JHU got more grants despite U.S. decline

In a year when federal funding of higher education research fell 3.8 percent, the government spent 2.6 percent more on studies at the Johns Hopkins University, which maintained the top spot in a ranking of all institutions receiving federal money. During fiscal year 2014, the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, NASA and other agencies spent $1.95 billion on research at Hopkins, including at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, according to NSF data. That is more than twice the $909 million the agencies spent at the University of Washington, the secondranking institution, according to the NSF. Hopkins’ overall spending on research grew 3.4 percent to $2.24 billion. The Laurel lab accounted for $1.3 billion of that total; without that spending, Hopkins would rank ninth among universities for total research dollars. Hopkins has led the NSF’s rankings of research spending at U.S. institutions since 1979, when the agency changed its methodology to include the physics lab.

UMB licenses pathogen technology

The University of Maryland, Baltimore has given a Baltimorebased biotech company worldwide, exclusive licensing rights to the university’s patents and technology to develop a faster, cheaper way to identify dangerous pathogens, University of Maryland Ventures said Wednesday. Biotech firm Pataigin LLC, founded by university researchers, has created a library of pathogens with chemical “barcodes” that can be used to identify types of infection. Infectious diseases are responsible for more than 18 million deaths a year, but the technology to detect potential infectious agents is slow, expensive and labor-intensive. The licensed technology uses the presence of lipids in the outer membranes of pathogens that are unique to each strain and creates “barcodes” for each lipid coating. Laboratory staff can identify specific strains of bacteria, fungi and yeast that cause disease, using tissues from blood, urine and wounds.