trust (REIT) and is part of Wexford’s Knowledge Community development at the UM BioPark.

Illumina’s 13,000-square-foot space in the UM BioPark will house its new Illumina Solutions Center facility, providing training lab capabilities and office space for customers and commercial teams. It will be the company’s first commercial location on the East Coast and will host hundreds of employees and customers annually.

“Our team is excited for the opportunity to inhabit the UM BioPark and to build upon our strong working relationship with the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Institute for Genome Sciences and its Director, Claire Fraser, PhD. We believe this will facilitate collaborative engagement in research activities with our academic partner, University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB),” shared Mark Van Oene, Senior Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer for Illumina. “We are inspired by all the ways genomics can stimulate economic activity to maximize impact in the region and fuel research with the potential to improve health outcomes for patients.”

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ROCKVILLE, Md. and SHANGHAI, July 10, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — MacroGenics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MGNX), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing innovative monoclonal antibody-based therapeutics for the treatment of cancer, and I-Mab Biopharma (I-Mab), a China and U.S.-based clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company committed to the discovery and development of first-in-class and best-in-class biologics in immuno-oncology and autoimmune diseases, announced today that the companies have entered into an exclusive collaboration and license agreement to develop and commercialize enoblituzumab. This investigational drug is an immune-optimized, anti-B7-H3 monoclonal antibody that incorporates MacroGenics’ proprietary Fc Optimization technology platform. Enoblituzumab represents one of the most advanced programs in development directed against B7-H3, a target for which no agent is currently approved. I-Mab obtains regional development and commercialization rights in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

As part of the collaboration, I-Mab will both lead regional studies in its territories as well as participate in global studies conducted by MacroGenics. MacroGenics intends to initiate a Phase 2 study of enoblituzumab in combination with MGA012 (also known as INCMGA0012), an investigational anti-PD-1 antibody that MacroGenics licensed to Incyte Corporation, in first-line patients with head and neck cancer later this year.

“We are very pleased to be partnering with I-Mab to further accelerate and broaden the development of enoblituzumab and to support our mission of bringing innovative medicines to patients with high unmet medical needs,” said Scott Koenig, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of MacroGenics. “We believe that I-Mab is an ideal partner given its track record of rapidly progressing innovative immuno-oncology programs and its ability to tap into the growing pharmaceutical market in this region.”

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Maryland biotech Altimmune Inc. has reached an agreement to acquire California drug developer Spitfire Pharma Inc. in a move that sent the local company’s stock skyrocketing Tuesday.

Under the deal, Gaithersburg-based Altimmune (NASDAQ: ALT) will make a $5 million upfront payment in common stock to Spitfire’s equity holders, who could also receive $8 million in future clinical and regulatory milestone payments and up to $80 million in sales milestones, the company reported.

Both companies’ boards of directors and Spitfire equity holders approved the merger, according to public filings. The transaction is expected to close this month and is subject to customary closing conditions.

The deal puts Spitfire’s flagship product candidate — a treatment for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, or NASH, a condition marked by fat buildup in the liver — into Altimmune’s pipeline of flu and anthrax vaccines. South San Francisco-based Spitfire was started by Dr. John Nestor and Velocity Pharmaceutical Development LLC, which was created by West Coast venture capital firm Presidio Partners. The company was formed to develop a treatment for NASH, the most severe form of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease that causes inflammation and liver cell damage.

The product is slated to enter clinical development next year, with a phase 1 clinical trial on the horizon for 2021. The company projects a $10 million budget to get it there.

For Altimmune, a clinical-stage immunotherapeutics company, the addition makes sense; the candidate, now called ALT-801, builds on its liver disease work within its hepatitis B program, according to the company. It’s “a transformative transaction,” said Dr. Vipin Garg, Altimmune’s president and CEO, in a statement.

“NASH is a significant unmet need. There are no approved treatments available, and prevalence is growing worldwide as a consequence of an expanding obesity epidemic,” Garg said. “Compelling preclinical data generated by Spitfire suggests that ALT-801 could reverse obesity, a primary cause of NASH, thereby reducing excess liver fat, inflammation and fibrosis associated with the disease.”

Click here to read more via the Washington Business Journal

Montgomery County Maryland’s Novavax has had a rocky road to say the least, and the latest failed Phase III RSV trial earlier this year put the company in a difficult position to recover from. Aside from the turbulent clinical path, the company is well known for the high caliber cGMP manufacturing assets, especially its talented workforce. For Catalent Biologics new Paragon BioServices division, this was exactly what they needed to aid their rapid expansion.

Paragon BioSevices has made many headlines this year with strategic moves that have propelled the company into a leading position within the gene therapy market. Therefore, this new strategic partnership with Novavax is right in line with their playbook.

The Baltimore-based CDMO has been hiring as fast as they can to meet the demand for their expertise in gene therapy, hiring around 90 in the first quarter along this year. Projections of 100-200 additional jobs at Paragon seemed almost impossible to fill in the current, competitive job market, so this acquisition for manufacturing assets and talent may have been the best way to meet their increasing workforce needs.

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A non-exclusive collaboration between NanoCellect and QIAGEN aims to accelerate adoption and ease of use of single-cell RNAseq by combining the power of NanoCellect’s WOLF® Cell Sorter with QIAGEN’s QIAseq® UPX 3′ Transcriptome Kit

SAN DIEGO and GERMANTOWN, Md. and HILDEN, Germany, June 24, 2019/PRNewswire/ — QIAGEN N.V. and NanoCellect Biomedical, Inc., a leader in cell analysis and sorting technology, announced today a scientific collaboration to improve the cell sample prep upstream of QIAGEN’s QIAseq^® UPX 3′ Transcriptome Kit through the utilization of NanoCellect’s WOLF Cell Sorter technology, which allows for individual cells to be gently sorted into RNAseq- ready 96-well plates.

Single-cell RNA-seq analysis focuses on the individual contribution of every cell, highlighting a specific biological response otherwise obscured when assessed in bulk. The greatest bottleneck to single-cell analysis is the lack of easy-to-use methods for precisely isolating single cells from a heterogeneous cell population and debris, without damaging the cells, and dispensing them into 96- or 384-well plates. Combining the power of NanoCellect’s WOLF Cell Sorter with QIAGEN’s QIAseq UPX 3′ Transcriptome Kit provides a high-tech, synergistic Sample to Insight^® workflow solution.

The two parties are working together to optimize a solution that simplifies the workflow and accessibility to precisely aliquot single (or up to 100) of cells per well. Customers will be able to leverage the dispensed cells with the high-performance and sensitivity of the QIAseq UPX 3′ kits and thereby achieve the goal of enabling high-throughput 3′ transcriptome NGS from ultralow amounts of RNA. The combination of cell IDs and sample IDs enables up to 18,432 libraries to be sequenced together, providing users with an innovative solution to many NGS challenges.

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QIAGEN N.V. QGEN recently announced that it has inked an agreement with McKesson Medical-Surgical Inc. Mckesson Corporation’s MCK affiliate will serve as the exclusive distributor of QIAGEN’s QIAstat-Dx syndromic testing solution in the acute market segment of U.S. hospitals, which have 200 beds or less. Mckesson Medical-Surgical will also distribute the solution in other select segments. This will enable QIAGEN to expand its reach within the healthcare market.

More About the Agreement

Through the agreement, McKesson becomes a non-exclusive distributor for future expansion of QIAstat-Dx into the non-acute retail clinics in U.S. retail pharmacies. The distribution relationship reinforces QIAGEN’s sales and marketing focus on the growing syndromic market in the larger hospitals and clinical laboratories setting.

The agreement with McKesson comes after the QIAstat-Dx syndromic testing system attained 510(k) approval from the FDA. The multiplex QIAstat-Dx Respiratory Panel for simultaneous qualitative detection and identification of multiple respiratory viral and bacterial pathogens also received FDA’s nod. This comprehensive respiratory panel identifies more than 20 pathogens and is the first test in a wide array of assays planned for QIAstat-Dx in the United States. Moreover, this includes the addition of a comprehensive gastrointestinal panel later in 2019.

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Last week two new partnerships were formed between Maryland and the United Kingdom. Biohealth Innovation, a MD based public-private nonprofit focused on accelerating commercialization for biohealth, will be collaborating with Catalyze, an Amsterdam based company dedicated to bringing non-dilutive funding for biomedical innovations.

Another alliance was formed across the pond at the 2019 BIO International Convention in Philadelphia as Maryland Commerce Secretary Kelly M. Schulz and Sir John Peace, chairman of the Midlands Engine, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). These new partnerships speak to the collaborative approach Maryland is taking to continue to grow its life sciences industry and expand growth opportunities for the hundreds of Maryland-based companies.

The MoU is a mutually beneficial agreement that will help bring investors to the table to help life science companies in Maryland and the Midlands thrive. This new union seeks to promote economic growth for both economies through opportunities like an exchange program that will be implemented by the two countries. Life science companies from Maryland and the Midlands will visit the other country to seek opportunities for expansion into the local market. One such trade mission already took place this past March with participation by eleven life science companies. 

Click here to read more via BioBuzz.