The Baltimore biotech ecosystem is thriving. And new, big and bold life sciences development projects are in the works, leading many to project Charm City as the next sector of the BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) to boom.
Dozens of startups have called FastForward’s innovation hub in the 1812 Ashland building home since it opened five years ago. Now, one of the original tenants will be moving out for a good reason.
Avidea Technologies, which develops T cell immunotherapies to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases, was acquired by Vaccitech, a British drug and vaccine maker, in December 2021 for $40 million. The deal was the culmination of a lifetime of research and more recent entrepreneurial efforts by Geoffrey Lynn, Avidea’s co-founder and CEO, who attended the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
“Avidea was really the vehicle for our team to advance promising therapies to patients,” he says. “From our earliest days, we always kept an open mind about how to achieve this and how we would eventually exit the company.”
Privately-held Avidea is developing next-generation T cell immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer and autoimmune diseases. The company’s immunotherapies are driven by its polymer-drug conjugate technology platform, SNAPvax, which is designed to co-deliver multiple antigens and immunomodulators in nanoparticles of precise, programmable size and composition. This is done so in order to enable the development of immunotherapy product candidates with tighter control over immune responses. The SNAPvax platform is designed to induce high magnitude cytotoxic T cells for treating cancer and chronic infections. It can also be configured to induce regulatory T cells for treating autoimmunity and allergies.
Maryland is the epicenter of biotech and life science innovation in the BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR). The state is home to a burgeoning life science ecosystem, including a rapidly growing cell and gene therapy industry, a robust and growing advanced biomanufacturing environment, and a deep network of leading research universities and critical government life science research entities.
Nick Fullenkamp Appointed Chief Business Officer at Avidea Technologies, Inc. Nick Fullenkamp, M.B.A. has joined Avidea Technologies as Chief Business Officer and will be leading Business Development, financing strategy and [….]
Baltimore’s Top 10 BioHealth Startup CEOs April 10, 2019 Baltimore is brimming with entrepreneurial talent. A new generation of CEOs and inventors are emerging right here in Baltimore with companies [….]
