From meetings at local craft breweries and conferences to more intimate panel discussions and seminar training events, there’s a little bit of everything in the BioHealth Capital Region to finish out the fourth quarter.
A recent panel discussion at Bisnow’s May Mid-Atlantic Life Sciences & Biotech event further emphasized the point that we’ve been hearing time and time again – we need to do more to support and adequately prepare the workforce to fill not only the current life science positions but future needs as well.
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.”
The BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR) continues to establish itself as the go-to hub for biotech startups and corporations. As we previously reported, BHCR startups secured important investment in 2019, including venture funding and IPOs of more than $739M in total investment raised. To keep the momentum strong and ensure that BHCR startups are set up for success, our region must develop and implement a robust infrastructure and network that enables innovative ideas to progress from research and invention to market commercialization.
TEDCO Talks’, a video series launched by TEDCO in November 2020, serves as a platform for individuals to hear from thought leaders on economic development in the BioHealth Capital Region (BHCR), and particularly in Maryland. These 30-minute virtual ‘fireside chats’ cover a range of topics, such as advice to small businesses dealing with COVID-19, available funding programs and benefits, diversity and inclusion, and more.
“Fiscal Year 2021 was an extraordinary one for Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures despite the challenges of the pandemic,” Executive Director Christy Wyskiel told BioBuzz in an email. “We took full advantage of the momentum from the last few years.”
