Wrapping up 2008

I am busy not being real busy work-wise, other than moving my lab from FITCI @Monocacy to Hood.  The Hood faciity is on the top floor of Rosenstock Hall.  It will be interesting to be back on a college campus, again.  We already have a couple Hood undergrad inters set up for the spring semester.  Free labor is always a good thing.  I will be working along side another new FredCoBio company, KempBio. KempBio is the next adventure for Chris Kemp, who was behgind the former Kemp facility on Executive Way alongside GeneChoice and PGC Scientific.

I am trying to put together a Top 10 list for FredCoBio in 2008.  I like those “Year in review” types of articles so figure I should write one myself.  Coming soon.

Speaking of which, I was reading one in the Gazette yesterday and I got a nice shout out, along with an interview of FITCI Director, Mike Dailey, in the last section of the article:

Emerging biotechs a bright spot for economic future

Frederick Innovative Technology Center Inc., Frederick County’s business incubator, graduated a record six high-tech companies this year, many of which planned to remain in the county.

“Obviously, the program is working,” said FITCI director Michael Dailey. “We are very pleased and are looking to our next crop of candidates.”

New graduates are Integrated BioTherapeutics Inc., Imagilin Technology, Cybrdi Inc., APE-BridgePath, Histo-Scientific Research Laboratories Inc. and ChromoTrax. HSRL moved to a 10,000-square-foot building in Thurmont, bringing 20 high-tech jobs to the town.

Akonni Biosystems, a FITCI graduate now in quarters on Carroll Creek, has noted significant growth and more than $5 million in private investment. It earned another $300,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health in October for research on its product that will help doctors quickly diagnose a variety of ailments at once, called TruArray.

As small companies like FITCI startups and large companies like MedImmune continue to thrive in the county, a new networking event for the biotech community called “Biobeers” has been attracting a growing crowd.

Gahaga CEO James Hard started the happy hour event at Flying Dog Brewery after launching a blog on local biotech news – fredcobio.wordpress.com.

Just a little typo on my name, but I appreciate the fact that my big news closed out the whole article.

Weekend Updates

I may be out of town on Monday, so thought I’d post a couple quick updates of noteworthy news.

I periodically check in on the Ft Detrick Web site for news and happenings.  I saw this interesting post on their Bulletin Board:

Student Employment Opportunities at Fort Detrick for the Summer

Do you know of any students interested in a 2009 summer position here at Fort Detrick?

The Civilian Personnel Advisory Center is looking for laborers, bio-science aids and office automation clerks to fill temporary summer opening. Applications must be completed by Feb. 27.

Visit www.detrick.army.mil, click on employment and then on student opportunities (this page is messed up, at least on my browser I can only view one of the two postings)  to find the job announcements and instructions on how to apply.

For more information, call (301) 619-2247.

The first opportunity is for Biological Science Aids (PDF in link) at Detrick

Description of Duties:   Provides technical laboratory support in a research environment by carrying out a variety of routine and repetitive tasks. Performs standard laboratory procedures. Uses laboratory equipment such as spectrophotometer, fluorometer, balances, centrifuges, thermocycler, incubators, and gel electrophoresis units. Maintains accurate and comprehensive records of experimental proceedings and results in a timely fashion. Contributes to the overall operation and upkeep of the laboratory, helping to maintain a safe, clean, and organized working environment.

There is another set of positions for “Summer research Opportunities” at USAMRIID

Student Research Opportunities

The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases has opportunities for student participation in laboratory research. Students gain hands-on laboratory experience and scientific knowledge while contributing to a vital national mission in bio-defense. Research opportunities are available full-time in the summer and part-time during the fall and spring semesters. Prospective students may be from undergraduate or graduate degree programs.

Depending on student interests and their educational institution’s program, students may receive class credit for their research participation. The research opportunities may be a paid position or a volunteer position. Students may apply through the ORISE program at www.orau.gov/orise.htm.

To learn more about USAMRIID and its research programs visit www.usamriid.army.mil.

As is typical with trying to find gainful employment on the Fort, the application process appears to be pretty complicated.  At least they’re giving students until mid-Feburary to complete the application for employment over the summer.

I also spotted an announcement in the Herald-Mail of a number of Awards given to FredCo residents working at NIST:

The following local residents recently received the Departmental Bronze Medal and other awards from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

· Linda C. Acierto of Knoxville, Md., a program analyst in the Office of the Director, received the Bronze Medal.

· Eric P. Whitenton of Knoxville, an engineering technician, received the Bronze Medal.

· Francine K. Amon of Frederick, Md., a chemical engineer, received the Bronze Medal.

· Nelson P. Bryner of Frederick, a supervisory chemical engineer, received the Bronze Medal.

· Marcus T. Cicerone of Frederick, a supervisory research chemist, received the Bronze Medal.

· Bert M. Coursey of Frederick, a program manager in the Physics Laboratory, received the Edward Bennett Rosa Award.

· Douglas Howell of Frederick, a utilities systems repairer operator in the Office of the Chief Facilities Management Officer, received the Eugene Casson Crittenden Award.

· Lizbeth Laureano-Perez of Frederick, a physicist, received the Bronze Medal.

· Val R. Miller of Frederick, a physical scientist, received the Bronze Medal.

· Terri J. Talbott of Frederick, a senior management adviser, received the Director’s Award for Excellence in Administration.

· Michelle P. Steves of Frederick, an information systems analyst, received the Bronze Medal.

· Randy L. Wixom of Frederick, a utilities systems repairer operator in the Office of the Chief Facilities Management Officer, received the Eugene Casson Crittenden Award.

· Deborah J. Anderson of Ijamsville, Md., a senior management adviser, received the Director’s Award for Excellence in Administration.

· Patricia A. O’Connor of Mount Airy, Md., a human resources specialist, received the Director’s Award for Excellence in Administration.

· Joan C. Sauerwein of Mount Airy, a supervisory measurement services product specialist, received the Judson C. French Award.

- Elizabeth J. Gentry of Urbana, Md., a general business specialist, received the Bronze Medal.

Congratulations to all of those people recognized.  I was hoping to go to NIST on Friday to see my friend, science comedian Brian Malow (who was performing for some funtion there), but plans just couldn’t be made.

Last Day of WashCo Bio feature

The last articles appear in today Herald-Mail and go more in depth interviews with the two (I believe these re the only two Biotech companies) in the Technical Innovation Center at Hagerstown Community College:  Protein RST, LLC and Ambay Immune Sensors and Controls.

One article is entitled “Creating protein, super enzyme energizes scientist” and interviews the principle at Protein RST, Fusheng Guo.  He’s a former NIH Chemist now working on contract protein purification, recombinant protein production and isolation services.  Based on this article and his CV, looks like he’s trying to create some sort of cellulosic enzyme for biofuels production.

It’s interesting because both Dr Guo and Dr Chandok both travel from the DC/Annapolis area through FredCo to get to HCC.

Dr  Meena Chandok is interviewed in the other article, “Young scientist hunts cancer ‘culprits’ at HCC“.  Her company, Ambay Immune Sensors and Controls, is working on a “biosensor” for early detection of breast cancer in peripheral blood.  I wasn’t able to locate a web site for Ambay, so if anyone knows of one please let me know.

I think it’s interesting because   Chandok gets to be called the “young” scientist at 42 (height and weight we not mentioned), but poor Dr Guo, at 40, gets no such label.  Since I am 46 and prematurely gray, maybe I’ll be able take home the “mid-aged scientist” moniker.

So wraps up the series on HCC and Biotech in Washington County.  I’ll keep looking for more stories and actually have no aversion to broadcasting for our partners to the North.  I hope to visit the HCC incubator at some point in time and talk to these two in person.  There is definitely an opportunity to work more closely with the folks in WashCoBio.

At HCC, biotech students exploring new frontiers

Thursday’s article in the Herald-Mail on the Business of Biotech series features a couple of students in the Biotech program at HCC.  According to the article “HCC’s program is the only one of its kind in this area. The closest is a certificate program – but no degree – in medical lab technology offered by Allegheny College of Maryland, according to the Maryland Higher Education Commission. None was listed in Frederick County.

And no biotech degrees or certificates are offered by area colleges in Pennsylvania or West Virginia, according to officials in those states. “

I find that interesting ana congratulate HCC for leading the way with this essential education program in our area; however,  CCBC (Community College of Baltimore County) does offer an AA degree in Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing, so their statement is not really accurate.  I knew this because when I was working at UMBC Tech Center in Catonsville we tried to hire people out of this program.  Interestingly, we could never get a roster of graduating students to contact an no one ever called me about getting a job.

Looks like the HCC program is addressing this through associations with MedImmune, NCI-Frederick and SAIC.

And to correct my own error, I had said I wished that the article on Monday would identify the Biotech companies and the goods and services they produce.  Looks like that is the feature of Friday’s concluding article with features on both companies.

LifeLine Grows a Cornea, WashCo Leads the Way

I was so caught up in blogging the Herald-Mail articles yesterday (aside from my normal duties as a biotech entrepreneur), that I overlooked an article in the Frederick News-Post about LifeLine Cell Technology in Walkersville.

Although the title is somewhat sensational, “Walkersville company grows cornea”,  it is a nice feature on a small business tucked away in Walkersville that really deserves more attention.  I know I give them enough press, but a lot of people still aren’t familiar with them.  The astute reader will know that the cornea news is actually over a year old and most of that research is going on in California at the parent company International Stem Cell Corp.  I don’t want to diminish the newsworthiness of their research and wish them great success in the future.

Two more articles in the Herald-Mail today are both related to the “cutting edge” program Washington County is using in the High School sciences called Project Lead the Way. The first is called “School’s biomed program on cutting edge” and the second one is “Tech students have variety of biomed career opportunities“. They run the Biotechnology program through Washington County Technical High School, or Tech High for short.

There appears to be some really great stuff going on there.  A summary of some of the classes offered:

Principles of Biomedical Sciences explores the concepts of human medicine and gives them hands-on projects — using animal organs — to investigate human body systems and various health conditions. For example, students team up to determine what led to the death of a fictional person.

In the second course, which Irwin also is teaching to this year’s juniors, students study how human body systems work together “like a machine,” to maintain internal balance and health, she said. Hands-on projects include designing experiments and using software to monitor body functions.

Next fall, she will begin teaching the third course, Medical Interventions, in which students will investigate ways such as gene therapy, pharmacology, surgery, prosthetics, rehabilitation and supportive care to extend and improve the quality of life. Using 3-D imaging, they’ll design a product that can be used as a medical intervention.

So, now I am really jealous. I wonder when we’re going to get a program like this in FredCo?

Biotech Day-by-day: Day 2

We’re following the Herald-Mail feature series on Biotech all week.  There are two more articles today under the header, “Business of Biotech” :  HCC nurturing young biotech companies and Frederick cultivating ’success stories’.  Not a whole lot of new information in either article.

The story about HCC’s incubator is interesting in a couple of respects.  Namely, that they don’t name either company they feature in the article.  They also don’t hyperlink to the HCC web site (a pet peeve I have with the on-line versions of FNP and Gazette, too).  So, courtesy of  FredCoBio, you can find the HCC Technical Innovation Center web site HERE.  It’s a pretty decent web site, even though they haven’t updated their Programs & events page since 2006(?). Strange that that don’t seem to disclose who the tenants are either,  although they offer Marketing as a part of membership.

But I should play nice and quit knit picking their web site.  Just wished they’d have mentioned the companies by name and what types of goods and services they offer.  I’ll try to follow up and get that information for you.

The second article was largely a recap of the new NCI-Frederick facility that we’ve talked about before.  They talk about Ft Detrick “drawing dozens” of small biotechs to Frederick, but do not mention any by name.  They do dwell quite heavily on the MedImmune story, which is interesting because MedImmune doesn’t have anything to do with Ft Detrick.

Both very interesting articles, nonetheless.  I suggest you read them if you haven’t already.

From Washington County to Mumbai

I just saw a breaking news story that AstraZeneca, owner of FredCo’s MedImmune, has “outsourced” their entire IT operation to an Indian firm Infosys in Mumbai (Bombay).  I wonder if this will have any impact on MedImmune’s Maryland Operations?  We’ll see how serious AZ is about making MedImmune a part of the fold, I am afraid.

According to the AP release  “Under the agreement, Infosys will deliver application maintenance services to AstraZeneca’s global operations in areas including manufacturing, supply chain, finance, and human resources.”  If anyone on the ground in Frederick hears anything, please let me know.

NBACC Building at Ft Detrick Under construction

As promised, The Hagerstown Herald-Mail has published two stories today.  Interestingly, they are more about how dependant WashCoBio is on FredCoBio, in particular, Ft Detrick. The first article is about a number of Washington County businesses doing business at the Fort. Although not entirely Biotech focused, interesting nonetheless.   There are a couple interviews/quotes from Marie Keegin (Apparently, based on e-mail I got Sunday, the retired Exec Director of the Ft Detrick Alliance) and FITCI Exec Director Mike Dailey.
I like this quote, in particular:

..in fiscal 2008, one of the largest organizations at Detrick — the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC) — awarded $3.4 billion in contracts, grants and modifications, said Jerome K. Maultsby, associate director of its Office of Small Business Programs.Of that, nearly $129 million went to businesses in Frederick city and county, Maultsby said.

Because of the jobs such contracts create, Keegin said, Detrick’s work generates approximately “half a billion dollars in local salaries and subcontracts” a year.

Or the quote from George Lewis I have heard him recite many times “I often say, if they (Detrick) could pay off in $2 bills, they’d start showing up in grocery stores, in churches … All of a sudden, people would realize how much this means to our area.” So true.

The second story is an interview, primarily, with Col. Robinson. She provides a number of interesting vital statistics that are sometimes hard to find.  For example:

The post covers 1,127 acres — 68 of them owned by the National Cancer Institute but ringed by the fort — inside Frederick city.

In all, there are 8,100 employees, including hundreds of scientists and about 1,300 military personnel, working in more than 40 agencies. Most of them do medical research. Some are in strategic satellite communications and other military support functions.

Four U.S. Cabinet-level departments are at Detrick and a fifth is coming:

• The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is represented by two agencies, including the National Cancer Institute, which has about 3,000 employees working in about 100 buildings at Detrick.

• The U.S. Department of Defense has several agencies at the post. They include the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, which together have 2,300 employees at Detrick.

• The U.S. Department of Agriculture employs about 50 workers at the Agricultural Research Service’s Foreign Disease Weed Science Research Unit. In its Biological Safety Level 3 laboratories, it studies foreign crop diseases “in hopes that we can develop measures that farmers can use when they (these diseases) come to our shores,” said Dr. Douglas Luster, research leader.

Part of this work is to develop “resistance genes” that can be bred into plants to fend off disease, he said.

Luster’s teams also are researching biological control of weeds, “trying to use one organism to control another, instead of using chemicals. It’s the more green, environmentally sustainable approach. We try to use plant pathogens — the microbes that attack weeds — to control weeds” without harming other plants, Luster said.

• The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently dedicated its National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center at Detrick. When the center opens next spring, its 140 scientists and technicians are to give the government new tools for predicting biological attacks and identifying those who commit bio-terror incidents and other so-called bio-crimes.

• The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs plans to build a Veterans Administration clinic at Detrick next year. Detrick spokesman Chuck Gordon said he doesn’t know how many employees it will have.

To understand the scope of what’s to come, you have more data:

“By the middle fall of 2009, I expect to have construction of or expansion of about seven buildings going on all at the same time,” Robinson said.

She said the nearly $1 billion in work that is to be done includes:

• Construction, now under way, on a building for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

• An expansion, already begun, of a building used by the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

• Construction, due to be completed in January, of the Defense Medical Logistics Center.

• Construction, already under way, of the Armed Forces Reserve Center.

• Construction, not yet begun, of the Veterans Administration Community Based Outpatient Clinic.

• Construction of the Navy Medical Research Center, probably starting next year.

Gordon said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is coming, too. But he said he doesn’t know yet whether it will move into an existing building or erect a new one.

Another facility that’s to be built, with private funding, is the Milwaukee Industry for the Blind Supply Store, which sells office and other supplies to the post.

Robinson said many other contracts remain to be awarded.

“I anticipate by the end of next summer, I will have 2,000 to 2,500 construction workers on base every day, with 2,000 cars,” she said.

And, when the agencies move into the new buildings, they will be hiring about 1,425 people, she said.

If Maryland economic development officials are correct, the additional facilities will need supplies and contract help from private companies, leading to “3,500 additional support jobs that are needed outside the base,” she said.

Hagerstown Herald-Mail to feature Biotech all week

I keep an RSS feed to the Hagerstown Herald-Mail on my Reader. According to my Reader stats, it’s the most active RSS feed I have with more than 45 posts per day. I still try to read/scan through it everyday, because if I don’t do it every day, after a couple days there are so many articles I just mark them all as read and move onto the next feed. So it’s a busy feed becasue they post each obituary, police blotter story, news story as individual posts.

Anyway, my point is that a couple days ago I saw one feed about “Sample Biotech post” or something to that effect, which piqued my curiosity. Then there was a long article yesterday and today an announcement that they will be featuring a Biotech story or two every day this week in a theme they’re calling “Biotech day-by-day“

The Herald-Mail today begins a six-part series, Business of Biotech. Following is a look at what the stories say about the economic development, educational and employment opportunities related to biotechnology.

Today

· The way Hagerstown Community College sees it, Washington County stands on the edge of opportunities that could transform its economic future. HCC President Guy Altieri says in a new report that the community must begin discussions about education, economic development and 21st-century bioscience-related jobs.

· Maryland’s top economic development official foresees biotech companies starting to pop up in Washington County in a big way within a few years.

Monday

· Fort Detrick, the military installation that increasingly is home to large governmental biomedical laboratories and agencies, has become both a magnet and a lifesaver to many businesses in Frederick County, Md.

· Fort Detrick’s garrison commander is looking to Washington County for businesses and employees who can support the work at the U.S. Army base’s labs. And she wants to partner with local schools to improve the science curriculum.

Tuesday

· Fort Detrick’s hive of laboratories has drawn dozens of biotech companies to Frederick County, Md. Millions and even billions of dollars in work is available to meet the needs of all of these organizations.

· The Technical Innovation Center at Hagerstown Community College strives to help fledgling scientists. If they succeed, officials hope, more such biotech companies will be drawn to Washington County.

Wednesday

· Technical High School, home of Washington County’s new Academy for Biomedical Sciences, is among a few dozen high schools nationwide pioneering the Project Lead the Way biomed program.

· What do the careers of occupational therapist, paramedic, registered dietitian and pharmacist have to do with biotech?

Thursday

· Two students who next spring are to be the first to graduate from HCC with biotech degrees have landed internships with big biotech organizations in Frederick, Md.

Friday

· Meena Chandok is a scientific sleuth in pursuit of a killer.

· Fusheng Guo works alone, producing batches of concentrated protein for other biotech labs.

Yesterday was a feature about HCC’s incubator program “HCC has a biotech vision“.  It lays out plans for training a biotech workforce to support, initially, new jobs opening up in Frederick (1,400 of them at Ft Detrick by 2010).  They anticipate more Biotech start-ups will move up the 270 corridor to Frederick and then up 70W to Washington County.

Seems logical, but there are some obstacles, as Richard Phoebus, president of the Hagerstown-Washington County Industrial Foundation, known as CHIEF, confesses.

“We are missing a number of elements that biotech firms like. For instance, a research university,” Phoebus said. “They like to be close to a research university.”

The University System of Maryland at Hagerstown has no labs and is not set up to be a research facility, Phoebus said.

Frederick’s “Research University” is Ft Detrick with NCI-Frederick and SAIC.  Nothing like that exists in Hagerstown, with the exception of the growing research interest of the Washington County Hospital system.

So now FredCoBio is in competition with Washington County to establish the first “accelerator” program.  This is the next step out of the “incubator” to have an expansion facility to develop commercially viable goods & services.  But the financial feasibility/sustainability is far from certain.

There’s a bit more about the “Accelerator” concept in a largely redundant piece called “A biotech vision” in today’s paper.  And another piece which focuses on interviews with DBED chief David Edgerly “Biotech wave could make a big splash“.  It’s odd, because both of these articles seem to be just pieces broken out of yesterday’s feature article.

It may be just a bit of creative editing in today’s paper, but I am looking forward to the Series coming up this week.

Army Stops the bleeding on the battlefield, California stops the bleeding at Life Tech-Frederick

I found a few divergent stories this morning I thought you may find interesting.

After my rant in the paper yesterday, I see now that the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine is taking more of the approach that I hope we can adapt in Maryland.  From an article in the San Diego Xconomy:

As institute president Alan Trounson said in a prepared statement Wednesday, “These awards represent the entry of the biotechnology industry into CIRM-funded initiatives to accelerate progress.”

The grants approved and the San Diego biotechs receiving them were:

—$827,072 for Novocell to advance development of “an implantable device” to capture and retain pancreatic stem cells. Novocell researchers have already implanted the device, a semi-permeable pouch, into animals and collected pancreas stem cells, which develop into mature cells that produce insulin.

—$749,520 for a joint effort by Fluidigm of South San Francisco and StemGent, a Cambridge, MA, biotech with operations in San Diego, to develop a screening technology to help stem cell researchers “reverse engineer” skin cells into stem cells. The technique would enable researchers to work with stem cells in a way that avoids ethical objections and technical barriers to using embryonic stem cells.

—$869,262 for an application by Invitrogen, now known as Life Technologies, for developing methods of modelling human neurodegenerative diseases in human embryonic stem cells. Researchers plan to focus their work on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

—$906,629 for Vala Sciences to develop new and improved techniques for developing mature heart cells called cardiomyocyte cells from human embryonic stem cells.

In a related move, the institute’s 29-member governing body agreed to accelerate funding for commercial entities to provide “greater financial stability” for California’s biotechnology sector, which “faces significant challenges arising from the credit crisis and economic downturn.”

Thank you California!! So this is really good news for Invitrogen-New, New LifeTech-Frederick, especially after the sad news yesterday about layoffs (I heard that the Stem Cell groups were not impacted. If you have more dirt, let me know).  Since a lot of the Stem Cell Research at LifeTEch is happening in Frederick, I think we’ll see some “trickle down”.

Speaking of trickle down, or stopping it, there was another article in the Army.Mil/News site about the WoundStat product I blogged about previously.  This one is more of a review of effectiveness after being deployed in the field.  It looks like this revolutionary product is going to save a lot of our soldiers who are putting their necks on the line everyday for us.

Army fields new equipment to stop bleeding

Dec 04, 2008
BY Sarah Maxwell
MRMC

Combat Gauze and WoundStat granules give Army medics a better chance of saving bleeding casualties. Photo by MRMC

Test results show Combat Gauze field bandages and WoundStat granules both demonstrated marked improvements over what’s currently used to control bleeding in the field, said Col. Paul Cordts of the Army Surgeon General’s office.

“These products improve survival, result in less blood loss and improved post-injury blood pressures,” he said about findings from the tests conducted by Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Institute of Surgical Research.

Excessive blood loss is the number one killer on the battleground, said Cordts, a surgeon. Both products can stop bleeding quickly in wounds where tourniquets can’t be used, he said.

About 270,000 12-foot strips of Combat Gauze are expected to be in theater by the end of the year, said Lt. Col. Sean Morgan from Program Executive Office-Soldier, the agency fielding most of the bandages. More than 17,000 packages of WoundStat also will be working their way to the field, he said.

Combat Gauze uses kaolin, a fine, white clay, to stop bleeding, Cordts said, and WoundStat granules react with blood to form a barrier, preventing more bleeding.

More than 92 percent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan survive their injuries in combat — the highest percentage of any war. Master Sgt. Horace Tyson, a combat medic, said he attributes the high number of people being saved to the advanced tools the Army provides medics, such as dressings that stop or slow blood flow from wounds.

Having recently returned from a 15-month assignment in Iraq as the senior enlisted manager in a battalion aid station in the heart of Baghdad, Tyson said, he saw first-hand the benefits of dressings with blood-clotting capabilities.

“I categorize these products as lifesavers for us,” said Tyson, who now works as a senior operations manager for Medical Research and Materiel Command.

A service member can bleed to death within minutes of being hurt, Tyson said.

“The bandages make the difference between a [Soldier] having no chance of living because he’ll bleed out in five minutes versus me getting him to an aid station within 20 minutes and him staying alive,” Tyson said. “Without the bandages, he could be dead.”

With 19 years of experience and four deployments in conflict areas under his belt, Tyson said, he’s seen the Army’s scientific research drastically improve medics’ tools and training.

“If we’re going to get something else better for the battlefield, that’s great,” he said.

The new dressings are expected not only to save more lives, but also to bring significant cost savings to the government, Cordts said. Combat Gauze is less than $30 per dressing, compared to the currently used HemCon bandage, which
uses chitosan from shrimp shells to stop blood and costs $88 per bandage. WoundStat also is less expensive than the QuikClot granules it replaces.

The Army plans to equip combat lifesavers to carry three gauzes, and eventually all Soldiers will have one in their Improved First Aid Kits. Combat medics, who are highly trained in emergency trauma, will be given three gauzes, but will be the only ones to carry WoundStat, since it requires more medical expertise to use, Cordts
said.

Although the new hemostatic dressings are promising great improvements, Dr. David Baer, ISR’s director of surgical research, said it doesn’t mean the Army isn’t still looking for the next line of products that could offer even more improvements.

ISR scientists looked into about two dozen other products in the last few years before they discovered Combat Gauze and WoundStat, and they will continue their efforts for even more cutting-edge products to save lives, he said.

“The way I think about it is the HemCon was better than the plain gauze, [Combat Gauze] is better than the HemCon, and it can get incrementally better,” Baer said.

And last, but not least, is some news breaking from U Md College Park. I think the news is big enough that we can include them in our little blog this time. All the way from WebIndia web site (I didn’t look very hard to find a closer source):

Gene mutation that appears to prevent heart disease identified
Washington | December 12, 2008 11:45:34 AM IST

A team of scientists at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore has identified a novel gene mutation among the Old Order Amish population that significantly reduces the level of triglycerides in the blood and appears to help prevent heart disease.

“We found that about 5 percent of the Amish have a gene mutation that speeds up the breakdown of triglycerides, which are fat particles in the blood associated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease,” said the lead author, Toni I. Pollin, Ph.D., an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Carriers of the mutation have half the amount of apoC-III, a protein linked to triglycerides, than people without the gene variant.

Pollin said that those with this mutation of the APOC3 gene have higher levels of HDL-cholesterol, the so-called “good” cholesterol, and lower levels of LDL-cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol.

Let’s hope this discovery will save more lives than the battlefield bandages in the days to come.

FredCoBio News & in the News

On a happy note, the Frederick News-Post ran the story I was interviewed for today.

It was a “positive” write up about how Md Stem Cell Funding helps “research” in the state.  **I’ll let you read for yourself:

Researchers:  First stem cell symposium bodes well for state

Yours truly was portrayed as the lone critic in the crowd, but I’ve never fancied myself as being a prolific researcher. Research is important, but research is about spending money, while Operations is about making profit. I still think that Private money will do a better, faster, cheaper job at developing commercially viable products than government funded research (as I sit here writing form my government-funded Incubator office).

And on a sadder note, I was tipped off by a comment yesterday that the New, New Life Technologies laid off a number of people yesterday.  I am not certain of the magnitude of the layoff, but I am pretty certain it will be related to some form of reorganization resulting form the merger with ABI.

If anyone out there was affected (and a few have already been in touch), please let me know if there is anything I can do to make a connection and help you navigate your next adventure.

I remember portions of  my “outplacement” camp in 2000.  One of the first sessions the “counselor” read us Dr Seuss’ “Oh, The Thinks you can Think” in her best, enthusiast  kindergartner teacher voice. I thought, you must be kidding me.  I’ve always preferred the Sneetches.

***I attended the Chamber Academy session last week about PR and Media Relations, “PR For Dummies“.  I found out that Cliff Cumbers frowns upon cutting & pasting whole articles.  I like the fact that they have been calling me and asking for leads for different biotech stories and occasionally even giving me free PR.