Ft Detrick Spring Research Festival

Just a reminder that the Annual Spring Festival is being held again this year at the Fort on Wednesday and Thursday this week (May 14th & 15th).

The event is open to the public, you just need to tell the armed guards ou’re going to the Spring Festival or the “Tent Show”.

If you’ve never been there, it’s definitely worth a couple hours time, either chatting with the vendors or Poster presenters. This year appears to be unusual because it seems like every year there is either torrential downpour, oppressive heat and even worse, both in combination. Standing in that tent is not pleasant in 100% humidity and 100 degrees.

I also like the theme this year: The Cancer Tree. They will be giving out free seeds, although it appears you’ll have to be a presenter or a exhibitor.

Here’s the story on the tree:

The Cancer Tree (Camptothecaacuminata)Our Spring Research Festival tradition is to choose something found in nature—plant or animal—that produces substances shown to have biochemical activity in fighting or preventing disease. In past years, we have featured the rosy periwinkle of Madagascar, Catharanthus roseus , the marine cone snail, Conus textilis, the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, the honeybee, Apis mellifera, and the gila monster (Heloderma suspectum and H. horridum). The “Cancer Tree,” a member of the tupelo family, is known by several additional non-scientific names: the Happy Tree and the Tree of Life. Those names are honestly earned. This is the tree that gave us the anticancer compound camptothecin, a substance found in the tree’s bark. The resulting drugs, topotecan and irinotecan hydrochloride are useful in treating breast cancers, ovarian cancer, colon cancer, malignant melanoma, small cell lung cancer, thyroid cancers, lymphomas and leukemias. The compounds, which have antiviral as well as anti-tumor properties, are also used for the treatment of AIDS. In 2002, the FDA approved another compound similar to topotecan as second-line therapy for certain cervical ovarian and lung cancers. The new compound, through regulating gene expression, can block growth of blood vessels that tumor cells need to survive. The tumor, deprived of its blood supply, can then shrink and die. The National Cancer Institute’s Developmental Therapeutics Program is responsible for the find. Giovanni Melillo, MD, together with colleagues Robert Shoemaker, PhD, and Nick Scudiero, PhD, devised a high-throughput screen for 2,000 compounds and found three other effective compounds in addition to the topotecan analog. The Cancer tree is native to China, growing up to 75 feet tall in warmer climates. In climates such as Maryland, the tree is easily grown from seed and can be kept indoors with ample warmth and bright light, when pruned to manageable size. The Spring Research Festival organizers, in a nod to both the cancer tree and to fostering biodiversity for the sake of research have ordered a supply of Camptotheca acuminata seeds, and will be awarding them to Festival participants. The recipients will receive instructions along with their botanic treasures to ensure that both have the best chances to live long and prosper.

USAMRIID Teams with Hopkins for Graduate degree at Ft Detrick

This looks like a pretty good opportunity for our “younger” readers out there.  The Job Search page continues to be one of the most popular on this site and I often wonder how many of these inquiries are from recent graduates?

In any event I saw a brief note in the FNP today and then pulled the original press release from Hopkins web site.  Here’s the skinny:

JHU Biotech Program, U.S. Army Enter
Collaborative Relationship
Agreement will expand educational opportunities in
biodefense research field

The Johns Hopkins University and the U.S. Army have agreed to work together to train scientists to develop vaccines and medicines to defend against biological attacks.

Students accepted into the program will study part-time to earn Johns Hopkins Master of Science in Biotechnology degrees with concentrations in biodefense. Simultaneously, they will work for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), located at Fort Detrick, Md.

Under a five-year agreement between Johns Hopkins’ Advanced Biotechnology Studies Program and USAMRIID, graduate students will be employed under the Army’s Student Career Experience Program and will be eligible for Army reimbursement of their Johns Hopkins tuition.

“Based on a long history of excellence in biotechnology research and education at both institutions, this is an invaluable cooperative effort that will significantly enhance the educational opportunities of our biodefense students,” said Richard McCarty, chair of the Advanced Biotechnology Studies program in the university’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Advanced Academic Programs. “We hope it will lead to future interactions and joint scientific research between our respective faculty and scientists.”

Johns Hopkins advisors will work with students to select an appropriate course structure that will capitalize on the resources being offered by USAMRIID, such as research staff and laboratory facilities.

USAMRIID does basic and applied research on biological threats to develop vaccines, drugs and tests to protect soldiers, but much of the science it produces is also applied to civilian medicine.

“USAMRIID is very excited about sponsoring these master’s students and offering them the opportunity to work at USAMRIID on vaccines and therapeutics against extremely interesting pathogens,” said Peter Hobart, USAMRIID’s science director. “This is one more manifestation of the institute’s keen interest in working closely with colleges and universities to train the next generation of scientists.”

About the Advanced Biotechnology Studies part-time Master of Science in Biotechnology Program: Grounded in biochemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology, this program allows students to delve into pure science, applied science, lab science, regulatory affairs, and biotechnology enterprise. They can pursue a general master’s in biotechnology or focus on one of three concentrations that are available fully online: bioinformatics, biotechnology enterprise, or regulatory affairs. Concentrations in biodefense and molecular targets and drug discovery require some on-site instruction.

For more information about Johns Hopkins’ part-time graduate degree available through the Advanced Biotechnology Studies Program, please visit biotechnology.jhu.edu or contact our academic advisors:

Patrick Cummings, Senior Associate Program Chair Biotechnology 410-516-4724; cupat@jhu.edu

Dr. Kristina Obom, Associate Program Chair Biotechnology/Bioinformatics 301-294-7159; kobom@jhu.edu

Lynn Johnson Langer, Senior Associate Program Chair Biotechnology (MS/MBA, Bioscience Regulatory Affairs, and Biotechnology Enterprise) 301-294-7063; ljlanger@jhu.edu

NCI’s Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory

I ran across this article last week in medicalphysicsweb.com, so might as well post it. All kinds of news from the Fort this week:

Apr 15, 2008

A new take on MRI contrast

The US National Cancer Institute (NCI) has given the go-ahead for preclinical characterization of a nanomaterials-based contrast agent that’s being billed, at least by developers in industry, as “a completely new approach to enhancing contrast during MRI procedures”.

The modified fullerene compound comes from the labs of Luna Innovations, a Roanoke, VA-based technology-transfer company with interests in healthcare, telecoms, energy and defence markets.

Studies of the MRI contrast candidate will include characterization of its physical attributes, its in vitro biological properties and its in vivo compatibility using animal models. Researchers will also examine critical parameters related to distribution, metabolism, elimination and toxicity.

The study programme is expected to take a year from receipt through the in vivo phase. Evaluation will be carried out at the NCI’s Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory (NCL) in Frederick, MD. The NCL’s remit is to standardize preclinical characterization of nanomaterials intended for therapeutic and diagnostic applications.

“The outcome of this characterization study is the report necessary for an Investigational New Drug application,” said Chris Kepley, nanoimmunology group leader at Luna and principal investigator on the study. “The process of getting a new drug to market can be a lengthy one. However, with the NCL behind us we hope to move forward more quickly bringing to market a next-generation solution for MRI contrast agents.”

Baylog’s Biotech

I’ve enjoyed Jason Balog’s write-ups about Biotech in the FNP. I believe this is the second one.  He seems to have an interesting angle on the events of the times and certainly has a good grasp of the local Biotech scene.

Among the interesting points:

• approximately two dozen lawmakers were forming a biotechnology and life sciences caucus to promote the industry throughout the state.
• The Biotechnology Investment Incentive Tax Credit remained intact and was again funded in the budget at the amount of $6 million
• The Md Stem Cell Research fund “did suffer a cut, I am happy to report that lawmakers settled on $19 million for the fund with $1 million more possible, depending on the availability of extra money from the Cigarette Restitution Fund.”
  • My Rant here:  Funding Stem Cell research with tobacco money? Oh, the horror.  In case you forgot, a vast majority of MdSCRF funding went to Hopkins who, by the way, already make a boat load of cash treating patients who use tobacco.

And the summary paragraph:

It was a quiet year in the legislature on the life sciences front. The current budget situation did not allow for the expansion of current programs or the initiation of new programs. However, momentum continues to build for the life sciences industry in the state as reflected by the creation of the new biotechnology and life sciences caucus. Many anticipate that the next two legislative sessions are going to be critical for the industry to grow in Maryland, and assuming that the economy cooperates I would expect to see new and exciting initiatives to help Maryland become the premier location for the life sciences industry.

Recent News and Links with the past

I have been busy the past few days and haven’t been able or motivated enough to put a real post together. So this morning, after being reminded that I had left MedImmune off the Companies list (which is one of the most popular Pages on the Blog in terms of hits), I wanted to take a step back to a press release from Feb. 6th from a new company started in Frederick County named Vaccinogen. This could be a really big story if they are able to demonstrate this process is effective.

Here’s the blurb from their web site:

Frederick, MD – February 6, 2008 – Cancer research pioneer Michael G. Hanna Jr. Ph.D., also Vaccinogen, Inc.’s Founder, Chairman and CEO has acquired the rights to OncoVAX®, a vaccine with the potential to prevent colon cancer from recurring in many patients.

“This agreement represents a major step forward in defeating cancer by increasing the body’s immunity to it,” said Dr. Hanna, who has been working on cancer vaccines for more than 30 years.

“This agreement represents a major step forward in defeating cancer by increasing the body’s immunity to it.”

In the agreement, Vaccinogen obtained exclusive license to OncoVAX® Active Specific Immunotherapy as well as an important component of the product TICE BCG. The vaccine is made from the patients’ own tumor and is injected back into the patient to effect an immune response against recurrence of that cancer.

The FDA views Stage II colon cancer as an unmet medical need. When colon cancer recurs after surgery it is frequently fatal. OncoVAX® prevents that recurrence and thereby reduces recurrence and deaths by over 50%. Vaccinogen is currently preparing to commercialize the vaccine in Switzerland.

I should also post an update off their web site from Feb 27th, that announces the availability of the vaccine in Europe:

Frederick, MD – February 27, 2008 –Vaccinogen, Inc. announced that its new vaccine to block colon cancer from recurring will be commercially available in Europe starting June 2008.

“This makes OncoVAX® the world’s first commercially viable vaccine for colon cancer,” said Dr. Michael G. Hanna, Jr., Ph.D., Chairman & CEO of Vaccinogen. “It is the beginning of our worldwide strategy of profitable distribution. Questions of the feasibility of patient specific anti-cancer therapies have been raised and this new European initiative will obviate these issues.”

Pro Vaccine AG, a leading Swiss-based pharmaceutical distributor, will begin distributing OncoVAX® throughout Switzerland starting with Zurich and Neuchâtel by June 2008. “We are very excited about the prospects of offering OncoVAX® to Swiss and foreign patients,” said Renato Duckeck, GM of Pro Vaccine.

Pharmacenter Hungary, a rapidly growing oncology company that commercializes a broad portfolio of oncology treatments, will begin distributing the vaccine in Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia starting in the third quarter of 2008. Dr. Christian Galli, Director of Business Development of Pharmacenter Hungary noted, “We recognize the excellent opportunity OncoVAX® provides us and the growing population of colon cancer patients in Eastern Europe.”

And I also wanted to go waay back to an article I started a post about in January that ran in the FNP when Vaccinogen first started. From the FNP, 1/22/08:

A company that uses a unique system to fight colon cancer has opened in Frederick.

Vaccinogen, located at 5300 Westview Drive, uses some of the patient’s own cancer cells to help cure the disease.

The company is headed by Michael Hanna, director of the National Cancer Research Center in Frederick from 1975 to 1983.

“At that time, I headed the entire operation,” he said of the cancer center. “We went from a small center to 50 buildings.”

After he left, the center’s operations were broken into several divisions, each headed by a different director, he said.

Although a resident of Bethany Beach, Del., Hanna said he is happy to be back in Frederick. It seemed the perfect place to locate the headquarters for his company.

Vaccinogen has a manufacturing plant in Emmen, Holland.

Although still undergoing studies here for approval, Vaccinogen’s system is being used in Switzerland.

“It is considered a transplant there,” Hanna said.

The immunotherapy, known as OncoVAX, follows surgery for removal of Stage II colon cancer. The tumor cells are processed in the facility in the Netherlands.

A specific vaccine is created using those cells and injected into the patient in four doses during a six-month period. The vaccine unleashes the body’s own immune system to fight cancer cells.

“It is the first time a patient-specific therapy has been successful,” Hanna said.

“We have done all the hard work. There are final clinical trials that need to be done,” he said.

Even though it was put on the fast track by the federal Food and Drug Administration, it will be four years before OncoVax could be on the market in the United States, Hanna said.

He said he would like to eventually build a manufacturing plant in the U.S., most likely in Baltimore.

“It is truly a Frederick product,” Hanna said. Research for the process began at the Frederick Cancer Research Center.

When he left the local cancer research center, Hanna ran a research institute for Litton Bionetics on individualized targeted therapy. That institute was later acquired by Azko Nobel. At that time, Hanna’s research team also developed a treatment for bladder cancer that is considered the standard for today.

Hanna acquired the OncoVaX technology and formed a company called PerImmune in 1997. In 1998, PerImmune merged with Intracel Corp., but Hanna continued to hold OncoVAX assets and formed Vaccinogen.

More than $300 million has been spent on research during the 35 years of OncoVax’s development.

Besides Switzerland, and eventually the U.S., Hanna said the company is working to market the product in Eastern Europe and other locations.

I knew a bit about the history of Vaccinogen before this story came out because we were doing a little work with their predecessor, Intracel, as they were closing up operations. Intracel also made HDL and LDL, which I believe Vaccinogen also acquired and is making today. Anyway, they have real nice History and TimeLine pages, with nostalgic pictures scrolling across the top of their About Us page.

So here’s where the story gets real interesting. The whole thing started in the 60’s with the formation of Litton Bionetics, which became a popular target of the conspiracy theorists in the 90’s due to their links with the military and germ warfare. It is a documented fact that Litton Bionetics was a major Defense Contractor of the time and the recipient of a1970 Dept. of Defense appropriations request for 10 million dollars for a 5 year study to develop immune system targeted micro-organisms for germ warfare. What they did with the money is where people get excited.

This research was overseen by Dr. Hanna the likes of emerging giants in the field such as Dr Robert Gallo, working at the National Cancer Institute at the time. To make a long story short, the conspiracy theorists claim, amongst other things, that this group is responsible for introducing AIDS & Ebola as a contaminant in a polio or small pox vaccine used in Africa in the 70’s. The allegation is that the vaccine was contaminated with monkey retrovirus that were used in germ warfare experiments.

Quite frankly, I was expecting to do a brief post on he topic, but my research took a strange turn towards the bizarre I had not anticipated. A long, unsubstantiated rumor, or maybe just a bit more Frederick County Biotech folklore?

And I thought Stem Cells were controversial……

My 100th Post: Marligen Makes a Deal

It’s been a while since I’ve heard anything about Marligen, the only Biotech company in my home town of Ijamsville. And even though they are less than a mile from the Montgomery County line, they’re still a FredCoBio member. That’s like having a semi-sterile cell culture flask, I guess. Here’s the news clip, via businesswire.com:

Marligen Exclusively Licenses Genisphere Labeling Technology for the Detection of microRNAs on the xMAP® Platform

Marligen Launches Vantage™ Line for the Purification, Labeling and Detection of microRNAs

IJAMSVILLE, Md.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Marligen Biosciences, Inc., a supplier of innovative products for the life sciences research market, will become the exclusive provider of Genisphere’s biotinylated labeling kits for detection of microRNAs on the xMAP^® multiplex platform. The microRNA labeling kits using Genisphere Inc.’s 3DNA^™ dendrimer signal amplification technology will be an integral product to Marligen’s new offering supporting researchers studying microRNAs. The Vantage™ product line includes reagent kits for purifying, labeling and detecting microRNA species.

Genisphere’s unique 3DNA^™ dendrimer technology is based on highly branched DNA structures serving as scaffolds for multiple biotins. The use of Genisphere’s signal amplification technology in combination with the Vantage™ microRNA detection panels offers researchers a fast and cost-effective system to directly profile multiple microRNAs in a single sample. The complete system offers exceptional sensitivity and throughput capabilities of greater than 100 samples in a single day and is compatible with total RNA or enriched RNA including degraded RNA from archived tissues. The initial Vantage™ microRNA Detection Panels are designed for profiling the relative abundance of different microRNA species known to be relevant in oncology. The Vantage™ Products will be launched at the upcoming annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research.

“High throughput profiling of MicroRNAs presents a challenge when combining rapid, effective labeling with improved detection sensitivity,” said Dr. Robert Getts, Director of R&D at Genisphere. “The complete Vantage™ package, having integrated our rapid 3DNA™ dendrimer microRNA labeling method with Marligen’s carefully designed detection panels, provides an optimized solution with consistent performance and much needed sensitivity on the xMAP® high-throughput detection platform.”

“Because microRNA play such an important role in tumor development and progression, it is vital we offer researchers innovative tools that allow them to profile these biological markers in archived samples. Our collaboration with Genisphere allows us to provide one of the most rapid and sensitive methods to screen directly from such samples,” said James Lazar, Chief Scientific Officer of Marligen Biosciences. “This will not only advance basic research but should expedite the application of microRNA detection in the diagnosis of cancer.”

It’s strange, because this article couldn’t be more timely. The Founder & CEO, Sherry Challberg, was the one who hired me in April 1988 to move South to Maryland. It’s hard to believe that it has been 20 years ago to this day.

I was working in a lab at the University of Rochester doing papilloma virus research (which supported research leading to a Nobel prize for Micheal Bishop in 1989 and in support of research into Open Reading Frames, which lead to the 1993 Nobel Prize for Sharp & Roberts and also 1989 Nobel prize in Chemistry for Thomas Cech’s discovery of Ribozymes) and steroid hormone modulation of gene expression (in support of research into Protein Phosphorylation as a regulatory mechanism of proteins leading to the 1992 Nobel prize for Edmund Fisher and Edwin Krebs and leading to the discovery of COX-2 enzyme and COX-2 inhibitors in 1991 which was subsequently “borrowed” by Pfizer and made into the blockbuster drug Celebrex, reaffirming Dr Young’s assertion that I was leaving academia to go work in the “Evil Empire” that is Industrial research).

But enough name dropping, lest you think this blog is just about shameless self-promotion.

Back to the story. We moved down here in 1988 to work in the Molecular Diagnostics Division of Life Technologies. This was sold in 1990 or ‘91 to become Digene. To the left you see the 25 year old version of yours truly, pretending I am doing lab work. This is from the front page of the Baltimore Sun’s Business section on Dec. 21, 1988. The story was about our pending FDA approval for (one of?) the first clinically approved DNA test on the market. You may notice that the paper has a tinge of orange from age, and if you look closely, you’ll see my beard was still orange, too. By the way, the Dow closed at a mere 2,166 that day, a 1-year CD would yield 9.00 % and the Prime was 10.5%.

Another busy day in the news

I was so caught up with some of the news yesterday, that I missed a whole special section of the business pages in the FNP called Progress 2008.

This section contained features on many local companies we’ve covered in the past: Akonni, FiberCell Systems, SAIC-Frederick, SuperArray and Dynport.

As the Opening “Editorial” suggests:

There may be no more exciting industry than biotechnology in these opening years of the 21st Century.

Maryland has more than 350 biotech companies and Frederick is a growing hub for research, home to nearly 40 biotech firms.

Economic development is targeting this low-impact, high-potential area; our educators are gearing to train the next generation of workers for what is anticipated to be a booming sector.

Among the highlights of the feature on SAIC-Frederick called “Cutting Edge”:

• Science Application International Corp., or SAIC, has been a mainstay of Frederick’s biotech research community since 1972 when President Nixon’s declared the “War on Cancer”
• SAIC-Frederick employs about 1,770 people, and operates on the largest single research contract awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services.
• SAIC-Frederick occupies 68 acres and 116 buildings at Fort Detrick
• Working with about 800 employees of the National Cancer Institute, the company operates from basic research and experimental levels, up to clinical trials and vaccine production (in their new facility off Rt 85 adjacent to the Ballenger Creek waste water treatment plant).
• SAIC-Frederick is currently monitoring 300 clinical trials that are under way all around the world, from Africa to Southeast Asia, and in the United States as well
• The company is also managing test locations at 16 hospitals around the country to deliver the latest in cancer care to rural and underserved urban areas
• In a separate article in today’s FNP, the parent of SAIC-Frederick reported revenues for 2007 of $8.94 billion, up 11 percent from the previous fiscal year

Dynamic DynPort: Headquartered just off U.S. 15, the DVC building covers a total of 60,000 square feet in the small business park, paralleling Thomas Johnson Drive. With over 87,000 employees worldwide, according to senior manager of communications April Finnen, “DVC is a world-class provider of solutions for the development of biopharmaceutical products.” More than specializing in vaccines for biological defense, Finnen said more recently DVC has begun to specialize in chemical defense and emerging infectious diseases.

Don’t forget to check out their current openings HERE. Rumor has it that they’re also looking to hire a number of for paid students internships over the summer! The application deadline is Aprill 11th, so you don’t have much time. I also wanted to give the interns from Hood we have working here get a jump on the competition, so I didn’t let the news out earlier.

FiberCell Doing Well: Since I know the owners pretty well, not much I can add. I know that they are busy this week strumming up business in New England (I’ve heard there are a few decent Biotech & academic institutions up there) and then off to the Left Coast for more Business Development. Rumor has it they’re going to get a big order for some systems from one of those Pharmas in NE. I hope they do. All I know is that John needs to be here tomorrow with me to cut open the three HF systems I have running with my MSC which have (hopefully) differentiated into neurons using placental basement membrane extract as a matrix.

SuperArray: The company has become a thriving biotech firm that sells its products worldwide : So successful, rumor has it, that they’re looking at a brand new, larger facility. SuperArray is home to about 65 employees. Although still a small number in comparison to many other companies, SuperArray has no problem finding business. “Sales are increasing. We are making a name for ourselves,” says Heather Fox-Brashears (yet another former Life Tekker). SuperArray experienced an 85 percent increase in revenue from 2005 to 2006.  I hope to be able to use their Stem Cell products pretty soon, pending my results from this weeks FiberCell collaboration.  I had set up some experiments about a year ago, but I was not able to follow through on it so I owe them a visit.

And finally, Quick Draw about Akonni.   They have been in the news so much lately, I don’t know if there is much more to say about them, other than the fact that they’re doing pretty well, leasing more space and expanding.  Here’s something I didn’t know:  The company was founded in Russia in 1988 by Dr. Andrei Mirzabekov, the director of the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow. The team was brought to the United States in 1995 and the technology’s license was acquired by Akonni in 2002.  They are about 25 people strong, but I look for them to add more pretty soon.

I also wanted to direct you to the North (or is that the West?) with the announcement that Washington County is opening a new incubator in Hagerstown. According to the Herald-Mail, Hagerstown CC “has opened 11 wet labs suitable for biotech research, with $1.3 million from the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development, Maryland Technology Development Corporation and the Washington County Commissioners”.  Sounds like people have caught on to the success of incubators elsewhere in the state.  Now if they start one in Ocean City…..

Too many topics, too little time

Today, as the weather breaks and the sun warms the ground, there are so many stories coming out from little old Frederick County, I won’t be able to do justice to them all.

In the Frederick News-Post today there are three interesting articles: The Tech Transfer Boon at the Fort, Our Resident Supply of Infected Mosquitos and an infestation of “cRusty crabs” in the Monocacy.

The first article is about The Fort Detrick Technology Transfer Initiative (FDTTI), where start-ups like me have access to technology developed at Ft Detrick. 11 companies have received FDTTI funding, nine of them are from Maryland, four from Frederick, with three from FITCI.

I was very interested about the growth of genetically-modified mosquitoes within Fort Detrick, because I am sure someone will read this and mount a new round of protests about GMO and all of the wide-spread pain and pestilence that is cultivated behind the concertina-wired walls of the Fort. Actually, I found it interesting because we know one of the PI’s at the lab through our daughter’s primary school. They are not really making GMM’s (genetically-modified mosquitoes), not there’s anything wrong with that or that they’d tell us if they were. I’ll bet there are plenty of GM-drosophila (fruit flies), though.

The third story is about the invasion of the Upper Monocacy with “rusty crayfish“, theorized to come form dumped bait buckets. So the DNR would like to ban fishing with crayfish in the Monocacy to prevent further spread of the invaders, which overwhelm the native crawdads and compete with game fish food resources. From the sounds of it, the rusties are much bigger and reddish in hue. Maybe they can be farmed for human consumption?

On to the other news:

Since posts about Jobs seem to popular, I saw a news feed about a Bioscience Career Fair in Bethesda. I’ll just cut and paste the feed:

BioSpace, the world’s leading online bioscience job board and life science career fair company, will host

the BioCapital Career Fair in Bethesda, MD on Thursday, April 17, 2008. The

event will take place at the Bethesda Marriott from 11 am to 4 pm. Life science professionals from across the BioCapital region including

Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, and Washington, D.C., will attend the biotech

job fair to meet in person with leading biotech and pharmaceutical

companies. Candidates will interview for careers with Aerotek Scientific,

Emergent BioSolutions, Lockheed Martin, SAIC-Frederick and many others.

Companies at the event will be hiring to fill clinical research jobs,

science jobs, engineering jobs, pharmaceutical sales jobs, formulation jobs

and a myriad of other opportunities.

The last BioCapital Career Fair, held on October 23, 2007, provided the

employers with over 500 pre-registered job seekers. Before the event

several exhibitors took advantage of the private BioSpace Career Fair

resume database to scout talent and schedule interviews ahead of time.

BioSpace encourages interested career fair candidates to pre-register

for the event at:
http://careers.biospace.com/Jobs/Public/CareerReceptionDetails.aspx?RECEPTION_ID=139

Candidates are required to hold a four year degree in a relevant

discipline and have at least two years of experience in a

bioscience-related field or industry.

The Bethesda Marriott is located at 5151 Pooks Hill Road, Bethesda, Maryland.

And last, but not least, a nice bit of news coming out from ImQuest, on Executive Way. ImQuest BioSciences, Inc. announced today the publication of the results of an important structure- activity relationship study to investigate the efficacy and toxicity of a series of pyrimidinedione analogs against HIV-1 and HIV-2.

Maybe they need to have a Job Board, too!

Updates from Ft Detrick

It’s Sunday morning, watching Meet the Press, so I guess it is a good time to update a few things going on at the Fort.

First, I will make a disclosure that much of my information is coming through my affiliation with the Frederick Chapter of AFCEA International. I have blogged this before, but wanted you to take a look at the updated and improved web site. Of particular note is the AFCEA Golf Outing at Whiskey Creek May 13th. Since we all like to golf and MdBio is no longer sponsoring their tournament in Frederick (which was always one of the best BioTech social events of the year IMHO), we’re going to try ad carry on the tradition. There are still sponsorships available and you can bet I’ll be harassing my friends at MedImmune, Lonza and other big Bio’s to get involved.

The presentation last month was by David W. Williams, US Army Medical Research & Material Command. You can get a copy of his presentation HERE. The USAMRMC and Mr Williams command a huge purchasing budget for all things related to Medical Materials and Medical-directed Research. The emphasis of this presentation were updates regarding the construction of the consolidated Logistics facility, the Defense Medical Logistics Center.

Also at the Fort this month, I wanted to highlight the excellent Seminar series, which is open to the public. I put the whole schedule on the Calendar page. A couple of highlights (for me) are
Dr. Valeri Vasioukhin, PhD, Cell Polarity in Self-Renewal and Differentiation of Stem/Progenitor Cells on April 7th and on April 18th Stem Cells and Early Lineage Development given by Janet Rossant, PhD. from the Hospital for Sick Children of Toronto.

There is also a very interesting looking retreat to Gettysburg on April 10th & 11th called the Cancer And Inflammation Program Workshop. Looks like a very comprehensive and interesting agenda, but not sure if I’ll be able to sneak out for two days.

Tech Awards wrap-up

The Tech Awards last night was a pretty good time. Aside from running into a few people I hadn’t seen in a number of years, I also met a few new people. It’s all about Networking. I was hoping to post a few pictures, but will have to see what I’ve got. I forgot to grab my camera from the house when I left in the morning and made a quick dash into the house over lunch. I ran in the back door, grabbed the camera off the PC in my daughter’s room and right out the front door. Apparently, I left the back gate open and the slider into the back porch open a bit, too. When my wife got home from work she thought someone had broken in. I was just worried about waking up the dogs, because they would have wanted to got outside and get some attention. I didn’t realize until I got to Lynfield and took the camera out that the battery was critically low. Such are the hazards of teenage daughters. I forgot to plug it in last night, so the battery was still drained this morning and I couldn’t download the few pictures I took.

But this is supposed to be a post about the event and not a litany of lame excuses of why I didn’t post any pictures.

I learned that I am a poor prognosticator. The only award winner I guessed correctly was Akonni (Small business of the Year). I was pretty sure about that one, as they’ve made all the right moves. They have a fascinating product, with both military and health care uses, they’ve run the gamut of the various funding organizations and moved into the downtown historic district along Carrol Creek. Plus, they’re growing and hiring people and the new facility is really great.

And so the battle of Frederick last night was won by the IT guys, as both of the other winners were IT companies.

Firm of the year went to Regent Education Incorporated . According to Rick Harris, Executive Director of the Tech Alliance of the Tech Council of Maryland: “This company has revolutionized the way financial aid is analyzed and dispersed in the United States. It has seen growth by more than 300 percent, which is phenomenal, by any standard and their products are truly breakthrough technology. Regent is a model for how to start and grow a business to meet a need.”

Mike Gaver with GTI Federal took the Executive of the Year award. To be honest with you, I am not really sure about the “product” they provide, but can see from their web site that they have contracts with the General Services Administration (GSA), U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (USAMRMC), the State of Maryland, DHS, DOE, Navy, the State Department and the NIH to name a few.

There was a final award give to SAIC-Frederick, Inc.. This was the Technology Leadership Award. A lot of times people forget how big and important SAIC really is to Fort Detrick and the county’s biotech community. For example, here are all of their job openings in Frederick:

At Fort Detrick

Geoffrey Way Vaccine Production Facility

Clinical Monitoring Program on Industry Lane

TJ Drive contracts and Admin

Advanced Technology Program on Toll House

Must run.  Maybe some pictures later..