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IDT Biologika, a globally integrated manufacturer of vaccines and biopharmaceuticals, announces today the one-year anniversary celebration of its first U.S. contract manufacturing facility in Rockville, Maryland. The state-of-the-art facility offers custom, end-to-end solutions to support the manufacture of viral and microbial vaccines (live and attenuated), gene and cancer therapies, and therapeutic proteins. IDT commemorates its first anniversary with a special program and tours of its facility for local political leaders and members of the biopharmaceutical industry.

Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation (Tekes) and IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced a partnership that will enable Finland to utilize Watson cognitive computing to help doctors improve the health of its citizens, and strengthen and develop the Finnish innovation and business ecosystem in the fields of health and well-being. To facilitate the collaboration, IBM intends to establish a Watson Health Center of Excellence in Finland, the first Nordic Healthcare Competence Center, and the first National Imaging Center of Excellence outside the United States in Finland. These centers are expected to employ 150 people over the next few years.

At first glance, Moderna Therapeutics looks like the most enviable biotech startup in the world. It has smashed fundraising records and teamed up with pharmaceutical giants as it pursues a radical plan to revolutionize medicine by transforming human cells into drug factories.

But the reality is more complicated.

David Petr, who has been hired to guide economic development in Montgomery County, said the county has what it needs to compete against rival Fairfax County: a quality work force.

“The true benefit of doing business here is the quality of talent,” Petr said Tuesday after a meeting with the Montgomery County Council.

Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences group, is investing big in developing technologies for the millions of people worldwide with diabetes.

Verily announced today that it is teaming up with pharmaceutical giant Sanofi to fund and spin out a new venture, Cambridge, Mass.-based Onduo, which is focused on helping clinicians and their patients manage the disease. The companies have tapped a new CEO to lead the startup, trained emergency-medicine physician Joshua Riff, from United Healthcare-owned Optum.

The University of Maryland School of Medicine tested out its first Zika vaccine shots Tuesday, in hopes to further research that could lead to a vaccine used around the world.

The vaccine was developed by the National Institute of Health, which chose three places to test, first in their labs in Bethesda, then at the U of M School of Medicine, and finally at Emery University in Atlanta.

The University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore announced details Tuesday of a joint national security academy.

Officials said the academy, which would be located in College Park, will enable them to expand their current programs in cybersecurity, law, criminology and counterterrorism.

Recently there have been numerous articles and editorials understandably scrutinizing the increases in pricing of EpiPen produced by Mylan, a generic drug company. The strong reaction to the behavior of Mylan and a few other companies is threatening to impede the ability of R&D-focused innovator companies to provide innovative, life-changing new therapies to patients.

Tech star and billionaire Steve Case has been hammering home one idea for the last few years — that the future of tech and startups rests outside of the traditional Silicon Valley ecosystem and in the fertile plains of America’s heartland.

Now, with less than a month until his fifth “Rise of the Rest” tour, he sees that idea gaining traction.